Desposyni

Originally posted by Don Quixote About the Gospel of James - do you mean this one http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/jam2.html ? I cannot find in it a remark about Mary being a consecrated virgin, would you quote the relevant verses?

No, this one. The Gospel or Protoevangelium of James was written in the first half of the second century, when people who had known the apostles or at least their immediate disciples were still alive. In short, Mary's mother, Anne, vows that she would devote the child to the temple. Because of ceremonial considerations it was necessary she kept her virginity. Here is the relevant text:

"6. And the child grew strong day by day; and when she was six months old, her mother set her on the ground to try whether she could stand, and she walked seven steps and came into her bosom; and she snatched her up, saying: As the Lord my God lives, you shall not walk on this earth until I bring you into the temple of the Lord. And she made a sanctuary in her bed-chamber, and allowed nothing common or unclean to pass through her. And she called the undefiled daughters of the Hebrews, and they led her astray. . . .

7. And her months were added to the child. And the child was two years old, and Joachim said: Let us take her up to the temple of the Lord, that we may pay the vow that we have vowed, lest perchance the Lord send to us, and our offering be not received. And Anna said: Let us wait for the third year, in order that the child may not seek for father or mother. And Joachim said: So let us wait. And the child was three years old, and Joachim said: Invite the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let them take each a lamp, and let them stand with the lamps burning, that the child may not turn back, and her heart be captivated from the temple of the Lord. . . .

8. . . . And Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food from the hand of an angel. And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of the priests, saying: Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord? . . .

9. . . . And the priest said to Joseph, You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the virgin of the Lord. But Joseph refused, saying: I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl. . . ."

There are three more references to Mary as a virgin out of the temple of the Lord.

I cannot understand what the faith of people that Mary was a virgin has to do with her being a virgin or not?

She was by all historical accounts a perpetual virgin. That's my point.

I can believe in Santa Claus, this doesn't mean that objectively he exists. What are we talking here - about what objectively could have been, or about faith? Those are 2 very different things.

A proposition or belief is true if it corresponds to reality. You talk about knowing things objectively, but we can only know the-world-as-it-is-to-us and not the-world-as-it-is-in-itself. Belief is, therefore, a necessary condition of knowledge and knowledge a kind of belief.

I don't know if Desposyni have any descendants, or not, and frankly, I don't see it as relevant to anything; what I'm saying is that Jesus, if he existed, that is, was a person like anyone else, with relatives, etc;

It was relevant to the OP. The topic is about the desposyni remember.

Do you really doubt the historicity of Jesus? If you hold other historical figures to the same level of proof, you would have to dismiss the existence of a great many of them.

Besides, celibacy was not an universal Christian ideal, only the Catholic Church got set on it, the Orthodox Christianity doesn't teach celibacy, and the Orthodox priests get married; and the Orthodox Chtistianity has the claim to the the oldest Christian church, since the Catholics separated from it in the Schism at 1054. But this is another story.

Then I suppose the Orthodox Church imposed celibacy on all clergy at the Council of Elvira in 306.

Orthodox priests are allowed to remain married, not get married. Orthodox bishops are celibate. The same rules apply to the Eastern Catholic Church.

Originally posted by Sidney I'm okay accepting that there is no word for 'brother' in the Aramaic, and that the term used can have a multiple of meanings, but was the NT not written in Greek?

Yes, but most of the dialogue had to have been in Aramaic.

Does it then apply to the Greek term 'brother'?

It does in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament). Lot, Abraham's nephew, is called Abraham's brother, and Jacob, Laban's nephew, is called Laban's brother. The translators used the Greek word for brother even though Greek has a word for cousin. By literally translating the word brother they imported the Jewish meaning of the word into their Greek language.

Considering this, the context, the early Christian interpretation, and the very early reference (Gospel of James, see above) to Joseph's children from a previous marriage, it's more plausible that the word brother was used in the wider sense.

You seem to be focusing a lot on the New Testament, but there was no set New Testament for the early Christians. Not until the Council of Rome in 382 did the Christian Church universally agree on the canon of the New Testament.

Originally posted by Sylla1 Mark 13: 55-56, copycated by Matthew 6: 3 :"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?" The canonical non-synoptic John mentions Jesus' brothers as a group twice:"After this he went down to Caper'naum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples; and there they stayed for a few days" (2: 12)"For even his brothers did not believe in him." (7: 5)

Thanks for the quotes, Sylla1.

