The Gospel of Thaddaeus

which might have been called the Gospel of Jude the Obscure, given that Thaddeus is identified with the most obscure of Jesus' apostles, sometimes named Jude, sometimes James, sometimes Judas, and on two occasions (Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55) recognised as one of the four brothers of Jesus - brother in the sense of biological siblings. Tradition - which is generally belief that has no substance - holds that Jude preached the Gospel in Yehudah (Judaea), Shomron (Samaria), Edom (Idumaea), Syria, Mesopotamia and Libya, also visiting Beirut and Edessa (not to be confused with Odessa in the Ukraine; Edessa is in Mesopotamia), though this latter is probably a confusion of our Thaddeus with the completely different Thaddeus of Edessa, a Jew born in that city who converted and became one of the Seventy Apostles mentioned in Luke 10 who were sent out in pairs to preach the coming of Christ. Tradition - which, as we have seen, likes to turn mere mortals into superheroes and cannot abide the anonymous - has created an entire biography for Jude, from his birth into a Jewish family in what was originally named Paneas, a town on the Golan Heights in northern Galilee whose name is now Banyas, though the Romans called it Caesarea Philippi.

Nicephorus Callistus, writing in the 14th century, makes Jude the bridegroom at the wedding at Cana, which is not simply unsubstantiated but thoroughly implausible. 

The Armenian Apostolic Church regards Thaddeus as one of the two men who brought Christianity to their country, the other being Saint Bartholomew; both are now honoured as the country's patron saints, with a monastery dedicated to their names, Bartholomew's in what is now south-east Turkey, St Thaddeus' known as "Ghareh Keliseh" or "The Black Church" (the monastery claims to have been founded in 68 CE), in the mountains of western Azerbaijan, in what is now western Iran.

Jude became Saint Thaddeus after being martyred for preaching the gospel in Beirut. That he is generally depicted carrying a club in the Herculean manner, or an axe in an even more brutal manner, or with an aureole of flames around his head, are all references back to his martyrdom, which may have been by club, by axe or by fire, though even tradition cannot decide on this occasion. Later his body was taken from Beirut to Rome and placed in a crypt in St. Peter's Basilica, before being removed to the left transept, where you can still see it today, under the altar of St. Joseph, with the remains of Simon the Zealot at his side, appropriately, as the two men were martyred together in Beirut.

On the other hand, he may have been martyred in Armenia, not Beirut, and his body taken not to Rome but to a monastery on an island in the northern part of Issyk-Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan, where they were visited by pilgrims until the mid 15th century, when it was decided to move them to a place of appropriate obscurity, in the hinterland of the Pamir Mountains.

On the other hand, if you can manage three, he may not have been martyred at all, or ever set foot in either Beirut or Armenia, but lived out his life peacefully in Galilee, following his father's profession of carpenter, which is why he is so often depicted with a carpenter's rule, and preaching locally, which is why he is so often depicted with a book, usually his own "Epistles of Jude", through which he communicated with Christian communities in places he would never see, such as Beirut and Armenia. Researching Jude is, as you have by now determined, a lost cause, and this too is appropriate, for to Roman Catholics Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, and of desperate cases.

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