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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

> The Gospel of Thomas Reputedly the writings of the apostle ‘Doubting Thomas’. This text purports to be a collection of the sayings of Jesus. Traditionally Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother. This text shows strong Gnostic influence.

I'll admit I'm not deeply familiar with most religious traditions, but I am absolutely sure none of the major ones have any "tradition" in which Jesus had a twin brother. Yes, "Thomas" means "the twin," but not because people believed he was actually Jesus' twin brother.

It's hard for me to take any of the summaries seriously after that, and it's almost enough to make me wonder whether the collection would actually include accurate copies of the documents it claims to.

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Like the other commenter said, The Gospel of Thomas is a real religious scripture from a date very early in the Christian era. When Origen, Eusebius, and the other Church Fathers decided which texts and doctrines were properly Christian, they didn't include the Gospel of Thomas. Assuming they were aware of Thomas at all, they would have judged its content to be heretical. It's likely, though, that Thomas' readers saw it as forming part of the nascent Jesus movement. Not only that, it shows signs of having borrowed from the same "sayings gospel," "Q," that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels used as a source

Yes, I'm well aware of this. But this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that no one thinks Thomas was literally the twin brother of Jesus.

> In later traditions (most notably in the Acts of Thomas, Book of Thomas the Contender, etc.), Thomas is regarded as the twin brother of Jesus.

Wikipedia cites a primary source, a translation of the Gospel of Thomas by John D. Turner, for this claim. It does has say "Now, since it has been said that you are my 8 twin and true companion [...]" in that translation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/bookt-jdt-ln.html

What else can you tell us about the historicity Jesus? And how is it you are able to say anything about this person that is purported to have lived 2000 years ago?

Approximately a third of the people on earth belong to some sort of Christian religion. The virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, at least at the time of His conception, is a Very Big Deal to all of them, as are the stories around His birth.

The prospect of the tradition(s)' having missed something as blatantly obvious as the birth of a second son at the exact same time is ridiculous.

You’re not familiar with this text or gnosticism.

GPT-4: “In Gnostic texts, particularly those found in the Nag Hammadi library, Thomas is often referred to as "Didymos Judas Thomas." The name "Didymos" is Greek for "twin," and "Thomas" is Aramaic for "twin." In the Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic gospels, Thomas is depicted as having a special understanding or connection to Jesus, but the text does not explicitly state that Thomas is Jesus's twin in a biological sense.

Instead, the "twin" designation may be symbolic, representing a spiritual kinship or a metaphorical relationship rather than a literal familial one. Gnostic texts are known for their symbolic and allegorical language, and the exact nature of Thomas's relationship to Jesus is subject to interpretation. It's also worth noting that Gnostic beliefs were diverse, and different texts might portray the relationship differently.“

Leaving aside GPT as a source you're saying agreeing with OP that Thomas is not traditionally understood to be Jesus' twin brother, except in perhaps a spiritual sense so the summary is wrong.

The summary is written in the context of the tradition the text is in, not an overall Christian/etc context.

What part of where I said I knew that "Thomas" means "the twin," and that no one but apparently whoever wrote this website blurb about this Gnostic gospel has ever thought Jesus had a twin brother suggested to you that I was commenting on the work itself, much less Gnosticism as a whole?

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