What is it?

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Mystophilus said:
  1. none of our subsequent Early Church historians lists any descendants of Mary, which is rather odd, considering the celebrity status which they should have had.
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Do any subsequent Early church historians say anything about any of the children of any of the apostles or even the cousins of Christ? Even that seems rather odd.

Just to give an example from another historical context, in Islam, the Caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty ruled the Muslim empire for more than five centuries and were descended from the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle Abbas. So even descendants of the uncle of a revered person like Muhammad were held in high esteem. So why didn’t any relatives at all of either Jesus or the 12 apostles get mentioned by any church historians? Should we assume that they didn’t have any relatives or children in the case of the apostles?
 
Thorolfr said:
Do any subsequent Early church historians say anything about any of the children of any of the apostles or even the cousins of Christ? Even that seems rather odd.

Just to give an example from another historical context, in Islam, the Caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty ruled the Muslim empire for more than five centuries and were descended from the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle Abbas. So even descendants of the uncle of a revered person like Muhammad were held in high esteem. So why didn’t any relatives at all of either Jesus or the 12 apostles get mentioned by any church historians? Should we assume that they didn’t have any relatives or children in the case of the apostles?
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Good point. But the burden of proof is on those who say she didn’t have children to prove otherwise. And this hasn’t happened.
 
Thorolfr said:
How reliable could Eusebius be considering that he was born more than two centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus?
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As is usual for history, that gets a little tricky: while he was writing at the beginning of the C4th, he drew from late-C2nd sources which talked about late-C1st events.

He does give us sufficient evidence to say that there was a widespread understanding in the early centuries of the church that Mary had no descendants. From a historical perspective, that, coupled with the lack of evidence against it, is fairly persuasive. It is not absolute proof, but very, very little of history ever comes anywhere close to such a thing.
 
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