St. Pachomius Library

The Thieves Crucified with Christ

In Chapter 23 of Luke we read: "And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left ... And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." According to Mark 15:28, the crucifixion among thieves was to fulfill Isaiah's prophecy (53:12) that the Messiah would be "numbered among the transgressors".
The Wise Thief is mentioned in the Exapostilarion of Good Friday, in the Ninth Liturgical Hour, in the prayer before Holy Communion ("But like the thief will I confess Thee ..."), and in the Apolytikion of Tone 7 (Barys). In one of the Tone 5 (Pl. 1) kontakia, Peter laments that "I betrayed Thee, but a thief theologised."
Patristic references are numerous, but for some reason many seem not to be available in English. The following paragraph from St. Bede's Commentary on Luke (translated for this page by Karen Rae Keck) is typical:
... The thieves who are crucified with the Lord at that time and place intimate those who submit in faith and in acknowledgement of Christ either to the contest of the martyr or to the custom of stricter self-control [i.e. asceticism]. But however many work here for eternal and heavenly glory alone are defined by the faith and reward advanced to the thief on the right, whereas those who have not forsworn either an eye for human praise or in any way a less worthy intention in this undeserving age [have] the mind of the blasphemer and of the thief on the left, and their acts are aped by such as those to whom the apostle says: And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
There has always been disagreement about whether the two thieves were ordinary criminals, exceptionally notorious murderers (cannibals, according to an Ethiopian tradition), or political revolutionaries who, like Jesus, were seen as threats to the Establishment. Most Fathers seem to emphasise the wickedness of the thieves; even the "good" thief, according to Chrysostom, only repented after seeing the earth quake. (This was meant to explain the troublesome statement in Mark 15:32 that "they that were crucified with him reviled him", although the timing of the earthquake in Mark and Luke also appears at a first reading to be different.)
Norman Hugh Redington

ABOUT:
- A Russian Ikon of the Wise Thief. --- St. John the Baptist ROCOR Cathedral
- Tradition seems always to have taken it for granted that the "Good Thief" was the thief on the right. Early references can be found in the apocryphal gospels rather than in the Fathers:
  - The Gospel of Nicodemus: The Acts of Pilate. Scroll to Chapter 10 of the "second Greek form". --- CCEL
  - The Arabic Infancy Gospel. Scroll to Chapter 23. --- CCEL
  This is why the foot-rest of the three-barred cross slants upward to the Lord's right, a position called "just balance":
  - Archbishop Anthony (Medvedev): Sermon on the Cross. The typesetting is unfortunately muddled. --- ROCOR
  - Archimandrite Deiniol: The Call of the Cross. The author is a priest-monk in Wales. --- Arimathea
- The Gospel of Nicodemus and other sources also describe what the thief encountered after death:
  - The Gospel of Nicodemus: The Harrowing of Hell. Scroll to Chapter 10. --- CCEL
  - The Dispute between the Cherub and the Thief. Translation of V Century Syriac poem (with extensive notes) by Sebastian Brock. --- Hugoye
  In the IV Century, the Thief appeared in a famous vision to St. Porphyry of Gaza, who later became the guardian of the True Cross at Jerusalem.
  - Mark the Deacon: The Life of Saint Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza. Scroll to Chapter 7. --- MSBP
- The names of the repentant and unrepentant thieves are usually given as "Dismas" (or "Dimas") and "Gestas" (or "Gesmas"), as in the Acts of Pilate. The Arabic Infancy Gospel however calls them "Titus" and "Dumachus"; it is interesting that "Dumachus", which one would assume to be the same as "Dimas", is the name of the bad thief in this version. An item in Notes and Queries (10 S. XI 321) mentions two other ancient pairs of names. One pair, from a VII Century Latin source, is "Lustin" (suspiciously like the Greek lestes, "thief") and "Vissimus"; the other, from the Collectanea attributed to St. Bede, is "Matha" and "Joca". In a curious parallel to the Dimas/Dumachus contradiction, "Joctan" is the name of the good thief in the Ethiopic tradition.
- The Arabic Infancy Gospel (above) gives a "prequel" to the canonical account: the two thieves as young men meet the Holy Family in Egypt, and the good thief persuades his comrade not to rob them. This story, often combined with another story (from the same apocryphal gospel) about a girl who is healed of leprosy, was widespread throughout the entire Christian-Islamic world from England to Asia by the XII Century.
- A Ge'ez version (translated by Budge from a XV Century manuscript in the British Museum -- see his One-Hundred and Ten Miracles of Our Lady Mary) adds the history of the next generation: sometime in the late I Century, the younger members of the robber gang, including the Good Thief's niece (described in language influenced by the Book of Judith) become involved a bloody cycle of revenge murders; all of them, however, manage either to repent at the moment of death or at least to die in waters sanctified by the Theotokos years before. Christ is reluctant to admit any of them to heaven, but at His mother's insistence they are eventually saved.
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