This is extremely speculative, and it casts more doubt on the straightforward reading of the Fourth Gospel than my notes usually do, but I wanted to put it out there and see what people think. The idea came to me quite suddenly as a sort of epiphany, which is why I’m posting it now rather than saving it for my notes on John 20.
One of the strange things about the “doubting Thomas” episode is that Thomas insists specifically on touching Jesus’ crucifixion wounds before he will believe. Isn’t that weird? Wouldn’t you take it for granted that the body of a resurrected person would be restored to its perfect condition, with no wounds? Herod Antipas reportedly believed that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead — even though John had been beheaded, and Jesus presumably had his head firmly attached, without so much as a scar around his neck. And I’m sure it never occurred to Herod to see that as evidence against his belief. People rising from the dead still wounded or maimed as they were when they died — with all due respect to St. Denis of Paris, that’s really more the stuff of zombie movies than of divine miracles.
What I was taught in church (the Mormon Church, but I suppose other churches must say something similar) was that in general people are resurrected with perfect bodies, but that Jesus himself was an exception. He chose to keep the wounds from his execution so that he could show them to his disciples as a sign. Isn’t that still weird, though? Why would they need or expect such a sign? Again, Herod didn’t expect the risen John to have decapitation wounds. If Thomas had seen and touched the risen Jesus, but a risen Jesus whose wounds had been healed, would he really have refused to believe? On what grounds?
Well, suppose Jesus had an identical twin brother. Then Thomas’s request would make sense. The wounds would be the proof that this was really Jesus who was crucified, not his never-crucified brother who looked just like him. Well, as it happens, there are (non-canonical) stories about Jesus having a twin brother! Does that explain Thomas’s request? Well, no, not in any straightforward way, because the identity of this possible twin is none other than Thomas himself! I believe this is made explicit only in the Gnostic Book of Thomas the Contender, but we can connect the dots in other sources as well.
For starters, Thomas isn’t actually a name but the Aramaic word for “twin”; the Fourth Gospel adds that he was also called Didymus, which is “twin” in Greek. Now that is definitely not a normal nickname; twins come in pairs, making “the Twin” a uselessly ambiguous designation. It might work, though, if the other twin were someone extremely famous and important — like, oh, I don’t know, Jesus Christ.
What was his real name, then, if it wasn’t Thomas? The canonical Bible doesn’t say, but both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas say that his name was Judas. And what do you know, both Mark and Matthew say that Jesus had a brother named Judas. In the Fourth Gospel, “Judas, not Iscariot” is considered a sufficiently clear descriptor, so apparently there were only two Judases among Jesus’ close associates, and Thomas must have been one of them. (Against this, we have Luke's list of the Twelve Apostles, which includes both Thomas and two other Judases.)
Okay, so let’s tentatively accept as a working hypothesis that Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother Judas. How do we reconcile that with what I was saying before, about how Thomas may have been demanding proof that Jesus was Jesus and not his twin? This is where I had my eureka moment.
In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples, “but Thomas . . . was not with them when Jesus came” (20:24). Jesus therefore appears again, when Thomas is among those present, and lets him touch his wounds. In Matthew, in contrast, we are told that the eleven remaining disciples (the twelfth, Judas Iscariot having hanged himself) all “saw him [and] worshipped him, but some doubted” (28:17).
In the Fourth Gospel, it’s clear enough why Thomas doubts: because Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus appeared. In the Matthew account, though, even some of the disciples who saw Jesus doubted. Why? Same reason: Because Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus appeared. Without seeing them both in the same room, they couldn’t be sure that this seemingly risen Jesus wasn’t really just Judas the Twin. Jesus resolved this problem by appearing again and letting them touch his wounds, proving that he was the crucified twin and not the uncrucified one.
Now imagine that this story gets passed on — that Jesus appeared to his disciples but some doubted because Thomas wasn’t there — but at some point the key fact that Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother is lost. Wouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world for people to assume that Thomas, the one who wasn't there, was the one who doubted, and for the story to morph into the form in which we now have it in the Fourth Gospel?
The next question to ask, then, is why Thomas wasn’t there. Was he just busy that day? Had a bar mitzvah to go to or something? It's possible, I guess, but it doesn't seem likely. Note, though, that Matthew specifies that only eleven of the twelve disciples were present, and that the one who was absent was a fellow named Judas. We have been assuming that Judas the Twin, a.k.a. Thomas, was the disciple the Fourth Gospel calls "Judas not Iscariot" -- but supposing he were the other one? What if Judas Thomas were that Judas, and Jesus was betrayed by his own twin brother? That would certainly put a new spin on John 7:1-5, where Jesus' brothers seem to be pushing him to go to Judaea and be killed by the Jews.
One obvious objection to the proposal that Jesus and Judas Iscariot were twin brothers is that the Fourth Gospel repeatedly refers to the latter as "Judas Iscariot, Simon's son." Jesus' father wasn't called Simon, which would seem to rule out the two men's being brothers. This objection is easily dealt with, though. In every case, the Greek says Ἰούδας Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου, "Judas of Simon Iscariot," and the assumption that the genitive means "son of" in this case is only an assumption. In Acts 1:13 and Luke 6:16, the grammatically parallel Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου, "Judas of James," is rendered "Judas the brother of James" in the King James Version and many other translations, although some translations go with the "son of" reading. And the same passages in Mark and Matthew (Mark 6:3, Matt. 13:55) that tell us Jesus had a brother named Judas also tell us that he had another brother called Simon. So "Judas of Simon" could well have been Jesus' brother.
