Apostle 1st century

Apostle Cleopas of the Seventy

Also known as Cleopas of Emmaus · Cleophas

One of the Seventy; the disciple who, with a companion, met the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus and knew Him in the breaking of bread (Luke 24).

Feast Day

October 30

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Commemorated as

The Holy, Glorious and All-Praised Apostle Cleopas of the Seventy

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Travel

Life

Cleopas is the disciple named in the Gospel of Luke as one of the two travelers who, on the day of the Resurrection, walked from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and were joined by the risen Christ, whom they did not at first recognize (Luke 24:13-32). After the stranger expounded the messianic prophecies and broke bread with them, their eyes were opened, they knew Him, and He vanished from their sight; the same encounter is summarized in Mark 16:12-13. He is numbered among the Seventy Apostles and is commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on October 30.

Orthodox tradition frequently identifies Cleopas with Clopas, named in John 19:25 as the husband of one of the women at the Cross, and holds him to be a brother of Joseph the Betrothed, and thus a kinsman of the Lord. Beyond these scriptural notices little is reliably known of his life, and the kinship identifications rest more on the oral tradition of the Church Fathers than on explicit scriptural statement.

Contributions & Legacy

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Identity and Kinship

The name Cleopas (Greek Kleopas, also given as Cleophas) is generally understood as a shortened form of Cleopatros, 'glory of the father.' Both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions identify him with the Clopas of John 19:25, where Mary, the wife of Clopas, stands near the Cross, and a number of writers have further connected the names Clopas and Alphaeus as variant forms of a single Aramaic original.

According to a tradition transmitted by early Christian writers such as Hegesippus and witnessed in later synaxaria, Clopas was a brother of Joseph the Betrothed, making Cleopas a kinsman of Christ. The Orthodox commemoration also associates him with the family that produced Simeon of Jerusalem, named in tradition as the second bishop of the Jerusalem church after the city's destruction in A.D. 70. These genealogical links vary among the sources and were preserved chiefly through patristic oral tradition rather than direct scriptural testimony.

Later Tradition and Repose

The New Testament records nothing of Cleopas after the return from Emmaus, and historical evidence for his later life is sparse. Orthodox synaxaria relate that he continued to preach Christ and was put to death for the faith, by tradition slain in the very house at Emmaus where the risen Lord had been made known to him in the breaking of bread.

The Western calendar preserves a parallel account: the Roman Martyrology commemorates Cleopas on September 25 as a disciple of Christ said to have been killed for confessing the faith in the same house in which he had received the Lord. The Eastern Orthodox feast is kept on October 30.

Commemorated with Read Hide

The Seventy Apostles

Commemorated together · Jan 4

Notes

Orthodox tradition sometimes identifies him with Clopas/Cleophas (Jn 19:25), kinsman of the Lord; sources vary on whether they are one person.

Sources: GOARCH calendar; OCA / J. Sanidopoulos cross-check