According to the first chapter of "The Acts of the Apostles", two men were on the ballot, the other named Joseph, who is also called Barsabbas, and Justus, Tolmai in the Syrian version of Eusebius of Caesarea, and Zacchaeus according to Clement of Alexandria, who says in his "Recognitions" that he is the same man as Barnabas, a Cypriot Jew named as an Apostle in Acts 14:14, a companion of Paul on his journeys to Anatolia, a participant in the Council of Jerusalem, and perhaps also the author of his own Gospel - click here. The sum of which paragraph is: no one has a clue what his name is, but he is named Matthias in his Gospel.
Before we explore who this Matthias was, if that was indeed his name, I should point out that there was already an Apostle named Matthias, because Matthias and Matthew are the same name, and in the Aramaic of their day, or the Yehudit of their scriptures, both would have been Mattit-Yahu, which was also the name of the man who founded the Hasmonean dynasty which ended with the Roman conquest. And was it perhaps this Matthias, and not the retired tax-collector Matthew, who penned the (probably fake anyway) "Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew"?
According to Nicephorus (Historia eccl., 2:40), Matthias by whatever name first preached the Gospel in Yehudah (Judaea), after which he went to Aethiopia; Nicephorus' statement may be questionable however, as he believed Aethiopia to be in the region of Colchis, which is in Georgia (not American Georgia; the one on the Black Sea), rather a long way from African Aethiopia, or even Yemenite Kush, with which it is often confused.
A plaque in the ruins of the Roman fortress at Gonio (Apsaros) in Georgian Adjara claims that Matthias was buried there after being stoned to death in Colchis, though the Abbey of St. Matthias in Trier, Germany, also claims to have his bones, brought there by Empress Helena of Constantinople, the mother of Emperor Constantine I. This too has to be regarded with some scepticism, as Helena's visions are infamous in history; she was told on at least six separate occasions where Mosheh received the law on Mount Sinai, and they are hundreds of miles apart, as are the various places in Yeru-Shala'im where her visions told her Jesus had been entombed. Her son believed in her however, as good sons should, and it was he who salved the Roman conscience over the Crucifixion by converting to Christianity and making Rome one of the two world centres of the cult it had brought unwittingly into existence (the other was Byzantium, today's Istanbul).
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