The story of the Road to Emmaus is well known. According to Luke, early on the Sunday morning various women went to the tomb and found it empty (Lk 24:1-10; 22-24). Later in the day Cleopas and a companion were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus. During their walk the risen Jesus joined them, listened to their story, then began to explain all that the Scriptures had said about Him, but they did not recognise Him until He broke bread with them. (Lk 24:13-35)
The story raises a number of questions. Who were the mysterious pair walking to Emmaus? Why did Jesus meet with them before His closest friends? Why were they so important to Him? Why does Luke go into so much detail about an incident which Matthew ignores, and Mark barely mentions (Mk 16:12-13)? Why does Luke include the story at all? What is its significance? And where did Luke get the story?
Once we think about it in these terms, it seems likely that Jesus must have had a particular reason for meeting Cleopas and his companion before he met his inner circle of disciples, and that Luke had a very good reason for including the story and giving it so much space.
Who was Cleopas?
We normally speak of the two companions as ‘disciples’. However, neither Mark nor Luke uses this term, both use the phrase “two of them”. Who does this phrase refer to? In Luke’s account, the phrase specifically seems to include those close family members who were with Jesus for the Passover (Lk 24:9-11).
In early Christian traditions, Cleopas was understood to be the brother of Joseph and therefore the ‘uncle’ of Jesus. At one time, scholars were not very sympathetic to this view, holding that Clopas and Cleopas were two different people.1 However views have now changed. For example, eminent scholar Richard Bauckham now considers that: “Clopas is a very rare Semitic form of the Greek name Cleopas, so rare that we can be certain that this was the Clopas who was the brother of Jesus’ father Joseph, and the father of Simon, who succeeded his cousin James as leader of the Jerusalem church”.2
Based on this understanding, we can imagine a close relationship between Cleopas and Jesus from his earliest days. Since there is no mention of Joseph during Jesus’ ministry, it is generally assumed that Joseph died sometime between Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem aged twelve (Lk 2:42-52) and the beginning of his ministry. Cleopas and his wife were presumably supportive to his sister-in-law Mary and her family when she became a widow. Depending on how old Jesus was when Joseph died, Uncle Cleopas would very likely have been someone Jesus turned to as a close relative while He was in his teens or early twenties.
Mary, the wife of Cleopas, is mentioned by name (Jn 19:25) as one of the women at the cross, indicating that she and Cleopas were part of the small inner circle of family members who were with Jesus (and his disciples) for the Passover. Since no other close male relative is mentioned, it seems that Cleopas was the senior male member of the family party gathered for Passover, a very significant role in Jewish families.
Jewish family protocols are being respected.
In this light, Jesus has not just chosen to appear on a whim to some random disciples before He even appears to the Eleven, which is how we tend to see the passage. Rather, He ‘reports in’ to the head of the family, putting family before friends as any good Jewish boy should. Jesus even allows Cleopas to break the news to the Eleven, before He himself appears in their midst (Lk 24:36). Jewish family protocols are being respected. Jesus’ first priority is to reassure His grieving family before consoling his friends.
Mary, wife of Cleopas
The next question is, who was Cleopas’ companion? One popular suggestion which currently has much support is that his companion was his wife. The idea would be that she was travelling back home with her husband, but Luke for whatever reason does not mention her by name. However, Luke has specifically named other female witnesses to the Resurrection (Lk 24:10), so why not here?
Also, John deliberately names Mary wife of Clopas (Cleopas) as being one of the women at the cross (Jn 19:25), so again, why is she not named here? Given these considerations, it seems to me that Cleopas’ wife was probably not his companion on this journey, and that she was still back with her sisters-in-law in Jerusalem. It seems we should think again.3
Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem
In later years, Cleopas’ son Simeon (or Simon) became the acknowledged leader of the church in Jerusalem. Simeon seems to have come into leadership sometime after the death of his cousin James in 62AD, eventually suffering a martyr's death himself around 107AD.4 This raises a possibility – could his son Simeon have been Cleopas’ companion on their journey home to Emmaus?
There is very good support for this from the early church. One of the earliest church historians, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (c 265-339), endorses this view. Eusebius understood Cleopas to be Joseph’s brother, and he identifies his companion on the Emmaus road to be his son Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem.5
In this, Eusebius follows Origen, a renowned early Christian scholar who lived in Caesarea prior to Eusebius. Origen (c 185-254) himself identified Cleopas as Joseph’s brother and his companion to be his son Simeon.6 If Origen and Eusebius are correct, even 70 years after Jesus’ death, the church in Jerusalem was still being led by someone who was not only a close relative of the earthly Jesus, but also a living witness of His resurrection.
Why does Luke include the Emmaus story?
We have found answers to the questions posed earlier: Who were the mysterious pair walking to Emmaus? Why were they so important to Jesus? Why did Jesus meet with them before His inner circle of disciples? And where did Luke get the story? Jesus met with His close relatives, His inner family members, before his friends. He reported to His favourite uncle, the ‘patriarch’ of the family, before His work colleagues.
Since it is often assumed that Luke obtained a great deal of his eyewitness testimony from Mary the mother of Jesus, it should be no surprise to find Luke also using an eyewitness story from the male side of the family. Richard Bauckham agrees: “There seems no plausible reason for naming [Cleopas] other than to indicate he was the source of the [account] … The story Luke tells would have been essentially the story Cleopas himself told about his encounter with the risen Jesus”.7
So why does Luke include the story, and what is its significance? The Emmaus story is included by Luke to powerfully emphasise that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel predicted in the scriptures. Luke has laid down many such markers already, significantly in the birth narrative, then in chapters 4 and 7, showing how Jesus fulfilled the messianic requirements of Isaiah 61, and so on. Now on the road to Emmaus, Jesus identifies himself to two witnesses who would become very well known in the early church, as being the one who fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel: “beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself.” (Lk 24:27)
Luke ends his Gospel with a deeply significant account which would empower the leaders of the early church to bear testimony that Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures regarding the messianic hopes of Israel.
