DESPOSYNI

The 'Desposyni' (from Greek (''desposinos'') "of or belonging to the master or lord" [1]) was a sacred name reserved only for Jesus' blood relatives. The closely related word (''despotes'') meaning lord, master, or ship owner is commonly used of God, human slave-masters, and of Jesus in the reading Luke 13:25 found in Papyrus 75, in Jude 1:4, and possibly in 2nd Peter 2:1 (Strong's G1203). In Ebionite belief, the ''desposyni'' included his mother Mary, his father Joseph, his cousin John the Baptist, (and in the modern Protestant Christian perspective), his sisters and brothers such as: James the Just, Joses, Simon and Jude; in modern Catholic and Orthodox Christian belief, Mary is counted as a blood relative, Joseph only as a foster father and the rest as close relatives, such as step-siblings or cousins.
As some asserted their descent from king David, all male ''desposyni'' could have been pretenders to the throne of Kingdom of Israel. However, the Roman occupation of the land of Israel (Iudaea Province), with the collaboration of the Herodians and the priestly dynasty of Annas, made any attempt by a ''desposynos'' to rise to or seize political and religious power impossible or limited in scope.
Different Christians also have different interpretations of Jesus' family members mentioned in and .Witherington, Ben III, "Jesus' Extended Family," ''Bible Review,'' 19:3, pg.30. Witherington lists a fourth possibility, that they were the full brothers and full sisters of Jesus, but notes that "this explanation does not mesh with most Christians' belief that Hodm not Joseph, was Jesus' father." Eastern Christianity, following Eusebius, believes that they were "Joseph's children by his (unrecorded) first wife." Roman Catholicism, following , , and believes with Jerome that they were Jesus' cousins, sons of Mary, the wife of Cleopas, which the Greek word for "brother" or "relative" used in the Gospels would encompass. Following Hegesippus (about 150), quoted by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 3, 11), Clopas is the brother of Joseph, and Simon is the cousin of Jesus. Both beliefs agree with the tradition that Mary remained a perpetual virgin,e.g., Origen's ''Commentary on Matthew'', §10.17 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 the biological children of Mary and Joseph.In other words, in this view they shared one parent (Mary) with Jesus. "So James, according to this view, would be Jesus' younger half-brother." Witherington, Ben III, "Jesus' Extended Family," ''Bible Review,'' 19:3, pg.30–31. In addition, the Nelson Study Bible (NKJV) lists the traditional authors of the Epistles of James and Jude as "James, the half brother of Jesus, traditionally called "the Just" (pg 2102) and "Jude the brother of James and the half brother of the Lord Jesus" (pg. 2156). The term "half brother" is used to denote parentage, not genetics. In this view, the other brothers and sisters listed in the Gospel passages would have the same relationship to Jesus. However, some Protestants reject the term "half brother" because it is too specific; the Gospel accounts refer to these relatives as brothers and sisters of Jesus, without specifying their parents, and refer to Mary only in relation to Jesus.

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 (Thomas 99). 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 step-brothers or cousins - argued to be valid translations for the underlying Greek term (adelphos). 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 step-brothers, sons of Joseph by another, unrecorded marriage (since according to Christian doctrine Joseph was not Jesus' biological father, such children would have no 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.^[1]

Historical accounts of the Desposyni

Hegesippus (c.110-c.180) wrote five books of Commentaries on the Acts of the Church. They are lost, but a few fragments are quoted by Eusebius in ''Historia Ecclesiae'', 3.20. Among them is the following relation, ascribed to the reign of Domitian (81-96):
In "The Ecclesiastical History", Eusebius records an account by Sextus Julius Africanus recorded the following concerning the family:

