Thomas the Twin

Thomas — in the Aramaic tĕʾōmā and the Greek Didymos alike, “the Twin” — is one of the Twelve Apostles, listed in all four apostolic catalogues but given a voice and a character only in the Gospel of John. This file sets out the meaning and doubling of his name, the ancient speculation about whose twin he was, his place among the Twelve, and the distinctive way the Fourth Gospel alone draws him as a person.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Name and Its Meaning

The apostle’s name is itself a description. “Thomas” transliterates the Aramaic tĕʾōmā (תְּאוֹמָא), meaning “twin,” and the Gospel of John, which alone among the Evangelists takes notice of the apostle’s personality, three times glosses it with the Greek equivalent: “Thomas, which is called Didymus” (John 11:16; 20:24; 21:2), Didymos (Δίδυμος) being simply the Greek word for “twin.” The name is therefore not a personal name in the ordinary sense but an epithet that has displaced the personal name; the Gospel writer’s repeated gloss signals that he expects his Greek readers to hear “the Twin” wherever the Aramaic word stands (Brown 1966–70, on John 11:16; Klijn 2003, 1–2). Some manuscripts and traditions supply the personal name “Judas,” so that the figure becomes “Judas Thomas” or “Judas called the Twin” — a form especially at home in the Syriac Church, where the apostle is consistently Judas Thomas (the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Thomas incipit, and the Old Syriac of John 14:22 all attest it; Klijn 2003, 1–4).

Whose Twin?

If Thomas means “twin,” the natural question is twin of whom — and the sources answer it differently, none with the authority of Scripture, which is silent. The Syriac tradition, building on the form “Judas Thomas,” developed the striking idea that Thomas was the twin brother of the Lord Himself, identifying him with the “Judas” listed among the brethren of Jesus (Mark 6:3); the Acts of Thomas and the Book of Thomas the Contender trade on this notion of the apostle as the Lord’s syzygos or twin (Klijn 2003, 2–4; Bornkamm 1992, 323). This identification is best regarded as a Syriac theological development, not a historical datum: the Church’s mainstream tradition does not hold that Thomas was a brother of the Lord, and the Gospel offers no support for it. Other ancient suggestions made him a twin of one of the other disciples. The honest position is that of the methodology’s handling of pinned tradition: the meaning of the name is certain, the identity of the twin is a matter of later — and largely Syriac and apocryphal — speculation, and the canonical record leaves it open (cf. METHODOLOGY §3.5).

Among the Twelve

Thomas appears in every list of the Twelve Apostles, always without comment in the Synoptics and Acts. He is named in Matthew 10:3 (where the Greek pairs him with Matthew the publican), in Mark 3:18, in Luke 6:15, and in Acts 1:13, where the Eleven are gathered in the upper room after the Ascension awaiting Pentecost. In the Synoptic lists his position varies slightly, as is common, but he is always among the second group of four, never among the inner three (Peter, James, John). The bare placement tells us only that Thomas was a full member of the apostolic college, present from the call of the Twelve through Pentecost; the Synoptics and Acts give him no words and no individual action (Bauckham 2006, on the apostolic lists). Everything that makes Thomas a memorable figure rather than a name comes from a single Gospel.

The Johannine Portrait

It is the Fourth Gospel that turns Thomas from a name into a person, and it does so in four scenes (treated fully in the companion file). In each, Thomas speaks or acts in a way that is at once a little out of step and deeply revealing. When Jesus resolves to return to Judea to raise Lazarus, knowing the danger, it is Thomas who says to the other disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16) — a word of blunt, fatalistic courage. At the Last Supper, when Jesus says the disciples know the way to where He is going, it is Thomas who objects, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (John 14:5) — a literal-minded question that draws from the Lord the great answer, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” After the Resurrection, absent on the first evening, Thomas refuses to believe without seeing and touching the wounds, and then, seeing, makes the highest confession in the Gospel: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). And in the epilogue he is named among the seven who go fishing and meet the risen Lord by the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:2).

The portrait that emerges is coherent and humane: a disciple of unflinching loyalty (he will go to die), of stubborn honesty (he will not pretend to understand or to believe what he does not), and of love so bound to the bodily reality of his Lord that he cannot rest in a Resurrection he has not touched. The Fathers found in this Thomas not a cautionary figure but a providential one — the disciple whose very refusal to believe too easily secured for the Church the certainty of the Resurrection (Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels 26; PL 76:1201; trans. Hurst, CS 123). It is from this Johannine Thomas, and not from any later legend, that the Church’s veneration of the apostle takes its substance: the “doubting Thomas” of common speech is, in the Gospel and in the liturgy, the apostle of the confession.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version and Revised Standard Version. (John 11:16; 14:5; 20:24–29; 21:2; Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18; 6:3; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13.)
  • Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John. 2 vols. Anchor Bible 29, 29A. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966–70. (On the name Didymus and the Johannine Thomas.)
  • Klijn, A. F. J. The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2nd rev. ed. Leiden: Brill, 2003, esp. 1–4. (The Syriac “Judas Thomas” and the twin tradition.)
  • Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. (The named disciples and the apostolic lists.)
  • Bornkamm, Günther. “The Acts of Thomas.” In New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher, vol. 2. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1992, 322–24. (The Syriac twin-of-the-Lord motif.)
  • Gregory the Great. Forty Gospel Homilies 26 [PL 76:1197–1204]. Trans. David Hurst, Cistercian Studies 123. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990. (On Thomas’s doubt as providential.)