The Last Shepherds of Zion
The Story of the Nazarenes, the Desposyni, and the Lost Jewish-Christian Church of Jerusalem
A Historical Novel Inspired by True Events
Author's Note:
This story is inspired by real people, events, and traditions deeply rooted in the earliest centuries of the Christian Church. While the historical foundation is accurate and well-sourced, I have taken creative and dramatic license to bring the narrative to life. To serve the flow of storytelling, some timelines have been condensed, characters merged, and events dramatized. The aim is not to distort history, but to make it accessible, vivid, and spiritually resonant.
For full historical background, sources, and reflections, see the companion article here:
The Nazarenes, the Desposyni, and the Lost Jewish-Christian Church of Jerusalem
PART I: The Church of the Rising Light
Chapter One
The Upper Room
I was only thirteen when my uncle, James the Just, returned from Galilee with blood on his tunic and fire in his eyes.
“He is risen,” James said to my father.
“We saw Him die.”
“And yet… He lives.”
We were from the line of David. Our grandfather traced our lineage back through Solomon. My father, Clopas, served at the Temple gates. We were poor, but we were holy—keepers of the Law and sons of Zion.
That night, in the upper room of Mary’s house—the one they said once belonged to the Teacher—we gathered. Eleven men stood in silence, praying in Hebrew. The same room that had tasted the Passover now drank in the Spirit of God.
“You are witnesses,” said Simon Peter. “And now, we must build.”
We were the Nazarenes—those of the Way. Not traitors to the Torah. Not Gentiles with strange gods.
We believed in the Messiah of Israel—Jesus of Nazareth.
And we still kept the Sabbath, circumcision, and the Law.
Chapter Two
James the Just
He never smiled, not the way others did. His face was worn, his eyes lined with prayer. James walked the Temple steps like a prophet returned from exile.
He fasted daily, wore linen, and spoke little. Yet all Jerusalem respected him—even the priests who denied his Lord.
They called him Oblias—“the bulwark of the people.”
He led not from a throne, but from his knees.
When Peter left for Antioch, it was James who led the community of believers in Jerusalem. And when Paul came to defend his mission to the Gentiles, it was James who listened, discerned, and offered guidance.
“Let them not be burdened with the whole yoke,” James said. “Only these: abstain from idols, from blood, from strangled things, and from fornication.”
“But the Law?” asked Eleazar.
“It is our inheritance,” he said. “But we do not chain it to others.”
We were gathered in the upper chamber of the assembly house in Jerusalem. The air was thick with incense, sweat, and the murmurs of men who loved God but not always each other’s opinions.
They came from Antioch, Galatia, Phoenicia, and beyond—some bearing scrolls, others scars. They came because the question threatened to divide the flock:
“Must Gentiles become Jews before becoming Christians?”
The room was divided. Some of the Pharisees who had come to believe in Yeshua—zealous men, still wearing the tallit and phylacteries—rose first.
“The Gentiles must be circumcised,” one declared. “They must keep the Law of Moses.”
Paul stood across from him, his jaw tight.
“We have seen them receive the Holy Spirit—without circumcision. Without the yoke of the Law.”
Peter, older now, with hair more gray than black, rose with a hand lifted. The murmurs fell to silence.
“Brothers,” he said, “you know that in the early days God made a choice among you: that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe.”
— Acts 15:7
“And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us. Why, then, would we test God by placing a yoke on their neck that neither we nor our fathers could bear?”
— Acts 15:8–10
There was silence and then murmuring again. Some nodded. Others scowled.
And then James stood.
He said nothing for a moment. Just let the weight of his presence settle over the room. He had not spoken first, but he would speak last.
His voice was calm, deep, almost whispering—but every word hit like a hammer on stone.
“Brothers, listen to me.”
— Acts 15:13
“Simeon has described how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for His Name. And with this the words of the Prophets agree…”
He quoted Amos, in Hebrew, from memory.
‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the fallen tent of David... that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord—even all the Gentiles who are called by My name.’