Family and Passover
As a Jewish feast, Passover is very much a family affair. We tend to focus on Jesus celebrating Passover with his disciples, because that is what the Gospel accounts tell us. However, if we take a closer look, we realise that many of those involved with Jesus during Passion Week were His own family.
Some had come with him from Galilee to celebrate Passover, others perhaps like Cleopas, may have lived around Jerusalem anyway. If Cleopas was Joseph’s brother, and we know that Joseph came from Bethlehem, there is no reason to suppose that Cleopas ever lived in Galilee. Another reason for the Galileans to make a family trip to the feasts would be to meet up with their Judean relatives.
It comes as something of a surprise when we see how much his own family was actually involved in the beginnings of the early church.
Many of the various women who appear in the Passion and Resurrection accounts were family members there for the Passover, such as His mother and aunts. Mary the wife of Cleopas was Jesus’ aunt on Joseph’s side. Zebedee’s wife was the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus. When we come to the first accounts of the early church in Acts, even before Pentecost, we find these women meeting to pray with the men (Acts 1:14). The women were intimately involved from the beginning, and were part of early church activities from then on.
Family and Mission
The normal way we think about Jesus’ ministry and the subsequent mission of the church is that Jesus trained twelve followers who took over his work when he was gone. So, it comes as something of a surprise when we see how much his own family was actually involved in the beginnings of the early church. We tend to think from the Gospels that His family was not initially very supportive of His early ministry (see Mk 3:31-35; Lk 8:19-21).8 However, by Acts 1:14 things have changed greatly, for here His mother and brothers are very much involved in the communal prayer meetings after his Ascension.
When we think of Jesus’ mission, we tend to think of Him starting His mission in Galilee, then handing over to the apostles after His death, who then base their ministry in Jerusalem. We may note with surprise family names popping up in the book of Acts, but we pass over them without thinking. However, in fact the first three leaders (or bishops)9 of the church in Jerusalem were personal relatives of Jesus.
The eleven apostles by contrast tend to disappear quite quickly from the recorded history of the church. Some of them leave no trace that we know of. Actually, this fits in very well with their designation as ‘apostles’. The word comes from a root meaning ‘sent ones’ or ‘sent out’; what today we might call ‘missionaries’. That was the role Jesus had modelled for them, and it was the ministry they followed. They became itinerant teachers, preachers and evangelists, leaving the leadership of the Jerusalem church to others.
At the beginning of Acts we find Peter and John teaching daily in the temple. However, by the end of their lives we understand Peter to be in Rome and John in Ephesus, leaders in the communities there. Meanwhile, despite Peter’s leading role on the day of Pentecost, the effective leader of the Jerusalem council was James bar Zebedee. James, of course, was one of the inner group of three, Peter, James and John, who were especially close to Jesus.
However, what is especially interesting is that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were also Jesus’ cousins. When James bar Zebedee was killed by the Sanhedrin, he was succeeded as leader of the Jerusalem church not by another of the Twelve, but by his cousin James, who was Jesus’ own brother. Eusebius adds the interesting snippet that “To him alone it was permitted to enter the holy place, for he wore nothing woollen but linen garments, and alone he entered the sanctuary; and was found on his knees asking forgiveness on behalf of the people, so that his knees became hard like a camel’s.”10
The two companions on the Road to Emmaus were not just random disciples, as we usually think. They were Jesus’ close relatives.
Dunn summarises the accepted view that “James the brother of Jesus was the leading figure in the Jerusalem church from the early 40s to the early 60s”.11 When this James was then killed in 62 AD, he was followed by Simeon son of Cleopas, who, as we have seen, was also one of Jesus’ cousins, this time on His father’s side.
Summary
The two companions on the Road to Emmaus were not just random disciples, as we usually think. They were Jesus’ close relatives. Certainly one was Jesus’ uncle Cleopas, the patriarch of the clan. According to the early Church, the other was Cleopas’ son Simeon, who later became Bishop of Jerusalem. After his Resurrection, Jesus reassured his close family first, and his family members subsequently became leaders of the Jerusalem church throughout the First Century.
Notes
1. See John Wenham, 'Easter Enigma' (Paternoster 1992) p100 on this point.
2. Richard Bauckham, 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' (Eerdmans 2006) p47; see also Bauckham 'Gospel Women' (Eerdmans 2002) p208 for an expanded treatment.
3. Bauckham discusses Mary of Clopas in some detail in 'Gospel Women' p203-223
4. James Dunn, 'Neither Jew nor Greek: Christianity in the Making Vol 3' (Eerdmans 2015) p525-527
5. James Edwards, 'The Gospel According to Luke' (Pillar NTC 2015) p717
6. Bauckham, 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' p43
7. Bauckham, 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' p47
8. James Dunn, 'Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making Vol 1' (Eerdmans 2003) p594-599 has a useful discussion on this point.
9. There are various views about the term sometimes translated as leader, elder or bishop in the early church. See Dunn, 'Neither Jew nor Greek' p 7.
10. Richard Bauckham, 'The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple' (Baker Academic 2007) p43
11. James Dunn, 'Beginning in Jerusalem: Christianity in the Making Vol 2' (Eerdmans 2009) see discussion p1078-1083