stephan huller

And a big pet peeve that has nothing to with the OP but the current digression. Why do people call it 'the Gospel of Thomas'? It's the 'Gospel of Judas the twin (of Jesus)." I can see regular folks make that mistake. But surely someone who appeared on that Jesus Forty Days special on the History Channel should have known that thoma isn't the disciple's name.

mountainman

These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.

How related is the "Thomas" in the Acts of Thomas?

At that season all we the apostles were at Jerusalem, Simon which is called Peter and Andrew his brother, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the publican, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Canaanite, and Judas the brother of James: and we divided the regions of the world, that every one of us should go unto the region that fell to him and unto the nation whereunto the Lord sent him.

According to the lot, therefore, India fell unto Judas Thomas, which is also the twin: but he would not go, saying that by reason of the weakness of the flesh he could not travel, and 'I am an Hebrew man; how can I go amongst the Indians and preach the truth?'

Sounds like a similar "Judas Thomas the Twin".

stephan huller

But people are so dense that they don't see the obvious parallel between Judas being crucified in the place of Jesus (Christian and Islamic apocrypha) and the idea of this 'twin' named Judas. Even in the standard story Judas is 'hanged' at the very time Jesus is crucified. One might even suppose that what Pilate wrote on the sign was “The King, Judah” המלך יהודה in Hebrew or מלכה יהודה in Aramaic.

It was only later taught that it was Jesus on the Cross, his suffering etc. Yet this makes no sense. In a sense it might have been true. But the Christian religion argued that the 'new man' was long gone, the one who was baptized into the death of Christ. He left before the event and was already inside of someone else. What remained was just the old man, enmity, crucified in his place

mountainman

But dont you see "Judas Thomas the Twin" as a staight and no nonsense Gnostic embellishment of the "One True Canon Story" ?

mountainman

Actually does this "Judas Thomas the Twin" also appear in a 3rd gnostic text called "the Revelation of the Magi"? Supposedly he backtracks the Magi to their homeland and converts them to Christianity, just like he did the Hindus and the Buddhists in India.

Are we able to disambiguate three "Judas Thomas the Twin"'s in these three texts,
or does the name of the supposed author vary slightly between the three texts?

stephan huller

Yes but the interest in Judas might actually be what we might call proto-Christianity. It goes back to very early sources in the Syrian Church. There are also good theological reasons for the interest in Judas.

In the Blessing of Judah (Deut 33.7) it says “Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah. Thou wilt bring him to his people”. That means the one to come will be brought by God to his people. Genesis 49:10 settles the question definitively. Even those that said the one to come was to be from Levi argued that Judah had at first held the right, but had lost it by the great heresy of the invention of Jerusalem. See my friend Ruaridh Boid (a fellow Aussie's) translation of the Asâtîr, ch. 11.

When the Samaritan woman accepted that the one to come was to be from Judah (implicit in John 4) this only meant she agreed that Judah had not forfeited its place. It does not mean there had ever been any disagreement over the meaning and implications of Genesis 49:10, or over the meaning of Deuteronomy 33:7.