— Acts 15:16–17
And then James did something no one expected.
“It is my judgment,” he said—not Peter’s, not the council’s—“that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God.”
He outlined a compromise: no circumcision, but a few essentials—abstain from idols, blood, strangled meat, and sexual immorality. Laws even a Gentile conscience could recognize.
And the council agreed.
Later, in private, I asked him:
“You spoke last. And they followed.”
He looked at me and simply said:
“Because someone must speak who will still be in Jerusalem when the others are gone.”
He did not wear a ring. He held no keys. But James was the anchor.
Peter opened the door to the Gentiles.
Paul carried the torch.
But James… James built the bridge.
Chapter Three
The Nazarenes
We were a strange people to Rome and to rabbinic Pharisees.
To one side, we were too Jewish to be Christian. To the other, too Christian to be Jewish.
But we knew who we were:
We read both Testaments—Moses and the Apostles.
We worshiped on the Sabbath and broke bread on the first day.
We honored the Feasts of the Lord, fasted on Yom Kippur, and read the prophets with eyes wide open to fulfillment.
St. Epiphanius would later describe us this way:
“They have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the law proclaims it... except for their belief in Christ.”
— Panarion 29.7
We were the Nazarenes. And we were not a cult.
We were the first Church.
Not long ago, a man named Saul of Tarsus—a fire-breathing Pharisee—sought to destroy us.
He once hunted us from house to house. He stood over the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen. And yet…
He became one of us.
Paul, Accused of Leading the Nazarenes
There came a day when Paul stood in chains before a Roman governor.
He had traveled across the Empire proclaiming Yeshua, and for it, he was accused not only of stirring up rebellion but of being the leader of our people. The accuser, Tertullus, spat these words before Felix the governor:
“We have found this man a plague, a creator of dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
— Acts 24:5 (NKJV)
Paul did not deny it.
“But this I confess to you,” he said, “that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and the Prophets.”
— Acts 24:14
He never renounced his people. He never abandoned the Law.
He simply saw it fulfilled.
And in the cities of the Gentiles, Paul bore the name Nazarene with pride—even as his chains rattled.
____________________________
Chapter Four
The House of the Lord
When James was martyred—pushed from the Temple wall and clubbed to death for declaring his Brother the Son of God—it was Simeon, son of Clopas, who succeeded him.
Simeon was over eighty, yet his voice boomed like thunder.
“Jerusalem may kill her prophets,” he said, “but we are not scattered yet.”
In those days, we counted fifteen bishops in succession—all Hebrew, all circumcised, all believers in Christ. Some were of the Desposyni—the family of Jesus. Others were elders chosen from the faithful.
And for nearly a century, Jerusalem remained a Jewish Church.
But not all was peace.
The Emperor and the Heirs
Word came from Galilee that two men—grandsons of Jude, the brother of the Lord—had been arrested and taken to Rome.
Emperor Domitian had grown paranoid. He feared secret kings, rebels, and heirs of ancient thrones. And so, the Desposyni were brought before him.
“You are of David’s line?” Domitian asked from his marble seat.
“We are,” the elder brother answered. “Sons of Judah. Grandsons of Jude.”
“And what of the Christ? Was he your king?”
“He is our Lord,” they replied. “But His kingdom is not of this world.”
Domitian asked them what wealth they owned. They confessed they were farmers, with nothing but soil-stained hands and a modest estate split between them.
“You are no threat,” the emperor said.
He released them, perhaps amused by their humility. But we, who knew them, understood the deeper meaning:
“They fear the crown,” one elder whispered. “But it is the Cross that will outlast the throne.”
Back in Jerusalem, we remembered their courage.
For a time, we continued to lead. The bishops of the holy city were still our brothers. The scrolls we read were still written in our tongue. The prayers we sang were those of David and the Apostles.
But we saw the tides turning. Rome did not kill the Church, but it did begin to reshape it.
“It will not be violence that ends us,” Simeon said one night. “It will be forgetfulness.”