Mentioning Jesus' brothers and sisters and mother and father together in Jesus' home environment certainly suggests that they were his close family, whatever interpretation you put on the term 'family'or on 'brother' - as full blood, adoption or half. Why mention brothers and sisters if they just meant cousins? Some of Jesus' cousins were his disciples, (the sons of Zebedee and of Alphaeus) but they are not called Jesus' brothers, and are not the brothers mentioned because we are told that Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him. Indeed, the above NT quote shows that the disciples and the brothers were seperate groups. If the brothers were his close companians, wouldn't 'disciple' cover them all?

I agree with you, Leroy, that celibacy certainly cut down on the likelihood of the Desposyni surviving in a long line. The last one mentioned (which does not mean the last one in existence)in Jerusalem was Judah, Bishop, expelled in 135AD in the time of Trajan. The Desposyni Bishops in Persia were alive in the mid 2nd Century, down to about the time of Marcus Aurelius. The last one I found reference to (up to now - and if I ignore the Welsh claims) was Conon in Turkey, in the time of Decius, about 220AD. If the story is accurate, that makes nearly 200 years of a family awareness. Maybe such claims were frowned upon, or even viewd by some as blaphemous (for similar reasons as these posts are illustrating - Christ had no brothers, and wasn't related to Joseph, so there can't be any descendants from them, and if there were they are not his relatives).

I wasn't aware of the idea that Mary was a consecrated virgin in the temple, so her suprise at being told she would be pregnant was not just that she was a virgin, but that she always intended to be one. But would a consecrated virgin of the temple be getting married in the first place? Her betrothal to Joseph occured before the pregnancy, and Joseph only hesitated about marrying her after Jesus was concieved. Wouldn't her temple status preclude a marriage (with or without sex)?

I'm not very good with understanding ancient languages. I'm okay accepting that there is no word for 'brother' in the Aramaic, and that the term used can have a multiple of meanings, but was the NT not written in Greek? Does it then apply to the Greek term 'brother'?But 'brother' also has multiple meanings in English -it can be full blood, half blood, adopted, in-law, spiritual, tribal, political, friendship, etc. But the same principle also goes for the term 'mother', 'sister','father' and son, so it gets to a bit of a stale-mate on the issue.

Edited by Sidney - 04-Apr-2012 at 14:39

Please note that in the case of James, TF Josephus explicitly called him & Jesus "brothers" in Greek language, within an historical non-religious work.

Well, it may sound irreverent, but when it comes to virginity...Mary may had conceived Jesus by non-penetrational sexual activity, and hence had been virgin when she bore him /many girls do that in order to keep a boyfriend but not no get too involved/ - but no one stays virgin after giving birth. Then she had other kids - if she wasn't married when she conceived Jesus she was when she conceived the others, so there was no reason to refuse her husband. Besides celibacy, even if embraced by Jesus, wasn't a feature of the everyday Jewish life, and Jesus's parents were ordinary people, not members of some elitist sect that was sworn to celibacy.

Tertullian was writing about and in later time - when the doctrine of celibacy /which I still think had to do more with Greek Stoic philosophy more than with Judaism/ was starting to spread. The only primary sources we have to rely about Jesus's intermediate family seem to be what Sylla1 posted - and to me they describe an ordinary family with kids etc.

Thank you, Leroy, for linking this work of Eusebius, which, I admit, haven't read.

Originally posted by Sidney 3. Why did their claims die out? Did they all forget, or the lines become extinct. How late did the tradition last of being related to Jesus?

Interesting questions, I hope you keep us updated with your research.

I would suggest that the desposyni died out during the reign of Trajan. Julius Africanus coined the term desposyni, but he does not claim that any relatives were still living.

Hegesippus tells us that Simeon and James were made bishops and that the grandsons of Judas became bishops of the Church as was natural in the case of those who were . . . of the kindred of the Lord. And . . . their lives were prolonged to the reign of Trojan.

These men were all martyred and would likely have been celibate or continent:

St. Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians (7:7-38) that he wishes that all were celibate like himself. Eusebius, commenting on this , says,

I am glad to say we are able to provide teachers and preachers of the word of holiness, free from all ties of life and anxious thoughts. And in our day these men are necessarily devoted to celibacy that they may have leisure for higher things; they have undertaken to bring up not one or two children but a prodigious number, and to educate them in godliness, and to care for their life generally.

