Robert Ambelain (in his book La vie secrete de saint Paul)
Tim Stepping Out:
Pontius Pilate, according to Josephus, persecuted and crucified a messiah type named Dositheos (35 CE), who wouldn’t you know it, was a Samaritan, and supposed teacher of Simon Magus – he also was purported to have known John the Baptist. Dositheos claimed to be a messiah, was a contemporary of Jesus Christ, and his name (in Greek) is the reverse of Theudas.
Who is Theudas? The purported companion of Paul and teacher to Valentinus! It’s hard to say whether the relationship between Theudas and Valentinus was real, or if it was a relationship invented to give the Valentinians better leverage against the apostolic side.
My own sense is that Simon Magus was a merging of the magician Simon (Atomus) that Josephus described, and Dositheus was an anagram for Theudas…perhaps this story was a rethinking of earlier tradition. Dositheus died in a cave, according to later tradition, which suggests another link to JTB.
I believe the Apostle Jude, who was also called Thaddeus and Judas, is a key piece in this puzzle. This Jude, who shows up in the Gospels and Acts, also went by Thaddeus; this name would have been interpreted as Theudas by later outsiders, including Josephus.
In this light, it is interesting that Bultmann speculated that the Gospel of John’s original content was more John-the-Baptist-centric, specifically because the Valentinians were said to copiously use the Gospel of John (Ir. AH 3.11.7). My speculation is that the Valentinians, through their inheritance of Paul’s/Simon’s doctrines, actually saw Theudas/John the Baptist as the Christ
On the other hand, Letter to the Colossians alludes to a secret doctrine, secret in the sense that the gospels reveal apocrypha, or hidden things. “I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago — was it in my body? I do not know, was this beyond my body? I do not know, only God knows — . This man was lifted up to the third heaven [...] and heard the inexpressible words that no man is allowed to repeat” (II Corinthians, 12, 2). Valentine, who left Egypt for Rome, where he knew and fought against Marcion around 140: didn’t he claim that, “through the intermediary of Theudas, one of the proper disciples of Paul, he himself had understood the secret teachings of Paul”?[201] Therefore Theudas is none other than Thomas, under whose name appeared the Logia of Jesus discovered at Nag-Hammadi.
This calls for a prompt clarification: Since centuries, every human born in ‹the West› is used, from childhood, to see JESUS as the Crucified MESSIAH; but modern text researchers insist that the Sicarian DOSITHEOS was crucified, but the Nazorean was stoned (see following chapters). A precise lecture of the gospel following John (Jo10:31-33; in connection with Acts14) absolutely allows for this other version, as soon as we read (Jo11:7) like this:
Thereafter he (Jesus?) says to the Disciples: «Let us go to Judæa again». The Disciples say to him: «Rabbi, just recently the Jews tried to stone you, and again you want to go there?»
This ‹JESUS›, thus, was not active in Judæa, but outside of it, e.g. in Samaria, the land of DOSITHEOS who later was given «from above» the surname of JEHOSHUAH/JÈSOÚS. Thus we read in Jo8:48:«The Jews answered and said to him (‹Jesus›): Don’t we speak rightly that you are a Samarian … ?» – This they could not say about JESUS who admittedly (Mt2:1) was born «in Bethlehem, in the Jewish land».
It is further suggested that the representation of Jesus as greater than Moses reflects not only a polemic with Samaritan (or a Samaritan-like) Mosaism, but also a polemic with a northern Palestinian sectarian movement engaged in the promotion of a particular figure as the Mosaic eschatological prophet. The hints received from the Gospel suggest that the heresiarch was the leader of a baptizing sect, a wonder-worker, and someone who claimed that he was a divine being. Christian and Samaritan traditions relating to sectarian movements in Samaria would indicate that the most likely candidates for this unnamed prophet-magus would be Simon, Meander, and Dositheus. The writer is inclined to identify him with Dositheus, although Acts viii 9-24 would suggest Simon.
(James D. Purvis, The Fourth Gospel and the Samaritans. p. 178-179, my bold)