“They will replace us?”
“No. They will believe we never were.”
This is the last time the Desposyni stood before an emperor. Not with sword or crown—but with truth, humility, and calloused hands.
And when they returned to us from Rome, they brought neither fear nor triumph.
Only silence.
The kind that precedes an earthquake. It was Hadrian.
PART II: The Exile of the Holy
Chapter Five
The Son of the Star
The year was 132 A.D., and the streets of Jerusalem echoed with a name spoken in reverence and fire:
“Bar Kokhba. Son of the Star.”
His real name was Simon ben Kosiba, but the rabbis gave him the title Bar Kokhba, after the prophecy in Numbers:
“A star shall rise from Jacob…”
Many hailed him as the Messiah.
But not we.
We—the Nazarenes—had already known the Messiah. And we would not trade the Crucified One for a general with a sword.
“This man will bring death, not deliverance,” said my uncle Simeon, now a bishop in hiding.
Still, the revolt spread.
We were caught in a storm not of our making: loyal to Israel, but loyal above all to Christ.
Chapter Six
Aelia and Ashes
Rome crushed the revolt in fire and iron. Hadrian came not to rebuild but to erase.
He renamed the city Aelia Capitolina.
He built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Temple of the Lord.
He banned Jews—of any kind—from the city.
And that meant us.
“We are not rebels,” Simeon told the Roman tribune.
“You are Jews,” the man replied. “And there is no place for Jews here.”
We fled to Pella, across the Jordan. A city of stone and olive trees, where the first Christians had once escaped before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.
There, under torchlight, Simeon spoke his final homily.
“They have taken the city. But they cannot take the Church.”
He died that winter. And with him, the line of Jewish-Christian bishops came to an end.
Chapter Seven
The Bishop Named Marcus
In the spring, a courier arrived from Caesarea. He bore a letter sealed in red wax, with the sigil of the imperial bishopric.
“Marcus has been appointed bishop of Aelia Capitolina,” it read.
The name Marcus was foreign to our ears. He was not one of the Desposyni. He had not walked the Temple courts with James or Simeon. He did not fast on Yom Kippur or eat unleavened bread at Passover.
He was, by all accounts, a righteous man. A believer. A leader sent by the Gentile churches of the coast and the governor’s hand. But he was not a Nazarene.
And soon, the greater blow came.
“The elders of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome have agreed,” said one of Marcus’s envoys. “The Law has been fulfilled in Christ. The burden of circumcision, the Sabbaths, and the customs of Moses no longer bind the followers of Jesus.”
We had heard this before, from Paul. But now, it was not a suggestion of inclusion—it was a doctrine of replacement.
Marcus himself would later write:
“We honor the Law through Him who fulfilled it. But let no man be compelled to keep feasts or customs that have been nailed to the cross.”
(Letter to the Churches of the Decapolis, attributed)
In Aelia, Gentile Christians no longer observed the Sabbath, nor the Feasts of the Lord. Baptism had replaced circumcision, and the Lord’s Day had overtaken the seventh.
“Why should the convert become a Jew to follow the Jewish Messiah?” Marcus asked.
“Because He is the Messiah of Israel,” I replied.
This was not blasphemy. It was theology. But to us—to the Nazarenes, to the Desposyni—it was the sound of a door closing.
We debated among ourselves.
“Is not Christ the fulfillment of the Law?” asked a younger elder.
“Yes,” I said. “But does the tree cut off its own roots?”
For generations, our faith had walked with Moses in one hand and Jesus in the other. Now, in the city of our God, we were told we must put Moses down to follow Jesus rightly.
Some among us were tempted to comply. Others were embittered. But most were simply… heartbroken.
Our holy city now bore the name of a pagan emperor.
Our temple had become a shrine to Jupiter.
And now, our faith was no longer allowed to look Jewish.
“Are we still Christians?” Hannah asked me as we watched the smoke from Roman chimneys rise over the horizon.
“Yes,” I said. “But to them, we are not Christian enough. And to the synagogue, we are too much.”
