Most Christians know the early movement spread because of evangelistic zeal. That’s partly true.
What nobody ever talks about is what scattered it.
From the Study Hall
The year is 70 CE. Jerusalem is on fire.
The Roman general Titus has breached the walls, and what follows is a catastrophe that reshapes the entire ancient world. Over two and a half million Jews are killed through war, famine, and disease.
More than a million are exiled to distant parts of the Roman Empire. Over a hundred thousand are sold as slaves. The Temple—the center of all Jewish life, worship, and identity—is razed to the ground. Its stones are thrown down one by one, just as Yeshua predicted in Mark 13.
Now here’s the question nobody asks in most churches or Bible studies: what happened to the followers of Yeshua when this happened?
They were Jewish. This was their catastrophe too. The movement was still overwhelmingly Jewish at this point, its leadership was still centered in Jerusalem, and when Jerusalem fell, the community fell with it.
The scattering of the disciples wasn’t just about evangelistic courage. It was about survival.
This week we’re going to follow Yeshua’s family into the destruction. We’re going to meet a word that should be far better known than it is. And we’re going to see what happened to the people who carried his name and his bloodline through one of the most brutal centuries in Jewish history.
The Hebrew Behind It: Nasi (נָשִיא)
The Hebrew word nasi (נָשִיא) means prince, leader, or head. In the context of the Sanhedrin (the governing council of Jewish life) the nasi was the presiding authority. It’s not a perfect translation into the organizational language of the early Yeshua community, because they weren’t calling James by this title. But it describes the function he served.
He was the presiding authority of the Jerusalem community. The head of what functioned as a believing Sanhedrin, a council of apostles and family members who together shaped the direction of HaDerekh (The Way).
When Paul travels to Jerusalem in Galatians 2, he identifies the three pillars he meets with: James, Peter, and John. James is listed first. That’s not by accident. James is the head. Jerusalem is the center. And the Jerusalem community, led by Yeshua’s own family, is the source of authority for the entire movement.
This matters a lot for understanding what the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE actually cost. It wasn’t just a political catastrophe. It was the dismantling of the primary seat of authority for the followers of Yeshua.
Everything that followed…the gradual shift toward Rome, the increasingly Gentile leadership, the eventual separation between Judaism and what became Christianity (The Parting of the Ways)…can be traced back to this moment.
Rooted Here: Two Catastrophes
To understand what happened to Yeshua’s family, you need to understand two events that are rarely discussed in Christian contexts but are foundational to everything that followed.
The Great Jewish War, 66–73 CE
The war begins in 66 CE as a Jewish revolt against Roman occupation. By 70 CE, Jerusalem has fallen, the Temple is destroyed, and Jews are expelled from the city. The Zealot holdout at Masada falls in 73 CE, marking the end of organized resistance.
The followers of Yeshua, under the leadership of Simeon bar Clopas, flee to Pella… a city in Macedonia, best known as the birthplace of Alexander the Great.
They aren’t abandoning the movement. They’re preserving it. By 73 or 74 CE, when some Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem, the community returns with them. Jerusalem remains the center of Yeshua-faith. But everything is different now.
The Bar Kokhba Revolt, 132–135 CE
The final straw for many Jews was the Emperor Hadrian’s decision in 131 CE to build a new Roman city called Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem, with a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount.
The revolt that followed was crushed with incredible force. 580,000 Jews were killed. Nearly a thousand villages were destroyed. Many more were sold into slavery.
The revolt puts the followers of Yeshua in an impossible position. Many initially support the uprising; this is a Jewish community, and Rome is the oppressor. But when the famous sage Rabbi Akiva proclaims the rebel leader Shimon Bar Kosiba as the Messiah, renaming him Bar Kochba, “son of a star,” the followers of Yeshua can’t follow.
They already have a Messiah. The tension this creates within the wider Jewish community is enormous, and it widens a fracture that had been growing for decades.
By 135 CE, Jerusalem is destroyed a second time. Jews are forbidden from the city entirely. And the fifteen Jewish leaders of the Jerusalem community come to an end. From this point forward, every leader of the Jerusalem community is a Gentile. The Jewish chapter of HaDerekh’s leadership is over.
