Transcription
Simon took over the dynasty following the death of James in 62 A.D. Eusebius reported that the remaining apostles gathered with the family of the Lord to take counsel on who would succeed James. He wrote that they all unanimously decided that Simeon, the son of Clopas, was worthy of the throne. Eusebius noted that this Clopas, mentioned in the Gospel of John, was the brother of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and thus also of Davidic lineage. We can presume that Peter was still alive when James died, and the apostles' choice of Simon shows just how important the Jesus dynasty was in their thinking.
However, what about Peter? Unfortunately, we have very little reliable history regarding him from the death of Jesus to the death of James. The best we can do is accept Paul at his word, that Peter was allied with James, and thus we can assume he shared and endorsed the legacy of the Jesus dynasty and preached its message. This was the same message he had received from Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, Peter is told by Jesus that he will be given the keys of the kingdom, which Roman Catholics interpret as indicating that he was put in charge of the Jesus movement. The transition from Jesus to James to Simon appears to be well documented.
What, then, were the keys of the kingdom? This image is a Biblical one, taken from the book of Isaiah. To have the Key of David is to be like a chief of staff over a royal household or administration. What Jesus promised Peter was not succession but a position of responsibility, which he fulfilled in service to James, who was of the House of David.
There is a tradition that Peter died side by side with Paul in Rome during the reign of Nero. Eusebius states that Peter was crucified, but later legends circulated that he insisted on being nailed upside down to his cross, as he felt unworthy to die in the manner of Jesus. It is difficult to assess the weight of the tradition that Peter died in Rome, especially since the Roman Catholic Church later claimed him as its first bishop or pope. One cannot help but wonder whether the stories about Peter as a martyr in Rome are more theological than historical.
I've already mentioned the ossuary found on the Mount of Olives, inscribed with Peter's full Aramaic name, Simeon bar Jonah. This name is otherwise unknown in any Jewish record. Whether the ossuary is indeed Peter's remains uncertain; however, Jerusalem seems a more likely resting place for Peter, close to the area where Jesus, James, and the Jesus family were all buried. It is worth noting that both Eusebius and Epiphanius provide us with independent lists of the successors of James the Just. They both record Simon as second and one named Jude (or Judas) as third. The Apostolic Constitutions, related to our Didache but compiled much later in the 4th century A.D., state that the Jude who succeeded Simon was a third brother of Jesus. This possibility is significant, as it traces the Jesus dynasty through four successive brothers: Jesus, James, Simon, and Judas.
We cannot know for certain, but we can realize with some confidence that the royal family of Jesus, including the children and grandchildren of his brothers and sisters, was honored by early Christians well into the second century A.D. At the same time, they were being hunted down by the highest levels of the Roman government in Palestine. The decades of the 40s, 50s, and 60s A.D. witnessed chaos and instability, with political unrest, violence, rebellions, and wars. This backdrop in Palestine, particularly, fueled a Messianic fervor unseen before, leading many to believe that the last days were drawing to a close and the anticipated kingdom of God was near.
In 66 A.D., a full-scale Jewish revolt broke out in Palestine, and Jerusalem fell under the control of several rebel factions. Nero appointed a Spanish general, Vespasian, to crush the revolt, and several legions poured into the country. By 68 A.D., Vespasian had defeated all opposition and moved south into Judea to lay siege to Jerusalem. When Nero committed suicide that same year, Vespasian left the war in Judea and the siege of Jerusalem in the hands of his son, Titus, while he traveled to Rome to become emperor in the summer of 69 A.D.
Newly empowered, Vespasian returned to Jerusalem and rejoined his son Titus to conduct the final stages of the siege. Jerusalem was surrounded by four Roman legions, including auxiliary troops; the Roman forces totaled over 50,000. By spring 70 A.D., severe famine set in, and Josephus reports that some resorted to cannibalism. Chaos reigned within the besieged city, and those who attempted to escape were captured and crucified—up to 500 per day—as a means of terrorizing the inhabitants into surrender.
By summer, the Romans had constructed ramps to breach the city's walls, entering the city gradually while setting fire to it and demolishing its structures. The temple, with its vast complex of buildings and courts, was burnt and utterly obliterated. The Jewish-Roman War was a tragedy beyond measure for Judaism and the Jewish nation. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple left the Jewish people without a national or religious center. Thousands were taken prisoner, and tens of thousands died. There was a grand triumphal march in Rome to celebrate Vespasian's victory, with Jewish captives paraded alongside treasures from the temple, including its sacred vessels.
The causes of the war were complex, but Josephus, who lived through it, drew a startling conclusion: “What more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle likewise found in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at that time one from their country would become ruler of the world.” Josephus asserted that the chief cause of the war was a religious expectation, involving the coming of the Jewish Davidic Messiah. The population believed that God would intervene to not only rout the Romans from Palestine but, as the Hebrew prophets had predicted, establish his chosen king as ruler over all nations. However, in hindsight, after the disaster of the war and the destruction of Jerusalem, Josephus charged that his devout countrymen had misread or overlooked a key portion of the prophecy from Daniel.
