Descendants of the Apostles

 

 

Ibn Batutta said that in Istanbul (13th century) he met descendants of the apostles. I am not the first to be amazed by this, there are some people out there who tried to research the family trees of the twelve. All twelve died violent deaths, and some authentic bones may be kept in churches. Yet it would be superfluous to get DNA samples since we know that all of them were pure Jews from Galilea, and their descendants are walking the Earth all over. To some extent, they must have been like me. 

Probably the most relevant verse is Mark 6:3. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?" The early Christian historian Julius Africanus reported (preserved in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical history 1.7.14) that Jesus’ close relatives were still known at the end of the 1st century and called desposynoi (meaning, “belonging to the Master”). At one point they were hauled up before the authorities who were searching for seditious behavior among decedents of the ancient King David. However, they were found to be “simple people who worked with their hands” and released.

History has long ago lost sight of the desposynoi but their DNA may exist in modern people who are unaware it is there.