Rooted Here: The Desposynoi
Here’s the word you need to know: desposynoi. It’s Greek (no kidding, Diane). It means roughly “those belonging to the Lord” or “the Master’s people.” Early church sources used it specifically to refer to the blood relatives of Yeshua, his family line.
These were the people who carried his bloodline forward through the most violent century in Jewish history.
After Yeshua’s resurrection, his brother James led the Jerusalem community until his murder in 62 CE. After James, a relative named Simeon bar Clopas assumed leadership. His connection to Yeshua is specific and documented: his father Clopas was the brother of Joseph, Yeshua’s father, making Simeon a cousin of Yeshua, though not by blood.
We know this from John 19:25, where three Miriams are present at the crucifixion—Yeshua’s mother, another Miriam who is the wife of Clopas, and Miriam of Magdala. Two sisters. Both named Miriam. This isn’t unusual. Names were recycled heavily in first-century Jewish culture and even in some European cultures.
Simeon bar Clopas led the community through the destruction of Jerusalem, the flight to Pella, and the return. He was crucified under the Emperor Trajan in 107 CE.
After Simeon, leadership passed to Justus I, believed to be the son of James the Just. Then through a succession of leaders, some clearly identified as blood relatives of Yeshua, others less certain, until the very last Jewish leader of Jerusalem: Judah Kyriakos.
Judah Kyriakos was a great-grandson of Jude, Yeshua’s youngest brother. He is believed to have died around 135 CE, caught in the catastrophe of the Bar Kokhba revolt. He is the last Jew named as a leader of the Jerusalem community. After him, only Gentiles.
We hear no more about the desposynoi after 135 CE.
Rooted Here: The Grandsons of Jude Before Domitian
Before the Bar Kokhba revolt ends the story of the desposynoi, there’s one more account that deserves your full attention. It comes from Hegesippus, a second-century writer, preserved in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History.
The Roman Emperor Domitian, reigning from 81 to 96 CE, issues a command that all descendants of the house of David should be killed. The logic is both simple and brutal: anyone of Davidic lineage could proclaim himself king. And the followers of Yeshua, who proclaimed a Davidic Messiah, were already causing Rome enough trouble. His blood relatives were a threat.
Two grandsons of Jude are brought before Domitian himself. The emperor interrogates them personally. He asks whether they are of Davidic descent. They say yes. He asks about their property and wealth. They hold out their rough, calloused working hands and tell him they own a small farm of about 39 acres. They support themselves through their own labor.
When Domitian asks about the Messiah and his kingdom, they tell him plainly: it is not an earthly or temporal kingdom. It is a heavenly one that will appear at the end of the age, when the Messiah returns to judge the living and the dead.
Domitian looks at these rough-handed farmers and concludes they pose no threat. He lets them go.
But here’s what actually happened in that room. Sixty-some years after the resurrection, the grandsons of Yeshua’s own brother stood before the most powerful man on earth, were questioned about the Messianic claim, and didn’t flinch. They didn’t deny it. They explained it. Calmly. To the man who was hunting them.
And Hegesippus records that after they were released, they returned to their communities and led them. Because they were witnesses, and because they were relatives of the Lord.
That family knew something. And they carried it at great cost, for over a hundred years, before history moved on and forgot them.
Besorah Connection: What the Destruction Means
There’s a passage in Matthew 24 where Yeshua looks at the Temple and tells his disciples that not one stone will be left on another. They assume he’s describing the end of the world. He’s describing 70 CE.
What tends to get lost in Christian readings of this passage is what the destruction meant for the Jewish community, and specifically for the followers of Yeshua within that community.
The Book of Hebrews, almost certainly written in the shadow of this catastrophe, is one response to it. How does our form of Judaism survive without a Temple? The answer the author of Hebrews gives is not that the Temple was bad or that God was done with sacrifice. The answer is that the Temple was always a pattern of something greater.
The earthly sanctuary was modeled on a heavenly one. The Levitical priesthood was a shadow of a greater high priest. The sacrifices pointed toward the one sacrifice that accomplished what they could only symbolize.