We had become a people between two worlds
Chapter Eight
A Song in Pella
We gathered one last time on the outskirts of Pella.
There were only thirty of us left: elders with failing knees, children with wide eyes, scrolls hidden in clay jars.
I, Eleazar ben Clopas, son of the priestly line, cousin of the cousins of the Lord, looked to the sky and sang:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem… if I forget thee, may my right hand forget its skill…”
We sang the psalms of ascent, not as pilgrims going up—but as mourners watching from afar.
Some would settle in the hills of Galilee. Others would join the growing churches of Antioch and Asia.
We would not be remembered.
But we would remember.
PART III: A Remnant Remembered
Chapter Nine
Scattered Like Seed
We left Pella in silence.
Some went north to the Galilee, others east to the Decapolis. I, Eleazar ben Clopas, journeyed south with a group of families toward Mount Tabor, where tradition said the Master had once been transfigured.
We settled in a grove of fig trees. We built no synagogue, no church, only a circle of stones where we read from the Torah and the Gospel.
The children called it the qahal — the assembly.
I taught them in Hebrew and Aramaic, and when I read from the scroll of Matthew, I read it from a copy written in our own tongue. The same copy James had read in Jerusalem.
“Blessed are the meek,” I read, “for they shall inherit the land.”
We were no longer leaders. No longer bishops or recognized elders.
We were memory keepers.
And we remembered everything.
Chapter Ten
The Scroll and the Silence
One evening, a stranger arrived from the coast. A deacon from Caesarea, bearing a gift wrapped in linen: a scroll case, sealed with wax.
Inside were the names.
A genealogy — of the Desposyni.
“They are being erased,” he told me. “The bishops in Aelia are no longer taught your names. Some say James was never a bishop. That the Church in Jerusalem began with Marcus.”
I held the scroll and felt my chest tighten.
“Then we must write it down,” I said.
That winter, I copied every name I knew:
James the Just
Simeon son of Clopas
Justus
Zacchaeus
...and eleven more.
Fifteen in all — all Jews, all believers in the risen Christ.
“These are the true stones of Zion,” I told the children.
Chapter Eleven
The Last of His House
In the village of Kfar Kana, I met a man named Joses.
He was old, blind, and called himself the last of the Desposyni.
“I am of the blood of Jude,” he said, “the brother of the Lord.”
He remembered James. Remembered how his beard touched his waist, how his knees were calloused from prayer.
He remembered the Temple, the fire, the exile.
“They say we are gone,” he said. “But my blood still sings the Shema.”
We prayed together that night.
He placed his hand on my head and said:
“Keep the name. Not for honor. For truth.”
He died the next morning, and I buried him beneath a fig tree.
No stone. Only a carved fish and the name: Joses, of the House of David.
Chapter Twelve
Echoes in Antioch
Years later, I traveled to Antioch, now a great center of the Church.
I found there brothers of faith, but few of memory.
When I spoke of James, of the Desposyni, of the Hebrew Matthew, they looked puzzled.
“That is a matter of curiosity,” one presbyter said. “Our bishop speaks of Peter and Paul.”
“But they came to James,” I said. “They bowed to him in Jerusalem.”
“That was long ago,” he replied. “We are all Gentiles now.”
But one old man, a presbyter named Theophilus, pulled me aside.
“I remember,” he whispered. “My grandfather heard James preach in the portico of Solomon. He called him ‘the just one.’”
He gave me ink and parchment.
“Write it down,” he said. “The others may forget. But heaven remembers.”
So I wrote.
Chapter Thirteen
The Council by the Fire
It was winter when the letter came.
Brought by a courier from Caesarea, it bore the seal of the Gentile bishop Marcus, successor of Marcus the first.
“To the remnant of the saints beyond Jordan,” it read, “let there be unity between the elder root and the wild olive.”
He was calling a meeting—not in Aelia, where Jews were still forbidden, but in a neutral town halfway to Joppa.
