How Jesus Grew A Twin
Nicknames feel like a very modern phenomenon, however they have existed for a long time. In fact, there are even nicknames in the New Testament. For example, the apostle Simon was nicknamed Kephas, which literally means rock in Aramaic, by Jesus and is now referred to as Peter, the Greek rendition of that name. There is also the apostle Thomas who is called Didymus, the Greek rendition of his name. Both Thomas and Didymus are connected to the word twin leading to the question, why is this apostle so connected to twins?
Early Christians tried to answer this question. Some early Eastern Christians concluded that Thomas was not just anyone's twin but the twin of Jesus himself. We see it in texts like the Acts of Thomas. The Acts of Thomas is a book written by early Christians that didn’t make it into the Bible. In this book, Thomas is identified as a similar-looking twin to Jesus. In another extra-biblical book, The Gospel Of Thomas, Thomas is identified as “Didymos Judas Thomas”. The Didymos and Thomas clearly come from what he’s called in a Bible, however nowhere in the Bible is Thomas called Judas.
What is likely happening in the Gospel of Thomas is that Thomas the twin is being connected to Jude, the brother of Jesus1. Jude is identified as the brother of Jesus in two of the synoptics specifically in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55 (although Matthew is using Mark as a source).
“ Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.” (Mark 6:3 NRSVue, footnotes removed)
Notice the first brother of Jesus is listed as a man named James. James is listed as the brother of Jude again in the epistle attributed to Jude.
“Jude,[a] a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,
a. 1 Gk Judas'' (NRSVue 1:1 and footnote a)
It’s important to note that James was typically seen as a brother of Jesus. Therefore seeing Jude placed in the list of brothers of Jesus, and called the brother of James (another brother of Jesus), it does make sense why some early Christians would conclude Jude is a brother of Jesus. Thus seeing Thomas as a twin brother of Jesus they merged him with a different brother of Jesus. But that still leaves one question unanswered. Why were early Christians seeing Thomas as a twin brother of Jesus?
In the article “The Apocryphal ‘Acts of Thomas’ and Christian Origins in India.” Gregorianum” George Nedungatt argues that this came from some level of historical fact. He says:
“'Twin probably implied that this disciple had some striking physical resemblance to Jesus. This seems to be suggested by the fact that Jesus had to be identified (with a kiss) by the traitor Judas Iscariot in the garden of Gethsemani, so as to avoid the wrong man being arrested(Mk. 14.44)”2
The verse quoted reads as follows
“Immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived, and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. 44 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.” 45 So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him”(Mark 14:43-45)
This evidence isn’t entirely convincing. It’s possible (and perhaps more likely) that the sign was needed because these guards did not see Jesus before. Therefore, the kiss shared by Judas and Jesus is not enough reason to say that Jesus and Thomas looked similar. Rather, it’s more likely that Thomas was called twin simply because he was a twin (of no one significant to the Gospels). It’s also unlikely that Jesus and Jude were twins, as when Jude is listed amongst brothers of Jesus he is listed last and second to last. If Judas was the twin of Jesus, it’s more likely he’d be listed first3. Even if that isn’t convincing, one still has no historical evidence for twinship with Jude. Therefore the idea that Thomas and Jesus were twins must come from developments after the Gospels.
This development must come before the gospel of Thomas. The latest possible dating for the Gospel of Thomas is 233 because Origen mentions Thomas in his Homilies on Luke. A later dating is possible if you hold that Origen referred to another Gospel of Thomas such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (which I write about in this article), however, it is unlikely. The earliest datings of Thomas put it before the Gospel of John. This article won’t rule on when Thomas was written. However, the potential earliness raises an important fact. The twinship of Thomas and Jesus may have emerged before the writing of some of the gospels, or before their popularization.
Bart Ehrman, in his Lost Christianities, notes that the idea of a divine being having a twin is not so unique. He brings the example of Hercules, the mythological most famously depicted in the Disney film. The film leaves out a lot of stuff from the original myth. Most importantly to this article, that Hercules was a child of an affair. Zeus4, the king of the Greek Gods was married to Hera but fell in love with a different, mortal woman (something he commonly does in Classical myth) The woman he fell in love with was named Alcmena who was already pregnant with her husband's baby. Zeus, to sleep with Alcmena, transformed into her husband and slept with her again, once again impregnating her. Therefore there was a mortal fetus and an immortal divine fetus in one woman's womb, leading to twins. Alcmena birthed twins. The divine Hercules, and mortal Iphicles
This does show that divine twins would not be so foreign a concept for ancient thinkers5. However, we should also note that the cause for the twins is the circumstances of the conception. It only occurs because Alcmena was impregnated by both her husband and Zeus. However, we do not have the story of the conception of Thomas and Jesus according to the Syriac tradition. Therefore it’s hard to say that stories like these directly inspired the Christian twins. However, what we do have is the places where these myths were believed.
The Christian twins were exclusive to the Syriac Christian tradition. They are not seen anywhere in the Latin or Greek traditions. We can get even more specific and see that the belief in Thomas as a twin is centered in Edessa
Marvin Meyer writes in his collection of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures that:
”In a variety of ways Judas Thomas is linked to Edessa”
He even suggests that it’s possible that the Gospel Of Thomas was composed in Edessa, where the bones of Thomas are venerated6. Further Esubius, who merges Judas and Thomas, gets his knowledge from a Syriac document in Edessa7. This is where our answer will lie.
Lloyd R. Bailey in his article Journal of the American Oriental Society, “The Cult of the Twins at Edessa.” finds the answer to why Christians saw Thomas as the twin of Jesus in the pre-Christian religious landscape of Edessa. He notes that Edessa was close to Harann, a major center of worship for the moon God Sin which survived until the Middle Ages. Edessa was almost certainly influenced by this local cultic center. Bailey notes that twinship was essential to this religion. Sin was the twin of Nergal, the lord of the underworld. Secondly, Istar and Nusku, the children of Sin are also both twins. They were worshiped in Edessa as Monimus and 'Azizus8.
Therefore it seems likely that when the worshippers in Edessa were introduced to Christianity, they merged their ideas of divine twinship with Thomas, the twin. This is an example of a social phenomena known as syncretism. This is the process where two religions in discourse merge or attempt to merge. When religions interact they will often apply aspects of one religion onto an aspect of another. The same was true when Christianity interacted with the local religions that came before it. As people converted to Christianity, they kept aspects of their religion and integrated them into Christianity. The same happened in Edessa, where converts integrated the idea of divine twinship into Christianity and created the character of Judas Dydimos Thomas.
Some claim that the “brothers of Jesus” are actually cousins, or half-siblings from a different marriage of Joseph’s. Whether or not this is true is not what this article seeks to answer. All that matters for the purposes of this article is the idea that some early Christians believed that Jesus had brothers.
Nedungatt, George. “The Apocryphal ‘Acts of Thomas’ and Christian Origins in India.” Gregorianum, vol. 92, no. 3, 2011, pp. 533–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43922416. Accessed 24 May 2024.
Patton, Kimberley C. Gemini, and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology. London [England], Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
I’m aware that Hercules is the Roman name and Zeus is the Greek name.
Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford England; New York, N.Y., Oxford University Press, 2005.
Meyer, Marvin W, and Wolf-Peter Funk. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. New York, HarperOne, 2007,
Hoberman, Barry. “How Did the Gospel of Thomas Get Its Name?” The Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 46, no. 1, 1983, pp. 10–11. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3209684. Accessed 13 May 2024.
Bailey, Lloyd R. “The Cult of the Twins at Edessa.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 88, no. 2, 1968, pp. 342–44. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/597209. Accessed 25 May 2024.