Jesus has a twin sibling

[acgoldis]

Start by assuming Jesus was an actual person just in case.

Suppose Jesus has a twin sister named Salome. She's also highly gifted and intelligent.

How do things change? Particularly if he gains the title of the "Son of God" he earns IOTL?

It isn't hard to figure out: if he was the Son of God, that implies his sister must be...

Variation: the twin is a boy named Emmanuel. Jesus is born first in both cases.

 

[eliamartin65]

Start by assuming Jesus was an actual person just in case.

Suppose Jesus has a twin sister named Salome. She's also highly gifted and intelligent.

How do things change?

ASB.

 

[acgoldis]

It should go to ASB then?

 

[Hearkener]

It isn't hard to figure out: if he was the Son of God, that implies his sister must be...

This is not how that works in theology.

Jesus wasn't God because of genetics - he was God because the Allmighty chose to incarnate in human form, to sacrifice Himself to redeem all of humankind. Whether Mary had other children is disputed, but they could never have been God as well. The life and death of the Messiah are unique, and His martyrdom upended all existence.

If we already assume the Christian theological premise to begin with, it's quite weird to have this discussion at all. And also really inflammatory.

 

[acgoldis]

Oh we can delete it if you want. I'm sorry.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

And also really inflammatory.

How is it inflammatory? Dude just presented a misguided question. IMO the premise that Jesus existed at all is still an assumption anyway.

 

[Stahlo]

How is it inflammatory? Dude just presented a misguided question. IMO the premise that Jesus existed at all is still an assumption anyway.

It's generally accepted that there was a historical person named Jesus that lived in the 1st century CE. Whether or not he was the Son of God is beyond the scope of this forum.

 

[Emperor-of-New-Zealand]

It's generally accepted that there was a historical person named Jesus that lived in the 1st century CE.

There were probably a bunch of people named Jesus/Yeshua in the 1st Century CE in that region (probably a lot of carpenters, too, probably with a lot of mothers named Mary). The biblical character's veracity is, as far as I know, not accepted at all as historical except by people who already believe that he is the "son of God".

 

[Fulano]

Well, the Trinity wouldn't be a thing, for starters. It would be a Tetrarchy, instead.
I think it depends on what this hypothetical twin does. Does he also follow the path of the Divine Grace, or does he fall into Sin as some kind of duality with him and Jesus?
And if he follows the path of his brother, does he also die on the cross? And does the Apostolic Succession still get transmitted one by one as in OTL or it is divided as a Diarchy the same way the Roman Empire got divided into West and East?

 

[Andristan]

There were probably a bunch of people named Jesus/Yeshua in the 1st Century CE in that region (probably a lot of carpenters, too, probably with a lot of mothers named Mary). The biblical character's veracity is, as far as I know, not accepted at all as historical except by people who already believe that he is the "son of God".

I have read that almost all historians of the timeframe involved recognize that the person Jesus of Nazareth as described in the Bible did in fact exist and die as more or less described, the real dispute is what happened after.

 

[Pauh the federalist]

Well, the Trinity wouldn't be a thing, for starters. It would be a Tetrarchy, instead.
I think it depends on what this hypothetical twin does. Does he also follow the path of the Divine Grace, or does he fall into Sin as some kind of duality with him and Jesus?
And if he follows the path of his brother, does he also die on the cross? And does the Apostolic Succession still get transmitted one by one as in OTL or it is divided as a Diarchy the same way the Roman Empire got divided into West and East?

Or if the twin lives and later has kids does Christianity eventually form similer to our timelines Islam with a eventual schism that factored into the sunni shia rift on weather or not to follow the word of the followers of Muhammad or his descendants going forward (in this the disciples and descendents)

 

[drakeVL]

This is not how that works in theology.

Jesus wasn't God because of genetics - he was God because the Allmighty chose to incarnate in human form, to sacrifice Himself to redeem all of humankind. Whether Mary had other children is disputed, but they could never have been God as well. The life and death of the Messiah are unique, and His martyrdom upended all existence.

If we already assume the Christian theological premise to begin with, it's quite weird to have this discussion at all. And also really inflammatory.

Doesn't really matter does it
if she is his twin then that implies she was conceived the same way to

 

[Evil Crusader]

There were probably a bunch of people named Jesus/Yeshua in the 1st Century CE in that region (probably a lot of carpenters, too, probably with a lot of mothers named Mary). The biblical character's veracity is, as far as I know, not accepted at all as historical except by people who already believe that he is the "son of God".

