Haha, possibly. The early conception of Thomas, throughout the Gnostic writings, Thomas was seen as Jesus’ favorite disciple, even drawing the ire of the other disciples because of Jesus’ supposed favoritism of Thomas. And interestingly, Thomas was seen as Jesus’ “twin”, in the Gospel of Thomas he is referred to as such, and John even mentions it in the Gospel of John:
In the Syriac-speaking culture of upper Mesopotamia and Syria the apostle was called Judas Thomas. Thomas (Tau’ma) means twin in Syriac, a form of the Aramaic which was the language of Jesus and his followers. And Didymus, a name by which the apostle is also called in the gospel of John, means twin in Greek. Perhaps some regarded the two as blood brothers. Perhaps the twinship was regarded as spiritual or symbolic. Sometimes, as in the Christian Gnostic systems, Thomas seems to be the this-worldly reflection or image of a divine savior-figure, an earthly body inhabited by a spirit like the savior’s. In any event Thomas became a focus of special reverence.
So, Thomas was definitely seen as a special figure in the early Christian writings, which is interesting as he is now commonly remembered as “doubting Thomas”, the disciple who doubted the resurrection initially. Seems like there was some in the early church that disliked Thomas’ original prominence (perhaps due to the association with being an important figure to the gnostic sects) and basically character assassinated him in retribution.
Yeah, the early Christian development is quite fascinating. I was first exposed to it by Elaine Pagel’s book “The Gnostic Gospels”, which led to me doing a deeper investigation. It was interesting, since I was also heavily into reading Taoist philosophy at the time, and I could immediately draw the parallels between the Gnostic and some Taoist ideas. The Gnostic version of Christianity seemed to have far more in common with eastern spiritual traditions than other western religious thought. I very much see Gnosticism as a western spiritual kin to eastern systems of thought. It makes a lot of sense too, as I have no doubt that there was a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between the east and west at that time, leading to a synthesis of western thought with the ideas it encountered from the east.
This was exactly the same way I felt walking by the protest in front of the courthouse today. I’m thinking to myself: “what does this performative bullshit really get us?” but also thinking “at least people are saying SOMETHING”, and here I am just being an onlooker. But the cynical part of me is looking back at past “big” movements and how for all the noise, they ultimately did fuck all. The other thing I noticed is that the messaging is all over the place “hands of Social Security”, Ukraine flags? “make america decent again”, “F-Elon”, for a casual onlooker you’d not really nail down a coherent narrative from just looking at the random assortment of signs, there’s no clear messaging, just vagaries.
I was in a nearby store and one woman actually asked the cashier what the protest was about, “Trump”, he said,“you know, about the constitution and stuff,” I held my tongue because I am sure she was a MAGA type and could tell she was waiting to offload on the cashier, but he was just this young guy and not terribly confrontational. It just pains me, because the anger, resentment and disillusion is there, but there is no focus to harness that because (as others in this thread have pointed out) the milquetoast liberal, whishy-washy idea of how to respond to these types of crises.
The poster who talks about the vanguard party and recruiting people is spot on, and I’m ashamed to say that my own efforts on that front have been dismal too due to apathy. It’s easy to get discouraged when the task at hand is so damn big, and seemingly unfathomably immense to undertake (especially with the current state of the left in the US).