I traveled with three elders, all bent by age, all wearing the mantle of forgotten priests. We met the bishop and two of his presbyters in a shepherd's grove, beneath the stars.
“We have not forgotten you,” Marcus said.
“But the world has,” I answered. “And memory dies unless kept with pain.”
We shared bread. We prayed in Hebrew and Greek. We read from both Moses and Matthew.
When dawn came, Marcus knelt before me.
“Bless me,” he said, “as one who knew the sons of the Lord.”
I placed my hands on his head.
Not as bishop to bishop. But as witness to witness.
Chapter Fourteen
The Tree and the Seed
The old fig tree near our camp had begun to rot. One of the children—Joachim, a bright boy whose father had died under Hadrian—asked what we should do.
“We plant another,” I said.
We dug into the earth beside the decayed roots and placed a small cutting from Galilee in the hole.
“Will it grow?” he asked.
“Only if it remembers where it came from.”
That night, I began dictating everything I could recall: the sayings of James, the customs of the early Church, the names of our dead. Joachim wrote with a reed, slowly but faithfully.
“Why does it matter?” he asked.
“Because Rome remembers Peter. Antioch remembers Paul. But Zion remembers the family.”
He looked up at me.
“Then I will remember, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Testament of Eleazar
My hands shake now, even when I hold nothing. I cannot fast as I once did. My knees are too swollen to kneel long.
But my memory? It is sharper than the blade that took my cousin’s life.
I remember:
The sound of sandals on temple stone
The smell of bread in the Upper Room
The voice of James, slow and steady, calling Yeshua “the Righteous One”
I have written all of it.
I do not know if Rome will care. I do not know if Alexandria will ever read our scrolls.
But I have passed them to Joachim.
“Hide them,” I told him. “Or share them. But never forget them.”
He asked what title to give the scrolls.
I said:
“The Last Shepherds of Zion.”
Chapter Sixteen
To the Mount of Olives
In my final days, Joachim carried me on a mule up the Mount of Olives.
From the summit, we could see Aelia, glimmering with Roman stone. The temple was long gone—only rubble and idols remained.
“That is not Jerusalem,” I said.
“Where is it, then?” he asked.
“In us.”
We sang softly:
“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.”
I looked east, toward the rising sun. Toward Galilee. Toward the return.
I closed my eyes and saw Him there—on this very mountain—before He ascended.
His hands still bore the wounds.
His eyes still held the flame.
And so I leave this world.
Not with an empire.
But with a name: Yeshua haMashiach.
And a people—Nazarenes, Desposyni—who carried Him faithfully, even as the world forgot.
We were the first.
And one day, they will remember.
📜 Epilogue (Addendum)
The Humbling and the Exalting of Zion
The bones of James still lie beneath the dust. The names of the Desposyni are no longer read aloud in the liturgies. The songs of the Nazarenes, sung in Hebrew and Aramaic, are remembered only by angels and by a few old scrolls.
But Zion’s story was not finished.
After Eleazar’s death and after Constantine’s rise, the Church that had once exiled its own roots now gathered to define its soul.
At the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, bishops from across the known world came together to articulate the nature of Christ and to restore unity to a divided Church.
Jerusalem, once the mother of all Churches, was barely mentioned.
Its bishop—though presiding over the land that witnessed the Resurrection—was ranked behind Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The council granted him a place of “honor,” but no metropolitan jurisdiction.
“Let the bishop of Aelia have precedence among the bishops of the province, out of honor for the city,” the council decreed.
— Canon 7, Council of Nicaea
Aelia, not Jerusalem—even the name stung.
The Nazarenes were gone. The Desposyni forgotten.
The Church’s mother had become its handmaiden.
But God is not finished with what He humbles.
At the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, more than a century later, the Church fathers looked again to the city of the Passion and the Resurrection. The bishopric that had once been reduced to honor without power was now declared a Patriarchate, one of the great five of the Christian world.
