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Desposyni
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The Desposyni (Greek desp?s????, plural of desp?s????, meaning "of or belonging to the master or lord") is a term that, according to Sextus Julius Africanus, a writer of the early third century, to refer to alleged blood relatives of Jesus who were then alive.
Some of these appear to have held, even at that relatively late stage, positions of special honour in the Christian Church.
us Julius Africanus's reference to the Desposyni is preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History:
bius has also preserved an extract from a work by Hegesippus (c.110-c.180), who wrote five books (now lost except for some quotations by Eusebius) of Commentaries on the Acts of the Church.
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The Desposyni (Greek desp?s????, plural of desp?s????, meaning "of or belonging to the master or lord") is a term that, according to Sextus Julius Africanus, a writer of the early third century, to refer to alleged blood relatives of Jesus who were then alive.
Some of these appear to have held, even at that relatively late stage, positions of special honour in the Christian Church.
Statement by Sextus Julius Africanus
Sextus Julius Africanus's reference to the Desposyni is preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History:
Statement by Hegesippus
Eusebius has also preserved an extract from a work by Hegesippus (c.110-c.180), who wrote five books (now lost except for some quotations by Eusebius) of Commentaries on the Acts of the Church. The extract refers to the period from the reign of Domitian (81-96) to that of Trajan (98-117):
The Desposyni and the Christian Church
The statement of Hegesippus says that the two Desposyni who were brought before Domitian "became leaders of the churches".
At an earlier stage too, James, known as "the Lord's brother", and who is said to have been granted a special appearance by the resurrected Jesus, was, with Saint Peter a leader of the church in Jerusalem and, when Peter left, James appears as the principal authority and was held in high regard by the Jewish Christians. Hegesippus reports that he was executed by the Sanhedrin in 62.
It is likely that other kinsmen of Jesus had some measure of leadership in nearby Christian communities, until all Jews were expelled from the area after the Jewish revolt during Hadrian's reign.
Claim by Malachy Martin
A certain amount of publicity has been won by the following claim by the controversial Irish priest Malachi Martin. However, he gave no valid source for his story.
Related questions
The "brethren of the Lord"
The New Testament names Jesus' mother, Mary, and his brothers, James the Just, Joses, Simon and Jude. According to Mark, Jesus' mother and brothers were at first skeptical of Jesus' ministry but later became part of the Christian movement. Saint James, "the Lord's brother," presided over the Jerusalem church after the apostles dispersed. Jesus' kinsmen likely exercised some leadership among neighboring Christian communities until Jews were expelled from the area with the founding of Aelia Capitolina.
The most natural inference from the New Testament is that Jesus' brothers were children of Mary and Joseph born after Jesus. Tertullian, possibly Hegesippus, and Helvidius accepted this view. In the 4th century, however, Saint Jerome rejected this view in favor of Mary's perpetual virginity. Jerome held that these men were sons of Mary's sister, also named Mary. Saint Epiphanius and the Eastern Church, however, regard these "brothers" as Joseph's sons from a former marriage. A modern proposal has these men as the sons of Clopas (Joseph's brother according to Hegesippus) and Mary (not identified as the Blessed Virgin Mary's sister).
In Catholic and Orthodox Christian belief, Mary alone is counted as a direct blood relative due to the doctrine of Perpetual Virginity, Joseph only as a foster father, and the rest as close relatives with no direct blood ties, such as step-siblings or cousins. In Protestant Christian belief, the desposyni include his mother Mary, his cousin John the Baptist ; as well, his brothers as named in the New Testament. In Ebionite belief, Joseph was viewed as the biological father of Jesus.
Christians hold divergent interpretations of what actual relation the family members listed in and may have had with Jesus. Eastern Christianity, following Eusebius, believes that they were Joseph's children by his (unrecorded) first wife. Within the Roman Catholic Church, which has no authoritative position on the matter, many agree with Jerome that they were Jesus' cousins, sons of another Mary, the wife of Cleopas, mentioned in on the basis of , , and . Hegesippus said Clopas was the brother of Joseph, and Simon was the cousin of Jesus. Both beliefs agree with the tradition that Mary remained a perpetual virgin, thus having no biological children before or after Jesus. While such notable reformers as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, as well as the 18th Century evangelist Wesley affirmed the perpetual virginity of Mary, most Protestants today believe that these family members were in fact the biological children of Mary and Joseph.