This is typology, not replacement theology. The Temple system was genuinely good, genuinely holy. But the original is always greater than the pattern. And the original is still functioning, in the heavenly Holy of Holies, with Yeshua as our high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
The destruction of the Temple didn’t end the story. It forced both Rabbinic Judaism and the followers of Yeshua to answer the same question in different ways. How do we continue without the center? Both answers shaped the world we live in now.
From the Study Hall
We are so accustomed to reading the New Testament as a story about individuals: Peter’s faith, Paul’s conversion, John’s vision. But in doing so, we miss the communal and historical forces that shaped everything.
The family of Yeshua didn’t disappear after the resurrection. They led. They bled. They stood before emperors. They buried their dead and kept going. And they did it as Jews, within Judaism, committed to Torah and to the Messiah they had known personally.
The fact that we don’t know their names is not because their story wasn’t worth preserving. It’s because the community that eventually told the story had already moved on from them.
Next week we go even deeper into two specific people from this family: Jude, the youngest brother, whose letter was nearly written out of the canon entirely, and James, whose martyrdom at Passover has a direct connection to the destruction we’ve been studying. There’s more to both of them than most people ever get to hear.
If you missed Part One, you can find it here.
Jewish Leaders of the Jerusalem Community
1. James the Just / Ya’akov HaTzadik (until 62)
· Brother of Yeshua
2. Simeon bar Klopas (62-107)
· Cousin of Yeshua
3. Justus I / Yehudah ben Ya’akov (107-113)
· According to early traditions he was the son of James
4. Zacchaeus (113- ?)
5. Tobias
6. Benjamin I (? -117)
7. John I (117- ?)
8. Matthias I (? -120)
9. Philip (? -124)
10. Seneca
11. Justus II
12. Levi
13. Ephram
14. Joseph I
15. Judah Kyriakos (? -135)
· Great-grandson of Jude, brother of Yeshua
Discussion Question
The Book of Hebrews proposes that the destruction of the Temple didn’t end Israel’s story with God. It revealed what the Temple had always been pointing toward.
How does it change your reading of the Brit Hadashah (NT) to know that much of it was written during or after one of the greatest catastrophes in Jewish history? What does it mean that these texts were written by people who had just watched their world fall apart?
You can view a chart on the lineage of Yeshua here.
Further Reading
Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chapters 5 and 11–20. Covers the flight to Pella, the succession of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, and the account of Jude’s grandsons before Domitian.
Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew (New York: Harper Collins, 2006)
For those who want to go deeper into how the destruction of Jerusalem shaped both Rabbinic Judaism and the Yeshua movement, the scholarship on Second Temple Judaism is rich. A good starting point is any introduction to Second Temple Jewish literature that covers the period between the two revolts.
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About the Author
Diane Ferreira is a Jewish believer in Yeshua, a published author, speaker, seminary student, wife, and proud mom. She is the founder of She’s So Scripture and She Opens Her Bible. She is the author of several books, including The Proverbs 31-ish Woman, which debuted as Amazon’s #1 New Release in Religious Humor, as well as Holy, Hormonal and Holding On.
She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Jewish Studies in seminary, with her favorite topics being the early church and Biblical Hebrew. Diane writes and teaches from a unique perspective, bridging her Jewish heritage with vibrant faith in the Messiah to bring clarity, depth, and devotion to everyday believers.
When she’s not writing, studying, or teaching, you’ll find her curled up with a good book, crocheting something cozy, traveling, or playing her favorite video games.
Ancient History Encyclopedia. “The Great Jewish Revolt of 66 CE.” Accessed March 3, 2026 - https://www.ancient.eu/article/823/the-great-jewish-revolt-of-66-ce/. Also see - https://ohr.edu/1088.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_bishops_of_Jerusalem
I’ve never studied this - loved it! Thank you.
No problem. I was just wondering if Jewish laws about blood relations were different, or if Joseph had adopted. Sorry about the pain. At 82, I have days where getting out of bed is quite difficult. By the grace of God, I have a new recliner where I can nap if necessary. I've got a new body on order. I can't get a delivery date, though.
Maranatha.