From: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H. Buehler)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Apostle Thomas in India?
Date: 11 Jan 93 08:54:35 GMT
Organization: none

In article <Jan.8.00.56.46.1993.2667@farside.rutgers.edu> aslt@acad2.alaska.edu writes:

   Someone told me that Thomas the apostle (as in Doubting Thomas) ended up
   in India as part of his missionary effort, but couldn't point me to any
   evidence.  Anyone know anything about this?

The following is by Herbert Thurston, S.J., taken from the Catholic
Encyclopedia, 1913.  Fr. Thurston was a *very* learned man, though a
bit on the critical side sometimes.  Keep that latter in mind as you
read this.

-----

THOMAS, SAINT, the Apostle.--Little is recorded of St. Thomas the
Apostle, nevertheless thanks to the fourth Gospel his personality is
clearer to us than that of some others of the Twelve. His name occurs
in all the lists of the Synoptists (Matt., x, 3; Mark iii, 18; Luke,
vi, l5, cf. Acts. 1, 13), but in St. John he plays a distinctive part.
First, when Jesus announced His intention of returning to Judea to
visit Lazarus, "Thomas", who is called Didymus [the twin], said to his
fellow disciples: "Let us also go, that we may die with him" (John,
xi, 16). Again it was St. Thomas who during the discourse before the
Last Supper raised an objection: "Thomas saith to him Lord, we know
not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?" (John, xiv, 5).
But more especially St. Thomas is remembered for his incredulity when
the other Apostles announced Christ's Resurrection to him: "Except I
shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into
the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not
believe" (John, xx, 25); but eight days later he made his act of
faith, drawing down the kindly rebuke of Jesus: "Because thou hast
seen me, Thomas, though hast believed: blessed are they that have not
seen and have believed" (John, xx, 29).

This exhausts all our certain knowledge regarding the Apostle but his
name is the starting-point of considerable apocryphal literature, and
there are also certain historical data which suggest that some of this
apocryphal material may contain germs of truth. The principal document
concerning him is the "Acta Thomae", preserved to us with some
variations both in Greek and in Syriac, and bearing unmistakable signs
of its Gnostic origin. It may indeed be the work of Bardesanes
himself.  The story in many of its particulars is utterly extravagant,
but it is of early date, being assigned by Harnack (Chronologie, ii,
172) to the beginning of the third century, before A. D. 220. If the
place of its origin is really Edessa as Harnack and others for sound
reasons supposed (ibid., p. 176), this would lend considerable
probability to the statement, explicitly made in the "Acta" (Bonnet,
cap. 170, p.  286), that the relics of the Apostle Thomas, which we
know to have been venerated at Edessa ("Peregrinatio Silviae", ed.
Geyer, p. 60), had really come from the East. The extravagance of the
legend may be judged from the fact that in more than one place (cap.
31, p. 148) it represents Thomas (Judas Thomas, as he is called here
and elsewhere in Syriac tradition) as the twin brother of Jesus. The
word Thomas in Syriac is equivalent to [didymos] in Greek, and means
twin. Rendel Harris who exaggerates very much the cult of the
Dioscuri, wishes to regard this as a transformation of a pagan worship
of Edessa but the point is at best problematical. The story itself
runs briefly as follows: At the division of the Apostles, India fell
to the lot of Thomas, but he declared his inability to go, whereupon
his Master Jesus appeared in a supernatural way to Abban, the envoy of
Gundafor, an Indian king, and sold Thomas to him to be his slave and
to serve Gundafor as a carpenter. Then Abban and Thomas sailed away
until they came to Andrapolis, where they landed and attended the
marriage feast of the ruler's daughter. Strange occurrences followed
and Christ under the appearance of Thomas exhorted the bride to remain
a virgin.  Coming to India Thomas undertook to build a palace for
Gundafor, but spent the money entrusted to him on the poor.  Gundafor
imprisoned him, but the Apostle escaped miraculously and Gundafor was
converted.  Going about the country to preach, Thomas met with strange
adventures from dragons and wild asses.  Then he came to the city of
King Misdai (Syriac Mazdai), where he converted Tertia the wife of
Misdai and Vazan his son. After this he was condemned to death, led
out of the city to a hill, and pierced through with spears by four
soldiers.  He was buried in the tomb of the ancient kings but his
remains were afterwards removed to the West.

