Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/535

 Reviews. 497

Passion of S. Perpetua in Dean Robinson's edition {Texts and Studies), and to study the learned editor's Introduction, especially on p. 26 ff.

We turn to the East, to Edessa. A Dioscuric cult existed in pagan and early Christian times in that city. Prof. Burkitt, however, has shewn that the inscription on one of the two great columns on the Citadel does not, as Dr. Rendel Harris believed, contain any allusion to the Twins ; and we understand that his proofs have been accepted by Dr. Rendel Harris. It is questionable, moreover, whether the pillars were twin monu- ments at all. We do not yet know that they are not merely the chance survivors of a larger number.

There remains the strange feature in the Gnostic Acts of Judas Thomas by which the hero of the Acts, Judas Thomas, is made to be the twin brother of Jesus. The story certainly contains a strong suggestion of Dioscurism ; but it may be doubted whether the author set out with the purpose of substituting Jesus and Judas for the Dioscuri. There are traces of Docetism in the Acts. Moreover, there are soHd grounds for assigning the Acts in their original form to the school of Bardaisan. St. Ephraim, in his commentary upon the apocryphal Corinthian letters (which were included under St. Paul's name in the Syriac Canon of the fourth century), says that Acts of Apostles had been written by this school, having told us just before that the errors of the Daisanites included a Docetic view of the Incarnation. Now, one of the characteristic features of early Docetic writings, especially of Acts of Apostles, was the appearance of Christ in a variety of forms. When we remember that the name Thomas means ' Twin ' we seem to have a satisfactory answer to the question, why does Christ appear as the twin brother of Judas Thomas? But what of the name Judas} Did the author of the Acts purposely add this in order to have a Dioscuric pair of names, Judas and Jesus, and further, perhaps, to give the name Thomas its full Dioscuric force by converting it into a mere kunndyd, or descriptic epithet ? The facts do not point in that direction ; for we find the double name, Judas Thomas, in the Sinaitic MS, of the Old Syriac version at Joh. xiv. 22 substituted for

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