“Inasmuch as the city of Jerusalem is the mother of all churches, it is fitting and proper that it be honored and held in dignity…”
— Canon 7, Council of Chalcedon
Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and now—Jerusalem.
The See of James was raised again. Not to rule empires, but to remember.
It would no longer be Jewish. The Desposyni would not return. But the spirit of the first believers, the memory of Eleazar and James and those who sang the psalms in the catacombs, would live on in the incense and stone of the restored Church.
“God humbles, and God exalts. He raises the poor from the ash heap and seats them with princes.”
The Rock in Rome may be unshaken.
But the Hill of Zion still echoes with the first steps of the Shepherds who knew His voice.
And if one listens—beneath the chanting choirs and beneath the marble domes—one might still hear the whisper of an elder from Pella:
“Tell them… we were there. We saw Him. And we still sing."
The Humbling and the Exalting of Zion
The bones of James still lie beneath the dust. The names of the Desposyni are no longer read aloud in the liturgies. The songs of the Nazarenes, sung in Hebrew and Aramaic, are remembered only by angels and by a few old scrolls.
But Zion’s story was not finished.
After Eleazar’s death and after Constantine’s rise, the Church that had once exiled its own roots now gathered to define its soul.
At the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, bishops from across the known world came together to articulate the nature of Christ and to restore unity to a divided Church.
Jerusalem, once the mother of all Churches, was barely mentioned.
Its bishop—though presiding over the land that witnessed the Resurrection—was ranked behind Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The council granted him a place of “honor,” but no metropolitan jurisdiction.
“Let the bishop of Aelia have precedence among the bishops of the province, out of honor for the city,” the council decreed.
— Canon 7, Council of Nicaea
Aelia, not Jerusalem—even the name stung.
The Nazarenes were gone. The Desposyni forgotten.
The Church’s mother had become its handmaiden.
But God is not finished with what He humbles.
At the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, more than a century later, the Church fathers looked again to the city of the Passion and the Resurrection. The bishopric that had once been reduced to honor without power was now declared a Patriarchate, one of the great five of the Christian world.
“Inasmuch as the city of Jerusalem is the mother of all churches, it is fitting and proper that it be honored and held in dignity…”
— Canon 7, Council of Chalcedon
Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and now—Jerusalem.
The See of James was raised again. Not to rule empires, but to remember.
It would no longer be Jewish. The Desposyni would not return. But the spirit of the first believers, the memory of Eleazar and James and those who sang the psalms in the catacombs, would live on in the incense and stone of the restored Church.
“God humbles, and God exalts. He raises the poor from the ash heap and seats them with princes.”
The Rock in Rome may be unshaken.
But the Hill of Zion still echoes with the first steps of the Shepherds who knew His voice.
And if one listens—beneath the chanting choirs and beneath the marble domes—one might still hear the whisper of an elder from Pella:
“Tell them… we were there. We saw Him. And we still sing."
_________________________
📚 Appendix: Historical Sources & References
🧾 Primary Sources and Ancient Authors
✝️ Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–340 AD)
Ecclesiastical History – Book 4
“Up to the siege of the Jews under Hadrian, there were fifteen bishops in succession, all of Hebrew origin, who received the knowledge of Christ in purity.”
— Ecclesiastical History, 4.5
“After James the Just had suffered martyrdom, as the Lord had also on the same account, Simeon, the son of Clopas, was appointed the next bishop. He was a cousin of the Savior.”
— Ecclesiastical History, 4.22
“The Church of Jerusalem was composed of faithful Hebrews, until the time of Hadrian.”
— Ecclesiastical History, 4.6
🗝️ Significance: Eusebius is our primary historical witness to the succession of early Jewish-Christian bishops and the fate of the Church in Jerusalem after the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
✡️ Hegesippus (c. 110–180 AD)
Fragments preserved by Eusebius
“James, the brother of the Lord, was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank no wine or strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved, and prayed so much his knees were like those of a camel.”
— Quoted in Ecclesiastical History, 2.23
🗝️ Significance: Hegesippus provides an early and deeply Jewish portrait of the Desposyni—especially James the Just—and is one of the first Christian chroniclers from Jerusalem.
