Ah, but there is a simple solution, partly fabricated from early hints and
clues. For those who saw Jesus as an "appearance" of the divine, or from
the world of the divine ("docetists," for example, or "gnostic" Christians
more generally, but also those for whom Jesus was an "angelic"
manifestation), the pregnancy of Mary called for explanation. In some
early sources, she has a "false pregnancy" and thus can fool the natural
and extra-natural observers regarding the "birth" of Jesus, who appears at
the time her "pregnancy" is over. It is a short step to the view that she
really gave birth to a "twin" at the time Jesus appeared. I suspect that
something like this is behind the "twin" tradition very early on.
Especially tempting in this reconstruction are sources such as the
quotation from a "Gospel of the Hebrews" found in a Coptic translation of
a discourse ascribed to Cyril of Jerusalem, which has the archangel
Michael taking on the form of Mary to deliver "Christ" as if born, and
even more to the point, the description in Ascension of Isaiah 11.8f --
"and it came to pass while they [Joseph and Mary] were alone, that Mary
straightway beheld with her eyes and saw a small child, and she was
amazed. And when her amazement wore off, her womb was found as it was
before she was with child." [Both texts are available in the
Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson NT Apocrypha volumes; see 1.177 (ed 2)
and 2.661 (ed 1) -- and also elsewhere.]
All this is part of a larger "topos," who is he and where is he from,
which emerges in numerous sources with various answers. It probably also
helps to have a Judas listed among the brothers of Jesus (Mk 6.3 and
parallels). Of course, by the middle ages, much has doubtless changed
with these materials.
Bob Kraft, UPenn
> seems to me that even the hint of the suggestion of Jesus having a
> literal "twin" would immediately raise all sorts of very, very worrying, shall
> i say, conceptual questions in the minds of even the most anatomically
> challenged Early Christian/Middlevil.
>
> surely it is a matter, in the later West at least, of J. Iskariot serving as
> another sort of doppleganger, something like a Jungian "shadow"
> figure?
>
> this is how the lovely St. Gilles (or was it Arles?) Kiss speaks to me, at
> least. or, for that matter the equally interesting one in the capital frieze
> of the Royal Portal @ Chartres.
>
> best to all from here,
>
> christopher
>
> [log in to unmask] (Robert Kraft) wrote:
> It is difficult to ascertain what the "twin" category may have meant to
> people in the early centuries as well, but my point was to suggest how the
> appellation "twin" (Aramaic "Thoma") could come to be associated with a
> Judah/Judas other than the one we call Thomas. Since the Acts of Thomas
> were preserved in Greek in the east, I would expect to find some later
> evidence for the Judas Thomas = twin tradition in eastern sources. What
> happened to it in the west is another matter. But I doubt that it
> appeared in the west out of nowhere, as it were. Probably the vague
> reference to "Judas" as "twin" (Thoma, Didymos) led to the
> misidentification with Judas Iskariot somewhere along the line.
>
> Bob Kraft, UPenn
>
> RAK wrote:
> > If someone else has covered this, forgive me. I just returned from a two
> > week tour of early Jewish and early Christian sites in western Turkey, and
> > am frantically playing catch up.
> >
> > Judas as twin of Jesus is an important theme in some early Christian
> > circles, but the Judas in question is not the betrayer, but Judas Didymus
> > Thomas (Didymus [Greek] = "twin" = Thomas [Aramaic]). The apostle/disciple
> > popularly known as Thomas seems to have been named Judah/Judas (one of
> > several by that name), and the tradition about him makes him a "twin" in
> > some sense of Jesus. See especially the "Acts of Thomas," and discussions
> > of the opening lines of the Nag Hammadi Coptic "Gospel of Thomas." In the
> > Acts of Thomas, there is even a passage that says something like "we both
> > nursed at the same breast."
> >
> > Bob Kraft, UPenn
--
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
[log in to unmask]
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html
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