No, Bob Thiel is not in any line of succession from Judas/Judah Kyriakos. The claim is pure speculative fan-fiction dressed up as restored apostolic history, the kind of thing that would make even the most dedicated conspiracy-map hobbyist blush.
Judah Kyriakos (also Judas of Jerusalem) is a real enough figure in the sparse early sources: according to Eusebius and Epiphanius, the fifteenth (and last Hebrew-descent) bishop of Jerusalem, described as a great-grandson of Jude (the brother of Jesus) and thus one of the desposyni. Eusebius lists the short-lived Hebrew bishops up to him and notes they “received the knowledge of Christ in purity.” After the Bar Kokhba revolt and Hadrian’s ban on Jews in the rebuilt Aelia Capitolina (~135 AD), a non-Jewish bishop named Marcus/Mark takes over. That’s roughly where the actual historical trail ends for this Judas. Later legends muddle him with a completely different Judas Cyriacus associated with the True Cross story centuries afterward. There is no continuous, documented episcopal line from him through Pella to Edessa (or anywhere else) that survives into later centuries with the doctrines Thiel wants.
Thiel’s version invents the rest: Judas “fled” the “antichrist” Markus who compromised by staying in Jerusalem, possibly went to Pella then Edessa, and somehow anchors a “speculative succession list” of leaders there that conveniently lines up with the practices Thiel prefers (avoiding unclean meats, binitarian Godhead, more literal reading of Scripture, Sabbath/holy days). He admits the list is speculative. From there it leaps across nearly two millennia of “true church in the wilderness,” through Herbert W. Armstrong’s church-era schema, various Worldwide Church of God offshoots, a private anointing that supposedly transferred a “mantle” and “double portion,” and finally lands on Bob himself as the one restoring knowledge that was “basically unknown in the 20th century.” Daniel’s increase of knowledge and HWA’s predictions are drafted as supporting prophecy. The punchline is that only two groups of professing Christians really exist today: the ones with God’s Spirit who contend for the faith once delivered (guess who), and everyone else.
This is not succession. It is a choose-your-own-adventure history where gaps are filled with “might have,” “logical,” and “we consider.” Actual apostolic succession claims (Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) at least attempt continuous, named, historically attested chains of ordination in recognized sees. Thiel’s version has an early list from Eusebius, then fog, legend, and self-referential COG genealogy ending in a 21st-century website and YouTube sermons. No serious historian traces an unbroken pure line of Sabbath-keeping, holy-day-observing, binitarian, unclean-meat-avoiding bishops from Judas of Jerusalem to Arroyo Grande.
Now the New Covenant part, which renders the whole exercise even more absurd. The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31; Hebrews 8–10) is not maintained by blood relatives of Jesus, speculative bishop lists, or geographic flight paths from Hadrian. It is ratified by Christ’s blood, written on hearts and minds, with Jesus as the permanent high priest after the order of Melchizedek. The old genealogical and cultic structures are obsolete. Scripture itself warns against endless genealogies and speculative controversies (1 Timothy 1:4; Titus 3:9). The “faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is the apostolic gospel centered on Christ, not a reconstructed package of second-century Jewish-Christian practices filtered through 20th-century Armstrongism and then declared the sole pure remnant. Claiming that knowledge of the “original” faith was largely lost until the last generation, only to be restored by one particular offshoot leader, treats the Holy Spirit as if He went on a 1,900-year sabbatical and needed Bob’s research notes to clock back in.
Markus of Jerusalem is not an “antichrist” in the sources; he is simply the first non-Jewish bishop after the Jewish ones could no longer reside there. The idea that fleeing equals faithfulness while remaining equals apostasy is a convenient binary that lets later groups anoint themselves the pure continuation. Desposyni still existed in the fourth century according to some reports, but that does not create a secret pure pipeline to modern California. And the notion that true Christians are defined by a short checklist of distinctive practices (plus recognizing Thiel’s group) is classic remnant theology, not New Covenant reality.
In short: Judas Kyriakos was a late-second-century Jewish Christian bishop whose trail goes cold. Bob Thiel is a post-Armstrong COG independent who built a speculative bridge of “maybes” and then declared himself on the far side of it. The New Covenant does not run on that kind of paperwork. The claim is historically groundless, theologically unnecessary, and comically self-serving.
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