desposynoi

 could well have the sense, more or less, of "members of the royal family.”

The first 15 Elders/Nazarenes of the original Messianic Assembly in  Yerushalayim  were Jewish.

The  historian Eusebius calls them

 “faithful Hebrews

who continued from the times of the  emissary, until the [Bar-Kochba] siege of Yerushalayim.”

Numbers 24:17:

 "There shall come a star out of Jacob"

The first leader or Nasi

Nasi is of Hebrew origin and derives from Torah/Hebrew Bible. It is a blood-related position in relation to the genealogical patrilineal tribal chieftainships. Nasi means the "uplifted one - standing above – being in a higher position". It pertains to matters of Inheritance indicating the “Hereditary Leaders/Chiefs”.
Its origins are traced back to the Tanach – the Law of Moses–.
It does not refer to a King or a Cohan while it does indicate the position of a Hereditary Leader/Chief within the tribal community.
The plural Nasa meaning the "uplifted ones" or the “Leaders/Princes/and a recent added new term Presidents”.

 was Ya'akov (James), half-brother of Yahushua.

Ya'akov,

 James the Just (יעקב "Holder of the heel;

supplanter";

Standard Hebrew Yaaqov,

Tiberian Hebrew Yaăqōḇ

also called James Adelphotheos, James, 1st Elder of Yerushalayim, or James, the Brother of the Messiah

James was an important figure in the Nasarene community of Yerushalayim. When Peter, having miraculously escaped from prison, must flee Yerushalayim, he asks that James be informed

And he said, “Report this to Yaʽaqoḇ and to the brothers.”

(12:17).

"After the Emissaries, James the brother of the Messiah surnamed the Just was made head of the Assemby at Yerushalayim.

And after they were silent, Yaʽaqoḇ answered, saying, “Men, brothers, listen to me: “Shimʽon

has declared how Elohim first visited the gentiles to take out of them a people for His Name.

“And the words of the prophets agree with this, as it has been written:  ‘After this I shall

return and rebuild the Booth of Dawiḏ which has fallen down. And I shall rebuild its ruins,

and I shall set it up,  so that the remnant of mankind shall seek יהוה, even all the gentiles on

whom My Name has been called, says יהוה who is doing all this,’  who has made this known

from of old.  “Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the gentiles

who are turning to Elohim,  but that we write to them to abstain from the defilements of idols, and from whoring, and from what is strangled, and from blood.

“For from ancient generations Mosheh has, in every city, those proclaiming him – being read in the congregations every Sabbath.”  Then it seemed good to the emissaries and elders, with all the assembly, to send chosen men from among them to Antioch with Sha’ul and Barnaḇah: Yehuḏah being called Barsabba, and Sila, leading men among the brothers,

Many indeed are called James. This one was Sacred from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels' knees

Falsely accussed

They came, therefore, in a body to James, and said: "We entreat thee, restrain the people:

for they are gone astray in their opinions about Yahuah’shua, as if he were the Messiah. We entreat thee to persuade all who have come hither for the day of the passover, concerning Yahuah’shua. For we all listen to thy persuasion; since we, as well as all the people, bear thee testimony that thou art just, and showest partiality to none. Do thou, therefore, persuade the people not to entertain erroneous opinions concerning Yahuah’shua: for all the people, and we also, listen to thy persuasion. Take thy stand, then, upon the summit of the temple, that from that elevated spot thou mayest be clearly seen, and thy words may be plainly audible to all the people. For, in order to attend the passover, all the tribes have congregated hither, and some of the Gentiles also.

To the scribes' and Pharisees' dismay, James boldly testified that Yahuah’shua "Himself sitteth in heaven, at the right hand of the Great Power, and shall come on the clouds of heaven." The scribes and pharisees then said to themselves, "We have not done well in procuring this testimony to Yahuah’shua. But let us go up and throw him down, that they may be afraid, and not believe him."

They threw down the just man… [and] began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: "I beseech Thee, Yahuah our Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

And, while they were thus stoning him to death, one of the priests, the sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, to whom testimony is borne by Jeremiah the prophet, began to cry aloud, saying: "Cease, what do ye? The just man is praying for us." But one among them, one of the fullers, took the staff with which he was accustomed to wring out the garments he dyed, and hurled it at the head of the just man.

And so he suffered martyrdom; and they buried him on the spot, and the pillar erected to his memory still remains, close by the temple. This man was a true witness to both Jews and Greeks that Yahuah’shua  is the  Messiah.

His death was plotted by the corrupt Saducee Temple-establishment.