The Desposyni and the Pope

The controversial Irish priest Malachi Martin, without giving a legitimate reference, noted in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church" that:
:"...A meeting between Sylvester (Pope Sylvester I) and the Jewish Christian leaders took place in 318....The vital interview was not, as far as we know, recorded, but the issues were very well known, and it is probable the Joses, the oldest of the Christian Jews, spoke on behalf of the Desposyni and the rest."
:"...That most hallowed name, desposyni, had been respected by all believers in the first century and a half of Christian history. The word literally meant, in Greek, "belonging to the Lord." It was reserved uniquely for Jesus' blood relatives. Every part of the ancient Jewish Christian church had always been governed by a desposynos, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Jesus' family---Zachary, Joseph, John, James, Joses, Simeon, Matthias, and so on. But no one was ever called Jesus. Neither Sylvester nor any of the thirty-two popes before him, nor those succeeding him, ever emphasized that there were at least three well-known and authentic lines of legitimate blood descent from Jesus' own family..."
:"...The Desposyni demanded that Sylvester, who now had Roman patronage, revoke his confirmation of the authority of the Greek Christian bishops at Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Ephesus, and in Alexandria, and to name desposynos bishops to take their place. They asked that the practice of sending cash to Jerusalem as the mother church be resumed... These blood relatives of Christ demanded the reintroduction of the Law, which included the Sabbath and the Holy Day system of Feasts and New Moons of the Bible. Sylvester dismissed their claims and said that, from now on, the mother church was in Rome and he insisted they accept the Greek bishops to lead them."
:"...This was the last known dialogue with the Sabbath-keeping church in the east led by the disciples who were descended from blood relatives of Jesus the Messiah."

Extended family

Other known relatives of Jesus include Simeon, the second bishop of Jerusalem, who was according to some traditions the son of Joseph's brother Clopas (mentioned by Eusebius, ''Historia Ecclesiae'' 3.11,32), and three Nestorian bishops of Seleucia on the Tigris in the 3rd century (according to the 13th-century Syrian historian, Gregory Barhebraeus). John the Baptist was also a relative of Jesus.

Family trees and pedigrees

Patriarchal Rule

According to author Malachi Martin, every early community of Judean followers of Jesus, whether it was Nazarene or Ebionite, was governed by a ''desposynos'' as a patriarch, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Jesus' family but no one was ever named after him. This does not seem absolutely true, as:
there is no recorded Ebionite bishop;
Hegisippus makes a special mention that the grand sons of Jude, the Lord's brother, were elevated to the Priesthood after suffering as Confessors;
and many of the early Church Fathers were the Bishops of the major Sees Malachi Martin mentions - yet it doesn't seem likely that any more than half of them, if even that many, were related to Jesus.

References in Popular Culture

The purportedly non-fiction 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 would have been ''desposyni''.
In the film ''Dogma'', the main character, Bethany, is the many-times great grand-daughter of one of Jesus' younger siblings.

Notes and References

1. http://www.jesuspolice.com/common_error.php?id=11 "Wilson (1992) [Wilson, A.N. Jesus: A life. 1992. New York: Norton & Co.] has hypothesized that the negative relationship between Jesus and his family was placed in the Gospels (especially in the Gospel of Mark) to dissuade early Christians from following the Jesus cult that was administered by Jesus’ family. Wilson says: “…it would not be surprising if other parts of the church, particularly the Gentiles, liked telling stories about Jesus as a man who had no sympathy or support from his family (p. 86).” Butz (2005) [Butz, Jeffrey. The brother of Jesus and the lost teachings of Christianity. 2005. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions.] is more succinct: “…by the time Mark was writing in the late 60s, the Gentile churches outside of Israel were beginning to resent the authority wielded by Jerusalem where James and the apostles were leaders, thus providing the motive for Mark’s antifamily stance… (p. 44).” Other prominent scholars agree (e.g., Crosson, 1973 [Crosson, John Dominic. “Mark and the relatives of Jesus”. Novum Testamentum, 15, 1973]; Mack, 1988 [Mack, Burton. A myth of innocence: Mark and Christian origins. 1988. Philadelphia: Fortress]; Painter. 1999 [Painter, John. Just James: The brother of Jesus in history and tradition. 1999. Minneapolis: Fortress Press])."

★ Cooper, L.E. The Jesus Presidents. iUniverse, 2004. ISBN 0-595-33300-1.

★ Kilgallen, John J. A Brief Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, Paulist Press, 1989.

★ Malachi Martin. ''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church''. New York, Bantam, 1983, pages 30–31.

★ James D. Tabor. ''The Jesus Dynasty''. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

External links

★ "From Jesus to Christ: Jesus' Family Tree" — PBS

★ Catholic Encyclopedia: The Brethren of the Lord

★ Desposyni and The House of Jesse

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DESPOSYNI

Jesus' relations with his biological family in the New Testament

Historical accounts of the Desposyni

The Desposyni and the Pope

Extended family

Family trees and pedigrees

Patriarchal Rule

References in Popular Culture

Notes and References

External links

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