Josephus wrote, “After the 62 weeks, that is, 483 years, an anointed one shall be cut off and have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." He identified the world ruler who came as none other than the emperor Vespasian, who destroyed both the city and the sanctuary. Yet, who then would be the anointed one or Messiah who was cut off? Josephus does not comment, but the followers of Jesus had read Daniel's prophecy in a similar way, even before the Roman War's disaster. Their interpretation was likely fueled by the tragic and unexpected murder of their leader, James the Just, in 62 A.D. James, descended from the royal line of David, aptly called a messiah or anointed one, had indeed been killed precisely seven years before the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem in the summer of 69 A.D. This timing was seven years short of the completion of the 490-year period predicted by Daniel; in their view, the end of the age could not be long in coming.
According to Eusebius and Epiphanius, a tradition holds that the Jerusalem followers of Jesus, now led by Simon, son of Clopas, fled the city of Jerusalem just before the siege in response to an oracle. They settled in the Decapolis area, specifically in Pella, just a few miles north of the biblical Wadi Karath, the traditional hideout of Elijah, and very likely the area where Jesus spent the last winter of his life hiding from Herod Antipas. If Simon, leader of this group at the time, was indeed the brother of Jesus, as I have argued, the flight in 66 A.D. would be a return trip for him after 40 years.
How many of these Jerusalem Christians followed Simon, we cannot say. It is moving to imagine this loyal band of followers making their way to their new home, living in caves surrounded by steep cliffs, awaiting the hope kindled by John the Baptizer 40 years earlier. Josephus reports that refugees fled from advancing Roman armies in all directions during this time. It was also the period when the Essene settlement at Qumran was abandoned, and the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden in surrounding caves. We know that 960 Jewish refugees ended up in the Judean desert at the fortress of Masada, where they committed suicide in the spring of 73 A.D. after a prolonged Roman siege. Masada became the last stand for Jewish resistance. It is possible—indeed, likely—that Jewish followers of Jesus were included among that group.
In November 1963, during the first excavation season at Masada, the skeletons of 24 men, women, and children were discovered in a remote cave at the southern end of the fortress. These remains appeared to be from a sectarian group, likely Essenes or even Nazarenes, who had joined others in flight. The Jesus dynasty had become lost and forgotten, and we have no robust historical records for these early Palestinian Christians during the period from the flight to Pella in 66 A.D. to the execution of the aged Simon during the reign of Trajan, probably around 106 A.D.
Eusebius reported that after the revolt, Emperor Vespasian ordered a search for all who were of the family of David to ensure that no member of the royal family remained among the Jews. This led to a great persecution of the Jews. Simon and any other relatives of the family of Jesus were likely in hiding or at least maintaining a low profile. Hegesippus related a fascinating story preserved by Eusebius, in which two grandsons of Jude, Jesus's brother, were arrested, questioned, and released during the reign of Domitian. Hegesippus wrote that they were leaders in the churches because of their witness to the origins of the movement and their relation to the Lord. He asserted that Simon's crucifixion was part of a roundup of any member of the royal house of the Jews.
Being Jewish was increasingly unpopular in the Roman world during the years 132 to 135 A.D. A second, even bloodier Jewish revolt erupted in Palestine during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. This revolt was led by Simon Bar Kokhba, who was accepted by many Jews as the Davidic Messiah. As punishment, the Romans forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem, and a temple dedicated to Jupiter was built on the site of the ruins of the Jewish temple. Thus, any hope of the kingdom of God being realized on Earth began to fade as the Jewish Messianic fervor grew cold.
The Gospel which emphasized salvation and the kingdom of God—not on Earth but in heaven—became increasingly appealing to many. We know that these original Christians survived mostly east of Palestine well into the 4th century A.D., but they were scattered, without power, and had little to no influence over what ultimately went into the New Testament. They were known subsequently by the term "Ebionites," which means "poor ones" in Hebrew. Eusebius knew of them but considered them heretics in contrast to the Christian orthodoxy he championed.
Eusebius noted that the Ebionites viewed Jesus as a plain and ordinary man, born naturally of Mary and her husband. He further stated that they insisted on the observance of Jewish law (or Torah) and maintained that salvation was by works as well as by faith, as the letter of James affirms. The Ebionites rejected the letters of the Apostle Paul, considering him an apostate from the original faith, and they used only a lost Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, surviving now only in fragments.
By 325 A.D., Eusebius aligned with Emperor Constantine, who had turned to Christianity, and classified each of these Ebionite views as heretical. Yet, their beliefs are grounded in the teachings of Jesus himself and the traditions passed down by his brothers. Only now, through the discovery of lost documents, insights gained from new archaeological findings, and a critical reading of the New Testament and other historical records, are we beginning to piece together many aspects of this complex narrative.
The legacy of the Jesus dynasty is starting to come to light, bringing exciting results for those who wish to reconnect with the original teachings of Jesus. I began the story of the Jesus dynasty with a tale of two tombs and their possible relationship to the ancient burial ossuary inscribed in Aramaic: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." It seems as though the surfacing of the James ossuary and the discovery of the two tombs, regardless of their final disposition, have signaled a material reality—a hidden and forgotten story of utmost significance. An understanding of the Jesus dynasty offers much more than an interesting alternative to the standard narratives of Christian history; it opens new avenues for contemplating the significance of Jesus of Nazareth and what his life and teachings mean to us. Jesus was the most influential figure in human history, and who he was and how he is remembered matters greatly to everyone, whether secular or religious, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.