He was succeeded by

Epiphanius lists these first 15 leaders of the Yerushalayim Messianic Assembly as:

Simeon,

 Simon, son of Cleopas, who became the leader and heir of the Nazarene (Yerushalayim) Assembly after James the Just.   Prior to the war, 66-67 AD, most of the Nazarene  fled to Pella in the Decapolis, the northeast tip of Peraea  and set up a government in exile under the leadership of Simeon, son of Cleophas. It appears that  Nazara (Village of the Sprout) was in this region as  Kochaba (Village of the Star) has been identified there also. Nazara and the modern translation of Nazareth would be references to a village identified with the Isa. 11:1 prophecy

And a Rod shall come forth from the stump of Yishai, and a Sprout from his roots shall bear fruit.  The Spirit of יהוה shall rest upon Him – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of יהוה,

Both Eusebius and Epiphanius affirm that the migration to Paraea was a total one and that Nazarenes fled over the Jordan, not only from Yerushalayim but also from other cities and villages. Eusebius goes on to add that all of Palestine at that time was completely emptied of Nazarenes. If this can be taken literally, it means that a new wave of christians must have come into the area from the Gentile church and totally replaced the Yerushalayim Assembly and all Jewish Nazarenes.

Why Pella?

Isa 9:1

But there is no gloom upon her who is distressed, as when at first He humbled the land of Zeḇulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her, by the way of the sea, beyond the Yardĕn, in Galil of the nations.

Pella is a typical example of a hiding place, lying hidden in a valley on the edge of the Transjordanian high plateau. Today called Khirbet Fahil, it lies 260 feet above the Jordan, diagonally across from Scythopolis. Pella thus became a chief center of Jewish Nazarenes which had hitherto been Palestinian, and it probably remained an important location in the following centuries. The Jewish Nazarenes apparently expanded from Pella into the rest of Peraea — the whole territory east of the upper Jordan. Johannes Weiss asserts:

“That the assembly  here subsisted not merely as an intimidated flock in hiding, but continued its communal living and its propaganda, is undoubtedly probable

And a Rod shall come forth from the stump of Yishai, and a Sprout from his roots shall bear fruit.

The exodus into Transjordan took place under the second Nazarene Elder, Simon (Simeon) bar-Clopus. According to the report of Hegesippus, he was chosen elder directly after the death of James when the relatives of Yahuah’shua assembled with the surviving apostles and disciples to elect a successor  As a cousin of Yahuah’shua and James, Simon bar-Clopus was apparently the next-of-kin. If the third Elder, Justus, should also prove to be a relative there would be a definite “dynasty of Yahuah’shua.” That Yahuah’shua family, referred to as the desposynoi because of their relation­ship to the “Messiah” two grandsons of Jude, the brother of Yahuah’shua, by the names of Jacob and Zocher (Zechariah) were interrogated by the emperor Domitian and after their release governed their congregations until the time of Trajan

According to the dating of James’ death, Simon bar-Clopus acceded to the episcopal seat of James between 63 and 66 A.D. In 107 A.D., according to Jerome, in the tenth year of Trajan’s reign, Simon suffered crucifixion. He was executed by Trajan’s governor, Atticus, as a descendant of David. Commenting on the tremendous significance of this event,

The Assembly continued until then as a pure and uncorrupt virgin; while if there were any at all that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving gospel, they were yet skulking in dark retreats; but when the sacred choir of apostles became extinct, and the generation of those that had been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom, had passed away, then also vile abominations of impious error arose by the fraud and delusions of false teachers. These also, as there was none of the apostles left, henceforth attempted, without shame, to preach their false doctrine against the gospel of truth”

1Th 2:13

And because of this we thank Elohim without ceasing, that when you received the Word of

Elohim which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is truly,

the Word of Elohim, which also works in you who believe. For you, brothers, became

imitators of the assemblies of Elohim which are in Yehuḏah in Messiah יהושע, because you

also suffered the same treatment from your own countrymen as they also from the Yehuḏim,

up to the year 135 A.D. there were fifteen Elders of the circumcision who succeeded one another and who possessed all the marks of a kind of monarchical episcopate over the congregations of the Jewish messiac Assembly. With the fall of Bether, the last Jewish stronghold, in 135 A.D., the revolt led by the Jewish partisan Bar kocheba which had lasted for three and one-half years came to its end. This year marks the end of the Jewish Nazarite congregation of Yerushalayim (at Pella). According to the list of Elders provided by Eusebius, their last Elder, Judas, resided there until the eighteenth year of Hadrian’s reign (134-135 A.D.). Tradition ascribed to this last Elder the surname Kyriakos, which appears to bring him into relationship with Yahuah’shua’ family The next Elder in the episcopal seat of James, Marcus (Mark) by name, was not of Jewish origin. Marcus was a Gentile, probably a native either of Italy or of the Latin provinces. At his persuasion, the most considerable part of the congregation at Pella renounced the Mosaic law, in the practice of which they had persevered above a century. By this sacrifice of their habits and culture, they purchased a free admission into the colony of Hadrian, into Yerushalayim, and firmly cemented their union with the Catholic church Here again, it is interesting to notice that while the pagans did not have to give up their culture or rites, the Jewish Nazarenes were required to forsake their observance of the Mosaic law. Those Nazarenes who remained at Pella and continued in obedience to the Law were called heretics and mocked as “Ebionites (poor in doctrine)” by the Catholic church