And Tertullian writes, commending the clergy and women devoted to celibacy:

How many men, therefore, and how many women, in Ecclesiastical Orders, owe their position to continence, who have preferred to be wedded to God; who have restored the honour of their flesh, and who have already dedicated themselves as sons of that (future) age, by slaying in themselves the concupiscence of lust, and that whole (propensity) which could not be admitted within Paradise! Whence it is presumable that such as shall wish to be received within Paradise, ought at last to begin to cease from that thing from which Paradise is intact.

In his On Monogamy Tertullian explains that the wives of the apostles became ministers to them and not women with whom they had marriage relations.

And Jesus Christ said,

For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mothers womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it.

My still-undecided-and-open-to-change thoughts are; The New Testament interpretation is that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born, not that she remained a virgin all her life.

The Virgin Mary seems to have taken a vow of virginity because she had no intention to have sexual relations. When the angel tells Mary you will conceive, she responds, how shall this be?

In any case, the interpretation of the early Church was that she was ever-virgin (see for example Tertullian, On Monogamy, 8). The notion that the Christian religion is based on the New Testament and not vice versa did not exist until the 14th century.

Not Desposyni, but along a similar vein of witnesses to the life of Jesus having descendants (traditionally);

There is an 11th Century Islamic work by Shaykh Tusi that tells how a descendant of St. Simon, “one of the closest
companion and successor of Prophet Jesus”, married Joshua, the son of the Caesar and ruler of Rome, and that their daughter Malikah, or Narjes, married Hassan al Askan, the 11th Shi’ate imam (d.874 and a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed), and was mother to Mohammad al Hassan (b.869), the 12th imam, by some believed to be the Mahdi who is still alive and will return to rule before the Days of Judgement.
The St. Simon mentioned could be Simon, Bishop of Jerusalem, but would more likely fit Simon Peter. The reference to the Caesar of Rome is, however, anachronistic. And I cannot find a Joshua in the family of the Holy Roman Emperor, or that of the Byzantium Emperor.
In the New Testament, Simon and Andrew are brothers and fishermen. Jesus visited Simon’s home and healed his wife’s mother. Jesus also renamed Simon ‘Peter’ as a sign of how important he would be in the history of the Christian church.
Apparently there are people today with the surname Semaan in Antioch, where Simon Peter visited and left his family, who claim to be descended from him. But the surname Semaan seems to be very common amongst Christian families with links to the earliest Christian communities, so it more likely was a name adopted as a declaration of faith (it means ‘the listener’), rather than an indication of who an ancestor was.

Callistratus was the descendant of Neocorus/Okurus who, as a soldier under Tiberius, had witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus and was converted to Christianity. Callistratus was born in Carthage to Christian parents, and like his own father, was a soldier. The emperor Diocletian decreed Christianity illegal in the army, but Callistratus was heard praying to Jesus during the night, and was hauled before his commander. During his interrogation and torture, 49 of his fellow soldiers converted to Christianity, and they were all martyred together, c.300 AD.

When the Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, travelled to Jerusalem in 327AD, she was seeking holy relics. On the track of the Holy Cross she met a Jew, Judas the son of Simon the son of Sachias, who knew, from knowledge passed down in his family, where the site of Golgotha was. Whether there was a tradition that his family saw the crucifixion, I haven’t read.

Originally posted by Centrix Vigilis but believes have nothing to do with reality, no? depends on the individual version of reality me thinks. But I ken yer latter point so am moving on.

I suppose it can be said in this way. Gabriel Marcel said that believers have an access to reality than is open only to them, in the same way as a person who is school in reading notes have the doors of classical music open to him on another level, that a person who doesn't know anything about theory of music cannot experience. Hence, you have open for you doors I cannot pass, so in general I cannot really understand the question in the way you do; and I separate things in way in which you don't see them - that's because you are a person of faith and I'm not.

Faith - it's an elusive thing, one cannot learn it, cannot fake it, cannot prove it to oneself, cannot force it one oneself, even if one wants to - it is there or not. I've been reading religious philosophy in the last, say, 13 years, and I'm fond in particular of the medieval theologians - but none of this rubbed off on me, even in the years when I was associated with a particular church. I respect your point of view, and in a way envy you, since I'm smelling a flower from behind a glass, while you have it in your nose - but this is only as far as I can go.

Anyway, I wouldn't like my opinions to be an obstacle to your participation in the discussion here - I love reading your posts on the matter, even when I don't agree with them. I don't need to agree with someone in order to discuss with them, nor I don't want then to agree with me - what a boring world it would be if everyone thought like me.

