St. Joseph, one of the last descendants of David

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Tis_Bearself

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I am praying this novena to St. Joseph that I found on EWTN and it discusses how Joseph was one of the last descendants of David’s line. First time I have encountered this concept. Is there scriptural support for this (other than the trees all ending in Jesus, but presumably he had cousins)? What happened to David’s line?
 
According to Joachim Jeremias in his book Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, Hegesippus and Eusebius both report that when the emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) attempted to exterminate the descendants of David, the grandsons of Jesus’ brother Jude were denounced as descendants of David and confessed at their trial that they were so. Simeon, a cousin of Jesus, who succeeded James the Just as the head of the Christian community in Jerusalem, was similarly denounced as being of David’s line and crucified.
https://www.amazon.com/Jerusalem-Ti...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547814871&sr=1-1
 
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“Jesus’ brother Jude”? Was this a half brother or cousin? Was this Jude the Apostle or different one?

I kind of thought maybe the Davidic line got killed off in the ongoing persecutions of Christians and/or Jews.
 
Yes, stepbrothers, half-brothers, or cousins – whatever the Evangelists meant, exactly, when they wrote “the brethren of the Lord.” Right here at CAF this is a recurring discussion.
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Luke 2: 22-24 and brothers of Jesus? Sacred Scripture
22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”). The passage says firstborn male referring to Jesus, if Joseph already had other children from a previous marriage like Orthodox believe( the brothers spoken of in Matthew 13:55-56) Jesus wouldn’t have been the firstborn. Yes, Jesus is Mary’s first(and …
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Did Jesus have brothers? Article dealing with the question of whether Mary was always "the Virgin Mary." Sacred Scripture
This article is at http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/brosis.htm This question is often raised by Protestants because of the passage in the Gospel of Mark, saying “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, a brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Aren’t His sisters our neighbors here?” (Mk 6:3) However, in the original text of the Bible, this article point out, the Greek word usually translated as “brother,” , described other relationships, like cousins, nephews, etc. The same is tr…
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Yes, I didn’t think they were his actual full brothers but was just wondering what relation they were, if any - however if they were going to die for being part of David’s line, I’m guessing they were related in some way even if distant, since one would expect a person not in David’s line to say he was the line of somebody else rather than lie. I read about Jude and James the Just on Wiki before but forgot.

I should probably just read the book Bartholomew B posted.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Yes, I didn’t think they were his actual full brothers but was just wondering what relation they were, if any - however if they were going to die for being part of David’s line, I’m guessing they were related in some way even if distant, since one would expect a person not in David’s line to say he was the line of somebody else rather than lie. I read about Jude and James the Just on Wiki before but forgot.

I should probably just read the book Bartholomew B posted.
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The earliest Church traditions are they were Jesus’ step-brothers, sons of Joseph from a previous marriage, and as such, they were clearly descendants of King David.
 
I heard that these descendants also protested that the Kingdom of Jesus was a purely spiritual kingdom and that they were merely poor farmers. Domitian looked at their hands and saw that they had callouses. At that point he treated them with contempt and dismissed them. Also there was an alleviation on the persecution that the Church was suffering at that time.
 
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