Barsabas

Joseph, called Barsabas (also spelled Barsabbas) and surnamed Justus, was a first-century disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. He is known principally from the Acts of the Apostles. After the Ascension and before Pentecost, the remaining eleven apostles sought to fill the place left vacant by Judas Iscariot. Peter required that the replacement be one who had accompanied them throughout the Lord’s public ministry, from the baptism preached by John until the day Jesus was taken up, and who could therefore be a witness to the Resurrection. Two men were put forward: Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. After prayer, lots were cast; the lot fell upon Matthias, who was then numbered with the eleven apostles (Acts 1:21–26). The New Testament records nothing further of Joseph’s subsequent life or death.

The name Barsabas is Aramaic and is commonly understood as “son of Sabbas” (or possibly associated with the Sabbath). Justus is a Latin cognomen meaning “just” or “righteous,” a type of additional name well attested among Jews of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A second New Testament figure, Judas called Barsabas, a leading man of the Jerusalem church and a prophet who was sent to Antioch with the decree of the apostolic council (Acts 15:22–33), bears the same patronymic; later tradition sometimes treated the two as brothers, but the texts themselves do not state a family relationship.

Outside the New Testament, the second-century writer Papias of Hierapolis, as quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea in the Ecclesiastical History (3.39.9), mentions a Justus surnamed Barsabas. Papias reported, on the testimony of the daughters of Philip, that this Justus drank a deadly poison and by the Lord’s grace suffered no harm. Later Christian writers generally identified this Justus with the Joseph of Acts 1, though the identification, while traditional, is not demonstrated by Papias’s fragment alone. Subsequent ecclesiastical lists, including those associated with the Seventy (or Seventy-Two) disciples of Luke 10, numbered Joseph Barsabas among that group. Some later, poorly sourced traditions claimed that he became bishop of Eleutheropolis in Judea; that claim is not found in early witnesses and remains uncertain.

No reliable evidence survives for the year or place of his birth, the year or place of his death, his burial, or any marriage or children. He belongs to the apostolic age and was not a member of a later religious order, nor did he hold the office of pope or patriarch. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 20 July, observing that although the lot did not fall to him, he continued in preaching and holiness until he rested in the Lord. In the Eastern Orthodox calendar he is remembered on 30 October among the Apostles of the Seventy. He is an ancient saint of the Church, commemorated by liturgical tradition rather than by a recorded act of formal canonization or beatification by a later pontiff.