Desposyni

The Desposyni (plural from Greek δεσπόσυνος (desposynos) "of or belonging to the master or lord, as in Gr. δεσπότης (despotes) "Lord, Master") is a contemporary term used to refer to alleged blood relatives of Jesus mentioned in and .

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: James the Just, Joses, Simon and Jude. In Ebionite belief, Joseph is viewed as the biological father of Jesus.

Different sects of Christians hold broadly divergent interpretations of what actual relation the family members listed in and may have had with Jesus, as a mortal or in his risen manifestation as "the Christ". Eastern Christianity, following Eusebius, believes that they were "Joseph's children by his (unrecorded) first wife." Roman Catholicism, following , , and agrees with Jerome that they were Jesus' cousins, sons of another Mary, the wife of Cleopas, which the Greek word for "brother" or "relative" used in the Gospels would encompass. Following Hegesippus, 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.

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 stepbrothers 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 stepbrothers, 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.

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."

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:

• Version I (after James Tabor)

                          Matthat bar Levi

                                  |

        Eleazar                   |

        |                     Heli/Eliakim

        |                           |

        Matthan             ________|____________

        |                   |                   |

        |                   |                   |

    Mary +              = Joseph (1st) =   Clophas (2nd)

          |                                     |

          |              _______________________|___________

          Jesus          |      |     |      |      |     |

       5 B.C.- A.D. 28.  |      |     |      |      |     |

                         James  Jose  Judas  Simon  Mary  Salome

                        d.A.D. 62     |   d.A.D. 101

                                  ____|____

                                 |         |

                                 |         |

                             Zechariah   James

                           alive in the reign of Domitian

• Version II (edited; see external link)

      __________________________________________

      |                                        |

      |                                        |

 Mary=Joseph                                   Cleopas=Mary

     |                                                |

     |______________________________________          |

     |    |     |     |     |      |      |           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 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, 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.

References

• 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