⛪ Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 315–403 AD)
Panarion (Book of Heresies)
“The Nazarenes use not only the New Testament but also the Old, as the Jews do… They have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the law proclaims it in the Jewish fashion — except for their belief in Christ.”
— Panarion, 29.7
“From the time of Hadrian until the reign of Constantine, the succession of bishops in Jerusalem was Gentile, for all the Jews were prohibited from entering the city.”
— Panarion, 29.7
🗝️ Significance: Epiphanius distinguishes between Nazarenes (faithful Jewish-Christians) and Ebionites (who rejected Christ’s divinity), offering one of the clearest descriptions of the early Jewish-Christian communities.
📜 St. Jerome (c. 347–420 AD)
On Illustrious Men, Letter to Domnio
“Certain of the Desposyni, relatives of our Lord according to the flesh, survived until the time of Emperor Domitian.”
— De Viris Illustribus, 2
🗝️ Significance: Jerome preserves knowledge of Jesus’ surviving family well into the second century, indicating the long reach of the Desposyni and their influence before the rise of Gentile bishops.
✍️ The Didache (c. 1st century)
Also known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
“Do not let your fasts be with the hypocrites… But fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
— Didache, 8.1
“Elect therefore for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord.”
— Didache, 15.1
🗝️ Significance: Reflects the early Judeo-Christian rhythm of community life, combining both Jewish ethical tradition and Christian liturgy. It may reflect practices of communities like the Nazarenes.
_____________________________________
🕎 Early Jewish-Christian Bishops of Jerusalem (c. 33–135 AD)
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were Jewish Christians, all "of the circumcision." This period concluded with the Bar Kokhba revolt, after which Jewish Christians were barred from Jerusalem.Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2wiki.phantis.com+2
James the Just (c. 33–62)
Described as "the so-called brother of the Lord."
Martyred around 62 AD.
Simeon I (62–107)
Cousin of Jesus, son of Clopas.
Crucified under Emperor Trajan.
Justus I (107–113)
Little is known about his episcopate.
Zacchaeus (113–?)
Details about his tenure are scarce.
Tobias (dates unknown)
Information about his leadership is limited.
Benjamin I (?-117)
Specific details about his episcopate are lacking
John I (117–?)
Little is recorded about his time as bishop.
Matthias I (?-120)
Information about his leadership is minimal.
Philip (?-124)
Details about his episcopate are not well-documented.
Senecas (dates unknown)
Specific information about his tenure is unavailable.
Justus II (dates unknown)
Little is known about his leadership.
Levi (dates unknown)
Details about his episcopate are scarce.
Ephraim I (dates unknown)
Information about his tenure is limited.
Joseph I (dates unknown)
Specific details about his leadership are lacking.
Judas (?-135)
His episcopate concluded with the Bar Kokhba revolt.
"These are the bishops of Jerusalem that lived between the age of the apostles and the time referred to, all of them belonging to the circumcision." wiki.phantis.com+2Bible Hub+2Wikipedia+2
✝️ Transition to Gentile Leadership (Post-135 AD)
After the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 AD), Emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, a Roman city. Jews, including Jewish Christians, were barred from entering. Consequently, the bishopric transitioned to Gentile leadership.
Marcus (135–?)
First Gentile bishop of Jerusalem.
Appointed under the authority of the Metropolitan of Caesarea.
Cassianus (dates unknown)
Details about his episcopate are limited.
Poplius (dates unknown)
Information about his leadership is scarce.
Maximus I (dates unknown)
Specific details about his tenure are lacking.
Julian I (dates unknown)
Little is recorded about his episcopate.
Gaius I (dates unknown)
Details about his leadership are minimal.
Symmachus (dates unknown)
Information about his tenure is not well-documented.
Gaius II (dates unknown)
Specific details about his episcopate are unavailable.
Julian II (dates unknown)
Little is known about his leadership.
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