Scholars of the Jesus Seminar suggest that the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity has impeded the recognition that Jesus had brothers and sisters.
Jesus' relations with his biological family in the New Testament
According to the Synoptic Gospels, and particularly the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was once teaching a large crowd near the home of his own family, and when this came to their attention, his family went to see him and "they" (not specified) said that Jesus is "...out of his mind."
- Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ - NRSV
- And he comes back home, and the crowd gathers again, to the point where they couldn't even eat a meal. Hearing of that, his folks came out [from Nazareth] intending to take him away, saying, "He's gone mad!" -Mark 3:20-21 (Andy Gaus, Unvarnished New Testament, 1991)
- And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, "He has lost His senses." - NASB
In the narrative of the Synoptic Gospels, and of the Gospel of Thomas, when Jesus' mother and brothers are outside the house that Jesus is teaching in, Jesus tells the crowd that whoever does what God wills would constitute his mother and brothers (). According to Kilgallen, Jesus' answer was a way of underlining that his life had changed to the degree that his family were far less important than those that he teaches about the Kingdom of God. The Gospel of John states that Jesus' brothers did not believe in him, because he wouldn't perform miracles with them at the Feast of Tabernacles.
There is much disagreement over whether the brothers referred to by these narratives are actual brothers or merely stepbrothers or cousins - argued to be valid translations for the underlying Greek term (). The official Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox doctrine is that Mary was a perpetual virgin, and so could not have had any other children besides Jesus, thus making these Jesus's stepbrothers, sons of Joseph by another, unrecorded marriage (since according to Christian doctrine Joseph was not Jesus' biological father, such children would have no genetic relation to Jesus whatsoever), or cousins. Only Tertullian seems to have questioned this in the early Church. Islam also holds that Mary was a perpetual virgin as did many of the early Protestants, although many Protestants today do not hold to the doctrine of perpetual virginity, and would thus believe that these are Mary's children.
The negative view of Jesus' family portrayed in Acts and the Gospels may be related to the conflict between Paul of Tarsus and Jewish Christians, who held Jesus' family in high regard, for example at the Council of Jerusalem.
Family trees and pedigrees
Aside from the Genealogies of Jesus present in the Gospel of Luke and Gospel of Matthew, there have been several attempts to piece together a detailed family tree of Jesus' immediate nuclear family:
Matthat bar Levi
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Eleazar |
| Heli/Eliakim
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Matthan ________|____________
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Mary + = Joseph (1st) = Clophas (2nd)
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| _______________________|___________
Jesus | | | | | |
5 B.C.- A.D. 28. | | | | | |
James Jose Judas Simon Mary Salome
d.A.D. 62 | d.A.D. 101
____|____
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Zechariah James
alive in the reign of Domitian
- Version II (edited; see external link)
__________________________________________
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Mary=Joseph Cleopas=Mary
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|______________________________________ |
| | | | | | | Simeon
| | | | | | | d. 106
Jesus James Joses Simon Sister Sister Jude
d.62 |
| Menahem
Jude ____|____
| ||
Elzasus James Zoker
| ?
Nascien |
Bishop Judah Kyriakos
fl.c.148-149.
In popular culture
The 1980's book The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, the fictional book and film The Da Vinci Code, and the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus claim that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. The children of such a marriage, the so-called "Jesus bloodline", would have been desposyni.
In the film Dogma, the main character, Bethany, is the many-times great granddaughter of one of Jesus' younger siblings.
Popular culture often outright denies biological siblings of Jesus. The phrase "Jesus was an only son" occurs in numerous songs, including the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name from his Devils & Dust album, and also occurs as a lyric in The Smashing Pumpkins' song Bullet With Butterfly Wings and the Lyle Lovett song Lungs.
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