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Thaddeus is usually thought of as the other name for Saint Judas (not Judas Iscariot) the disciple. Many people do not realise that there were two Judas's among the disciples - Judas Iscariot who betryed Jesus, and Saint Judas son of James. The problems of confusion surrounding St Judas meant that he became eventually known as St Jude and often called Thaddeus instead, and became the patrion saint of Lost Causes. It was quite common in those days for people to use more than one name (Jesus/Emmanuel, Simon/Peter, Matthew/Levi, Saul/Paul etc) and so this dual nomenclature is not unusual. However,some scholars do not accept that Jude was the same person as Thaddeus, relegating Thaddeus to one of the 72 'outer' crowd as opposed to the inner group of 12 disciples. Others claim that the '12' and the '72' were approximations, and there might have been 13 or even 14 disciples to take account of different names (e.g. Matthew/Levi) and Thaddeus would have been one of the 'extras', and 70-80 others rather than the 72, but this is rather far-fetched. Jewish culture bestowed great importance on numbers (12 tribes of Israel etc) and so the numbers 12 and 72 (12 times half of 12) would have been very significant. So it seems that the likelihood is that Thaddeus was the other name given for Jude.

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17y ago

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