The Jewish Nazareness in Palestine did not participate in the Bar Cocheba war. The reason is not hard to guess: it was because of Bar Cocheba’s messianic claim which was accepted by the majority of the people and by its rabbinic leadership headed by Rabbi Akiba. In the persecution of 135 A.D., conducted by the Jews, the last Jewish Nazarite martyrs of whom we have knowledge perished. It was probably another headlong flight for the Jewish Nazarenes, for they had to leave behind their greatest relic, the Elders’s chair upon which James had sat and which was exhibited in Yerushalayim as a precious relic even in the time of the emperor Constantine. The persecutions during and after the year 135 constituted the end of both the Jewish state and Palestinian Jewish Nazarenes.

 Hugh Schonfield writes:

“Jewish Nazarenes never regained its position of authority in the affairs of the Assembly. The Hadrianic war, which had wrung the death knell of Jewish hopes of political independence, had also relegated the Assembly of the apostles to the rank of a heretical sect. Henceforth the Jewish Nazarenes, while they observed their ancestral customs, were practically excluded from the Catholic Ecclesia and might only associate with one another in their own congregations” For the external history of the Ebionite communities in Transjordan after 135 A.D., we possess few direct testimonies. We do know that they continued their mission in a limited way and that in this new homeland, which was practically untouched by international commerce, they held their own for a long time — some 350 years. Their tendency to heretical schism, following the customary sectarian fate, probably produced further schisms of separate lines of development. Since Epiphanius gives us information concerning the existence of Ebionite settlements on Cyprus about the year 375, we may suppose that the Ebionites fled from their hostile environment to this island. In the west around 360 A.D., Ambrosiater and Marius Victorinus knew Symmachians and Nazoreans. Augustine identifies these groups with each other and explicitly states that remnants of them persisted to his own time — presumably he means in North Africa. In Syria, however, according to a statement by Theodoret of Cyprus who was certainly well enough informed about this region, the Ebionites were no longer in existence as autonomous groups about the year 450. It was at this time that Pella became an episcopal seat of the Catholic Ecclesia.

The Jewish Nazarenes very early came into opposition and conflict with the European-centered, Gentile-dominated “Great Ecclesia.” There were, of course, those of Jewish origin who were loyal members of the “Great Ecclesia.” Justin, writing about the middle of the second century, distinguishes two groups of Nazarenes of Jewish origin — moderates who were a part of the Great Ecclesia and who, especially in the Diaspora congregations, exer­cised a Judaizing influence on the formation of their doctrine and morality; and extremists who refused to live with Gentiles who would not incorporate the Jewish law into their faith in Yahuah’shua There were probably such Jewish nazeritie’s who had separated themselves from the rest of what was being called Christianity because they combined faith in Yahuah’shua Ha Machaich  with Jewish legal observance. They were to be found in many places such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Rome, and for a long time

The names under which these Jewish Nazarenes appear in the lists of sects provided by the Ecclesia  were originally honorable names in the New Testament but their meanings have since deteriorated. Ebionim or “Ebionites,” is a rehebraized ancient title of honor, which the primitive Ecclesia adopted, probably after their flight from Yerushalayim , on the basis of Yahuah’shua’ beatitudes concerning the “poor.” There was no one named Ebion who served as father of the sect, as the Church Fathers (Hippolytus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, etc.) suggested in order to conceal the group’s true origin and to label it more easily as heretical. The name was chosen by the believers in accordance with a traditional pattern (e.g., Perusim = Pharisees, Sadducim = Sadducees) (Schoeps, p. 11). Later, the hatred and satire of opponents reduced Ebionite to a nickname and term of abuse so that the Jewish Nazarenes themselves avoided it. The term has been broadly used by not only the Ecclesia but by almost all writers. Any group proclaiming Yahuah’shua Ha Machach and upholding the Mosaic law, regardless of whatever other philosophies, doctrines, and practices they held, have been lumped together under the term Ebionite.

For fifty years after Paul’s life, a curtain hangs over the Ecclesia, through which we vainly strive to look; and when at last it rises, about 129 A.D. with the writings of the earliest Ecclesia Fathers, we find a Ecclesia in many ways very different from that in the days of Peter and Paul” What happened during this time? Obvious­ly, it was a time of many heresies. The Ecclesia Fathers come on the scene in the second century to tell us vociferously who the heretics were and where the “orthodox Church” was. These men claimed to be the followers of the apostles but their theology was different and seemed to blend Hellenistic philosophy and Babylonian religious custom with Christianity.