Now it is certainly a remarkable fact that about the year A. D. 46 a
king was reigning over that part of Asia south of the Himalayas now
represented by Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Sind, who
bore the name Gondophernes or Guduphara. This we know both from the
discovery of coins, some of the Parthian type with Greek legends,
others of the Indian type with legends in an Indian dialect in
Kharoshthi characters. Despite sundry minor variations the identity of
the name with the Gundafor of the "Acta Thomae" is unmistakable and is
hardly disputed. Further we have the evidence of the Takhti-Bahi
inscription, which is dated, and which the best specialists accept as
establishing that the King Guduphara probably began to reign about A.
D. 20 and was still reigning in 46. Again there are excellent reasons
for believing that Misdai or Mazdai may well be a transformation of a
Hindu name made on Iranian soil. In this case it will probably
represent a certain King Vasudeva of Mathura, a successor of Kanishka.
No doubt it can be urged that the Gnostic romancer who wrote the "Acta
Thomae" may have adopted a few historical Indian names to lend
verisimilitude to his fabrication, but as Mr. Fleet urges in his
severely critical paper "the names put forward here in connexion with
St. Thomas are distinctly not such as have lived in Indian story and
tradition" (Jour.  of R. Asiatic Soc., 1905, p. 235).

On the other hand, though the tradition that St.  Thomas preached in
"India" was widely spread in both East and West and is to be found in
such writers as Ephraem Syrus, Ambrose, Paulinus, Jerome, and, later,
in Gregory of Tours and others, still it is difficult to discover any
adequate support for the long-accepted belief that St. Thomas pushed
his missionary journeys as far south as Mylapore, not far from Madras,
and there suffered martyrdom. In that region is still to be found a
granite bas-relief cross with a Pahlavi (ancient Persian) inscription
dating from the seventh century, and the tradition that it was here
that St. Thomas laid down his life is locally very strong. Certain it
is also that on the Malabar or west coast of southern India a body of
Christians still exists using a form of Syriac for its liturgical
language. Whether this Church dates from the time of St. Thomas the
Apostle (there was a Syro-Chaldean bishop John "from India and Persia"
who assisted at the Council of Nicea in 325) or whether the Gospel was
first preached there in 345 owing to the Perslan persecution under
Shapur, or Sapor, or whether the Syrian missionaries who accompanied a
certain Thomas Cana penetrated to the Malabar coast about the year 745
seems difficult to determine. We know only that in the sixth century
Cosmas Indicopleustes speaks of the existence of Christians at Male
(?Malabar) under a bishop who had been consecrated in Persia.  King
Alfred the Great is stated in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" to have sent
an expedition to establish relations with these Christians of the Far
East. On the other hand the reputed relics of St. Thomas were
certainly at Edessa in the fourth century, and there they remained
until they were translated to Chios in 1258 and afterwards to Ortona.
The improbable suggestion that St. Thomas preached in America
(American Eccles. Rev., 1899, pp. 1-18) is based upon a
misunderstanding of the text of the Acts of the Apostles (i, 8; cf.
Berchet "Fonte italiane per la storia della scoperta del Nuovo Mondo",
II, 236, and I, 44).

Besides the "Acta Thomae" of which a different and notably shorter
redaction exists in Ethiopic and Latin, we have an abbreviated form of
a so-called "Gospel of Thomas", originally Gnostic, but as we know it
now merely a fantastical history of the childhood of Jesus, without
any notably heretical colouring. There is also a "Revelatio Thomae",
condemned as apocryphal in the Decree of Pope Gelasius,which has
recently been recovered from various sources in a fragmentary
condition (see the full text in the Revue benedictine, 1911, pp.
359-374).

[bibliography omitted]

HERBERT THURSTON.