Originally posted by Don Quixote The claims of Desposyni didn't die out easily, Eusebius of Cesarea recorded that in AD 318 a Desposyni delegation went to Rome to talk with the Bishop Silvester at Constantine's Lateran Palace:"... Through their chief spokesman. Joses, the delegated argued that the Church should be rightfully centered in Jerusalem, not Rome. They claimed that the Bishop of Jerusalem should be a true hereditary Desposinos, while the bishops of other major centers - such as Alexandria, Antioch and Ephesus - should be related. After all, they declared, Bishop clement of Alexandria had written that Jesus's brother James /as the appointed Nazarene Bishop of Jerusalem/ was "the Lords of the Holy Church and the bishop of bishops". In that respect, their Israelite-Christian movement was of far higher authority than a contrived Roman offshoot centered upon St. Peter, who was a mere apostle of the Lord and not a family member. Not surprizingly, their demands were made in vain..." pg. 27-28 "The Magdalene Legacy" by Laurence Gardner.

I've heard this story too, but if Laurence Gardner found it in Eusebius, he must have a hitherto unknown source, as it doesn't appear in the known records of that historian.

It does however, appear in the work of Malachi Martin "Decline and Fall of the Roman Church" (1981). Malachi starts by saying that the interview between Pope and Desposyni was not recorded, yet then goes on to tell us what was discussed, which seems to be a contradiction. He also states that the Hebrew Bishops of Jerusalem, and in fact all the early church leaders in the East, were Desposyni, and that the Desposyni were only classed as such if they were blood relatives to Jesus through his mother Mary, which is at odds with the references I've found. Malachi gives no sources for his information, and writes his history in a very readable, but also very novelistic, style, which makes it hard to judge which parts are historically attested and which is artistic retelling.

Edited by Sidney - 01-Apr-2012 at 16:29

but believes have nothing to do with reality, no?depends on the individual version of reality me thinks. But I ken yer latter point so am moving on.

I find the Desposyni interesting for three reasons;

1. That a family believed themselves related to an individual who lived one or two hundred years before them, implies some knowledge that that person existed and was important. There are some modern arguments that Jesus never even existed in 1st Century Palestine, but these family traditions place him within a genealogical context.

2. These people claimed a relationship through Joseph the carpenter, not through Mary. If Joseph had no children by Mary then that connection would be of no great import, espescially as he vanishes early on from the gospels. I know 'family' could include an extended range of individulas, adopted/half/step/in-law/full blooded, but its an interesting point, although I'm not sure whether it has any significance.

3. Why did their claims die out? Did they all forget, or the lines become extinct. How late did the tradition last of being related to Jesus?

Jesus' brothers pose an interesting problem for some people, or have an easy solution for others. Either they were full siblings (and Jesus was a son of Joseph, which is a problem for Jesus' divinity), or they are other children of Mary (which poses questions about Mary's virginity). Usually they are explained as children of Joseph by a previous marriage, or they are made into cousins - children of Mary's sister and Joseph's brother.

My still-undecided-and-open-to-change thoughts are;
The New Testament interpretation is that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born, not that she remained a virgin all her life. That belief came later when people wanted Mary to have been 'without sin' (i.e. had no sexual intercourse) inorder to have received the Holy Spirit, and God must have maintained her sinlessness inorder to proove how holy she was. And having a (so to speak) divine womb, it can't have been polluted by mortals, unless you accept that any further children were (at least in part) divine, which no one did. But the idea of Mary's perpetual purity meant that she too had to have been born 'without sin', and so we get the tricky situation where her mother Anna was also said to have concieved through the Holy Spirit. This train of thinking leads to the inevitable repetiton ad infintum (i.e. Anna must also be without sin, and so her mother must have concieved via the Holy Spirit, and so her mother, etc.) which seems unlikely. It also led to inventions of how Mary could have had a sister if Mary was a virgin birth, in the same way that people argue over how Jesus could have had siblings.

Going back to the New Testament, Jesus is called Mary's first-born son. To me that implies the existence of others. I see no reason not to accept that Jesus had uterine brothers and sisters, whether or not Jesus' was the literal son of God.

Also, while the word 'brother' in Aramaic (or in most languages for that matter) didn't neccesarily mean 'son of the same parents', why, when given a group of people who were all companians or near relatives of Jesus, is one, James, singled out as his 'brother'?

But that is my interpretation, and I know that there are arguments and beliefs against it, from ones more versed individuals than I am.