Eusebius, after relating how the Apostles were finally driven from Judea by the hostility of the Jews, goes on to describe the fortunes of the Nazarim community in Yerushalayim:

“However, when the people of the Ecclesia in Yerushalayim, having been commanded by an oracle, given by revelation to men there approv­ed, before the war (Mark 13), to depart from the city and to dwell in a certain city of Paraea, namely, Pella, and when those who believed on Christ had migrated thither from Yerushalayim . . .” (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., III. v. 2-3).

 Eusebius then proceeds to show that when all faithful Nazarenes had left Yerushalayim and the whole land of Judea, the judgment of Yahuah then fell upon the unbelieving Jews in the form of the Roman armies. The accounts of Epiphanius agree on the main facts and add a note that some of the disciples subsequently returned to Yerushalayim

Both Eusebius and Epiphanius affirm that the migration to Paraea was a total one and that Nazarenes fled over the Jordan, not only from Yerushalayim but also from other cities and villages. Eusebius goes on to add that all of Palestine at that time was completely emptied of Nazarenes. If this can be taken literally, it means that a new wave of Nazarenes must have come into the area from the Gentile Ecclesiaes and totally replaced the Yerushalayim Ecclesia and all Jewish Nazarenes.

Independent of these accounts, there are the passages referring to the exodus to Pella in the Ebionite “Acts of the Apostles,” as recon­structed from the Pseudo-Clementines (H. Schoeps, Study of the Pseudo-Clementines, Leipzig, 1949, pp. 69 ff). Recognitions 1:37 (Syriac version) and 1:39 (Latin version of Rufinus) report that the wisdom of God led those who believed in Him to a safe place in the country before the outbreak of the war. The war, which would not come unexpectedly but which would verify the prediction of the “True Prophet,” would result in the destruction of non-believers. The Jewish war and its tragic consequences were evidently regarded as predicted by Yahuah’shua, and his Parousia was expected immediately after 70 A.D., when the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple and the abolition of sacrifice, emphasized in the teaching of the “Ebionite Yahuah’shua,” had been fulfilled. Finally, the true gospel would be sent out, only after the destruction of the holy city, for the refutation of future heresies (Hom. 2:17). With respect to these accounts, Hans-Joachim Schoeps says:

“Who else in the whole of Christendom would have been interested in appealing to this event and placing it of all things at the center of an account of the history of salvation, except the posterity of these exiles, the separated Jewish Nazarenes or Ebionites, who, it is true, appear to be removed by a considerable period of time from the moment of their separation” (H. Schoeps, Theology, p. 447).

The Jewish Nazarenes moved to Pella in Transjordan, and thus the rest of the history of this portion of the primitive Ecclesia took place in a land foreign to that of their origins.

Why PELLA  Continue here

http://www.giveshare.org/Ecclesiahistory/nazarenes/part1.html

These Jewish relatives of Yahushua who led the Yerushalayim Messianic Assembly were called  Desposynoi, meaning “heirs,” and were often persecuted because of their Davidic lineage

and their relationship to Yahushuah.

With the Bar-Kochba revolt the Jewish nation was crushed by Emperor Hadrian.

Yerushalayim was renamed

In 132, a revolt led by Bar Kokhba quickly spread from Modi'in across the country, cutting off the Roman garrison in Yerushalayim. The struggle lasted for three years before the revolt was brutally crushed in the summer of 135. After losing Yerushalayim, Bar Kokhba and the remnants of his army withdrew to the fortress of Betar, which also subsequently came under siege. The Yerushalayim Talmud relates that the numbers slain was enormous, that the Romans "went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils" (Taanis 4:5). The Talmud also relates that for seventeen years the Romans didn't allow the Jews to bury their dead in Betar.

Following the Second Jewish Revolt (CE 132-135), led by Simon bar-Kochba, the Roman emperor Hadrian (emperor 117-138) designated the site of Yerushalayim a Roman polis called Aelia Capitolina and banished Jews from the city. According to Michael Avi-Yonah the decree read: 

The establishment of Aelia Capitolina resulted in the failed Bar Kokhba's revolt of 132-135.

It is forbidden for all circumcised persons to enter or stay within the territory of Aelia Capitolina; any person contravening this prohibition shall be put to death.

Aelia Capitolina

Latin in full: Colonia Aelia Capitolina

Was a city built by emperer hadrain in the year 131 ad and was occupied by a Roman conlony, on the site of Yerushalayim ,

Aelia came from Hadrains nomen Gentile

Capitolina meant New City and was dedicated to

Jupiter Capitolinus