I'm not sure yet how far I want to entertain this line of speculation -- it's a departure from my usual practice of taking the Fourth Gospel pretty much at face value -- but I'll be keeping it in the back of my mind for a while and seeing if it sheds light on anything else.
11 comments:
@Wm - I agree that your initial question, as to why Jesus should be resurrected with wounds, is a valid concern - and invites us to take a step back.
My first response is that this whole doubting-Thomas episode seems trivial, inessential - something I do not regard as adding anything substantive. It is, of course, 'memorable' - but not in a useful way! The teaching derived from it seems 'a bit obvious' and heavy-handed.
Then, I notice that this episode is interrupted by verses 21-23 which I regard as bogus, and a later insertion.
And then I wonder whether the doubting-Thomas episode may not be itself an insertion; and I tend to think it is. There are several aspects - including the business of resurrection with wounds - that I find to be alien to the mind of the author. For example, Jesus being reported as saying 'Peace be unto you' three times.
At any rate; my current attitude is to essentially ignore this passage as lacking coherence with the overall teaching of the IV Gospel. I would not allow this to-me-dubious (or else dubiously-understood) anecdote to overthrow anything essential about the rest of the Gospel - including the nature of the resurrected body.
@Bruce
Like you, I am very confident that John 20:21-23 is an interpolation. I had not considered that the whole doubting Thomas episode might be, but it does seem possible. "Peace be unto you" is a phrase from Luke, as is the idea of Jesus using his crucifixion wounds to prove his identity -- "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see" (Luke 24:39). There are actually several spots where we see specifically Lucan parallels in the Fourth Gospel, though I'm not sure what that means.
But whether these ideas come from Luke or wherever, they still require some explanation. "Behold my hands and feet, that it is I myself" is just such a strange thing to say -- why not "my face"? -- and I think the twin hypothesis provides one possible explanation.
Other things being equal, one would think crucifixion wounds would be evidence against the resurrection -- evidence that Jesus instead faked his own death (with a coma-inducing drug in the vinegar) and was taken down from the cross alive. Indeed, it is showing his unwounded hands and feet, after everyone had just seen the Romans drive spikes through them, that would have been stronger proof of a genuine resurrection -- unless, that is, he had a twin.
Do you explain why no one recognizes his face? I assumed he somehow looked different entirely upon resurrection as well.
That is, no one recognized him on the road, etc. they only seemed to know it was him later spiritually/in their hearts. My assumption was the wounds were to prove somehow it was him since otherwise he appeared a different man somehow (child-like imagining he went Super Sayian or such)
I always assumed the sign was not that he was the Christ, but rather that he, the Christ, co-suffered mortality with us. Certainly it has come to mean the same thing - that is what the Christ does. But the apostles wouldn't have had that understanding yet.
@Anon I recall Bruce's idea that the resurrected Christ did not have an age, and that's why they didn't recognize his face. He didn't look like the 33 year old version of himself, but the timeless version of himself.
@HS
But the apostles certainly knew that Jesus suffered mortality: They saw him cruficied! He clearly uses his wounds to prove his identity as Jesus: "Behold my hands and feet, that it is I myself.
Was the ageless Christ Bruce's idea? It doesn't sound like him. I think I remember reading it in some French-language esoteric writer, maybe Tomberg or Guénon or Lévi.
I've always assumed that the display of the crucifixion wounds was, in some sense, "just for show", and not at all meant to suggest that mortal injuries become a lasting characteristic of resurrected bodies. Luke suggests the display is to prove that it is his actual body resurrected and he is not merely a spirit, which may have resonated more strongly with the disciples and their particular expectations and concerns. However, if we postulated that it was actually to distinguish him from a hypothetical identical-twin-brother impersonator, that wouldn't really seem to affect the "just for show" nature of it.
I do think that the resurrection accounts where people saw Jesus and initially didn't recognize him, apparently thinking he was just some guy, and then suddenly *did* recognize him - that doesn't really seem to jive with concerns about being mistaken for a twin brother.
"In the Fourth Gospel, “Judas, not Iscariot” is considered a sufficiently clear descriptor, so apparently there were only two Judases among Jesus’ close associates, and Thomas must have been one of them."
I don't think this generally follows. If there are three (or four) apostles with the given name "Judas", but only two are generally called "Judas", while the others are universally known by aliases (perhaps to distinguish them from all the other Judases) - then saying something like "the other Judas" is sufficiently clear to know who you mean. Also, in John 14, there are quotes attributed to Thomas and then "Judas, not Iscariot" in fairly close proximity, which, by the most natural reading, would strongly imply the author knows them as two different people.
I don't think the ageless resurrected Christ was my idea - indeed I don't think I have heard the idea before (I do sometimes forget things I have written). But it is an interesting idea!
The ageless resurrected Christ is Tomberg's idea, quoted in my long post on the World card.
Ctrl-F tiberias to find the relevant passage here:
https://narrowdesert.wordpress.com/2018/12/19/the-throne-and-the-world/
I think this reading is truly inspired by the Holy Spirit
Max, are you referring to my twin theory or Tomberg’s ageless Christ theory?
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