In the Anglophone biblical studies community, which is very much agnostic or atheistic dominated, still is an almost universal consensus that there once existed the "historical Jesus": a carpenter turned minor religious leader named Joshua who briefly preached and traveled before getting apprehended and likely killed by the authorities. That's pretty much Occam's Razor-level, why would those story beats be invented?

That said, I think OP is being super naive and those figures are likely to either have existed OTL (the adelphoi), meet a similarly greatly diminished role ATL, or just make Christianity even more complex and less successful.

 

[chornedsnorkack]

By the way, remember Castor and Pollux? Helen and Clytaemnestra?
Two pairs of twins. Both had one twin who was son/daughter of God/swan, and the other a child of the mother´s husband (Tyndareus).
Jesus OTL had 4 brothers (James, Joseph, Simon and Judas) and unspecified number of unnamed sisters. However, both Christmas stories agree that Jesus was a single birth.
So WI Jesus were one of the twins, and the other twin is son of Joseph?

 

[Jürgen]

In modern Christian doctrine it would be some thing of a problem, but that’s a result of how the Church evolve.

But the Church have been able to deal with bigger problems, the Bible tells us that Jesus had brothers (who are sons of Mary) but according to Catholic doctrine they’re not his brothers, but either cousins or half brothers through Joseph. I don’t think that Christians would have a harder time dealing with Jesus’s twin, unless he was very active in the scripture, honestly for all we know one of his four brothers could be his twin,

 

[Andristan]

There is also the Gnostic thought that the Apostle Thomas called Didymus which means twin, is Jesus's twin.

 

[Disraeli's Ghost]

he biblical character's veracity is, as far as I know, not accepted at all as historical except by people who already believe that he is the "son of God".

Bart Ehrman (one of the leading, or at least widely cited, skeptical NT scholars) famously stated it was as much a historical fact as anything in the ancient world that Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion on the orders of Pontius Pilot. We have ample attestation from Josephus etc.
Whether he was then buried in a tomb and actually rose on the third day is where it gets far less certain. I believe even Ehrman accepts that something happened that Sunday to convince the Apostles he had risen, what that was though...

To answer the question - if Christianity is false then ITTL it's almost certainly dead on arrival. The whole point of Jesus was that he was the messiah predicted in the Old Testament. His claims cannot possibly make sense if he has a twin sister that the OT never remotely talks about.
If it's true then there would be some prophecy Christians could point towards from the OT that predicted the messiah's twin.

 

[Disraeli's Ghost]

ut the Church have been able to deal with bigger problems, the Bible tells us that Jesus had brothers (who are sons of Mary) but according to Catholic doctrine they’re not his brothers,

Twin and brother is very different though. Brother simply means either half brother as Rome claims, or the son of Joseph as most Protestants do. Twin means theologically, she would have had to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit as well, I don't think it's a fact that can be brushed off lightly.

 

[Frame]

Start by assuming Jesus was an actual person just in case.

Suppose Jesus has a twin sister named Salome. She's also highly gifted and intelligent.

How do things change? Particularly if he gains the title of the "Son of God" he earns IOTL?

It isn't hard to figure out: if he was the Son of God, that implies his sister must be...

Variation: the twin is a boy named Emmanuel. Jesus is born first in both cases.

Some early Christians thought Thomas was a twin of Jesus. She may have occupied a similar space.

 

[Hearkener]

By the way, remember Castor and Pollux? Helen and Clytaemnestra?
Two pairs of twins. Both had one twin who was son/daughter of God/swan, and the other a child of the mother´s husband (Tyndareus).
Jesus OTL had 4 brothers (James, Joseph, Simon and Judas) and unspecified number of unnamed sisters. However, both Christmas stories agree that Jesus was a single birth.
So WI Jesus were one of the twins, and the other twin is son of Joseph?

Hellenic religion yields a category error in comparison. The natural comparants of 1st century BCE/CE Jewish religion should be other Semitic belief systems. And divine twins aren't nearly as big of a motive in these cults.

Bart Ehrman (one of the leading, or at least widely cited, skeptical NT scholars) famously stated it was as much a historical fact as anything in the ancient world that Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion on the orders of Pontius Pilot. We have ample attestation from Josephus etc.

It really comes down to how much faith you generally place in Classical historians. Different historical sciences have different standards for what constitutes a "factual" event. Through an Assyriological or Modern lense, his existence is dubitable, but the nature of Classical sources would mean that almost any event from the Classical period would have to be considered as such.