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Jude Thomas

This entry discusses problems of the identity of Jude Thomas Didymus. The identity of several other members of the inner circle of Jesus also have perhaps become confused, unnecessarily multiplied, or obscured by periphrastic allusions in the canonical writings that compose the New Testament in the form that it has evolved and survived.

"Jude" is the ordinary English translation of "Judas," which is common in many other European languages, nevertheless. The differentiation apparently stems from an unwillingness to apply the form of the name by which Judas Iscariot is recognized, to a member of Jesus' innermost circle. Early Syriac tradition expresses the same hesitation in the common formula "Judas not Iscariot."

In the triple name Didymus Judas Thomas, Didymus is Greek for 'twin;' it is used in the Gospel of John (11.16; 20.24; 21.2) to explain "Judas." In the Old Syriac Gospels, the question reported in John 14.22 is put to the Lord by "Judas Thomas." In Aramaic t'oma also signifies "twin."

References in the Canon

Judas or Jude is mentioned in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55 as a brother of James and of Jesus.

The mention of "Judas [son] of James" among the apostles, in Luke 6:16 is debated. (Compare John 14:22). A common Greek idiom regularly followed a man's name with his father's name in the genitive case? the ordinary way in the papyri. Early English translators, Tyndale and Coverdale, understood this idiom correctly in Luke, but Gospel of Thomas discovered at Nag Hammadi:

Among the library at Nag Hammadi is another manuscript, being called the Book of Thomas. It has a similar incipit: "The hidden sayings that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas, which I, Mathaias, in turn recorded. I was walking, listening to them speak with each other.'" (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, p. 67)

Current positions

• A local tradition of eastern Syria identifies Jude with the Apostle Thomas, also known by them as Jude Thomas, whom they believe is the twin brother of Jesus Christ
• Protestants believe Jude is the uterine half-brother of Jesus Christ. A literal brother of Jesus, but at the same time not the Jude who is one of the twelve Apostles.
• The Eastern Orthodox Church views Jude as a stepbrother of Jesus by a previous marriage of Joseph that was never mentioned in the canonic Gospels..
• The Roman Catholic Church holds the belief, first expressed by Jerome, that Jude is a first cousin of Jesus, a son of Clopas the brother of Joseph, or Mary the sister of Jesus' mother Mary. The Catholic New American Bible opens its introduction to the Epistle of Jude

"This letter is by its address attributed to "Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James" (Jude 1:1). Since he is not identified as an apostle, this designation can hardly be meant to refer to the Jude or Judas who is listed as one of the Twelve (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13; cf John 14:22). The person intended is almost certainly the other Jude, named in the gospels among the relatives of Jesus (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3), and the James who is listed there as his brother is the one to whom the Letter of James is attributed (see the Introduction to James). Nothing else is known of this Jude, and the apparent need to identify him by reference to his better-known brother indicates that he was a rather obscure personage in the early church."

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