Thomas the Apostle

St Thomas the Apostle, Judas Thomas or Didymus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels and Acts list this "twin" (Toma means twin in Aramaic, as does Didymus in Greek) among the apostles (Mt 10:3, Mk 3:18, Lk 6:15).

Thomas in the Gospel of John
Thomas appears in a few passages in the Gospel of John. In John 11:16, when Lazarus has just died, the disciples are resisting Jesus' decision to return to Judea, where the Jews had previously tried to stone Jesus. Jesus is determined, but Thomas has the last word: "Let us also go, that we might die with him" (NIV). Some interpret this to anticipate St. Paul's theological conception of "dying with Christ". He also speaks up at The Last Supper in John 14:5. Jesus assures his disciples that they know where he is going, but Thomas protests that they don't know at all. Jesus replies to this and to Philip's requests with a detailed and difficult exposition of his relationship to God the Father.

In Thomas's best known appearance in the New Testament, John 20:24-29, he doubts the resurrection of Jesus and demands to feel Jesus' wounds before being convinced. Caravaggio's painting, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (illustration above), depicts this scene. This story is the origin of the term Doubting Thomas. After seeing Jesus alive (the Bible never states whether Thomas actually touched Christ's wounds), Thomas professed his faith in Jesus, exclaiming "My Lord and my God!"; on this account he is also called Thomas the Believer.

Name and identity
There has been, and continues to be, disagreement and uncertainty as to the identity of Saint Thomas. The latest theory is presented in the book The Jesus Family Tomb. The authors, Jacobovici and Pellegrino, identify him with one of those who were interred in the Talpiot Tomb, "Yehuda son of Yeshua."

Twin and its renditions

 * The Greek Didymus: in three of these passages (John 11:16; 20:24; and 21:2), Thomas is more specifically identified as "Thomas, also called the Twin (Didymus)".
 * The Aramaic Tau'ma: the name "Thomas" itself comes from the Aramaic word for twin: T'oma (תאומא). Thus the name convention Didymus Thomas thrice repeated in the Gospel of John is in fact a tautology that omits the Twin's actual name.

Other names
The Nag Hammadi "sayings" Gospel of Thomas begins: "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded." Syrian tradition also states that the apostle's full name was Judas Thomas, or Jude Thomas. Some have seen in the Acts of Thomas (written in east Syria in the early 3rd century, or perhaps as early as the first half of the 2nd century) an identification of Saint Thomas with the apostle Judas son of James, better known in English as Jude. However, the first sentence of the Acts follows the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in distinguishing the apostle Thomas and the apostle Judas son of James. Few texts identify Thomas's other twin, though in the Book of Thomas the Contender, part of the Nag Hammadi library, it is said to be Jesus himself: "Now, since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine yourself…"

Saint Thomas in Christian tradition
Some have claimed that the mainstream Christian tradition has mistakenly divided the person of Jude the Twin and rendered one man as two, both Saint Jude and Saint Thomas. However, the lists of the Twelve in Luke 6 and Acts 1 clearly treat Judas son of James (St. Jude) and Thomas as separate people. Mainstream Christian churches follow this by regarding the two Apostles as separate individuals.

Thomas is revered as a saint in both the Roman Catholic Church, in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in the Oriental Orthodox Church, and is remembered each year on Saint Thomas Sunday, which is always one week after Easter.

The ancient debate over Doubting Thomas
Many scholars believe that the majority of the lost Gospels were written decades and in some cases centuries after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But some think one of the long-abandoned texts, the Gospel of Thomas, was very much on the mind of John's author when he sat down to write in about A.D. 95.

Elaine Pagels sees certain verses in John as refutations of Thomasine thought and a valuable illustration of how the early Christian communities lobbied for their version of Christ and his message. "I'm not saying [John] was responding to Thomas as written, because there may not have been a written text [yet]," she says. "But after you study them, it is inconceivable that the Gospel of John is not responding to some of these ideas." In her book Beyond Belief, Pagels adopts an argument proposed by Claremont Graduate University religion professor Gregory Riley. John's author, she says, was infuriated by Thomas' suggestion that Christians could gain salvation through esoteric knowledge and internal quest rather than straightforward belief in Jesus' divinity and atoning sacrifice. She claims that John "hammers home" that displeasure in a series of prickly interactions between Christ and--who else?--the Apostle Thomas. Of course, this point of view is entirely based on an assumption that the Biblical Thomas was the writer of the Gnostic "Gospel of Thomas", and would therefore be at odds with traditional Christian doctrine.

The incidents culminate in John's indelible post-Resurrection portrait of Doubting Thomas, a man so obsessed with what he can "know" that he is blind to the greatest spiritual truth in human history. For it is Thomas who announces that he will not believe in the risen Christ "unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my ... hand in his side." When Jesus presents precisely this proof, writes Pagels, "Thomas, overwhelmed, capitulates and stammers out the confession, 'My Lord and my God!'" Jesus then turns pointedly to the other disciples and says, "Thomas, you have believed because you have seen, blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe."

"John may have felt some satisfaction writing this scene," Pagels ventures. "In place of Thomas' cryptic sayings, John offers a simple formula: 'God loves you; believe, and be saved.'"…"

Later history
Just as Saints Peter and Paul are said to have brought the fledgling Christianity to Greece and Rome, Saint Mark brought it to Egypt, Saint John to Syria and Asia Minor, Thomas is often said to have taken it eastwards as far as India. Saint Thomas is said to have been the first Catholicos of the East.

Thomas and the Assumption of Mary


According to The Passing of Mary, a text attributed to Joseph of Arimathaea, Thomas was the only witness of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. The other apostles were miraculously transported to Jerusalem to witness her death. Thomas was left in India, but after her burial he was transported to her tomb, where he witnessed her bodily assumption into heaven, from which she dropped her girdle. In an inversion of the story of Thomas's doubts, the other apostles are skeptical of Thomas's story until they see the empty tomb and the girdle. Thomas's receipt of the girdle is commonly depicted in medieval and pre-Tridentine Renaissance art.

Thomas and Syria
"Judas, who is also called Thomas" (Eusebius, H.E. 13.12) has a role in the legend of king Abgar of Edessa (Urfa), for having sent Thaddaeus to preach in Edessa after the Ascension (Eusebius, Historia ecclesiae 1.13; III.1; Ephrem the Syrian also recounts this legend.) In the 4th century the martyrium erected over his burial place brought pilgrims to Edessa. In the 380s, Egeria described her visit in a letter she sent to her community of nuns at home (Itineraria Egeriae):
 * "we arrived at Edessa in the Name of Christ our God, and, on our arrival, we straightway repaired to the church and memorial of saint Thomas. There, according to custom, prayers were made and the other things that were customary in the holy places were done; we read also some things concerning saint Thomas himself. The church there is very great, very beautiful and of new construction, well worthy to be the house of God, and as there was much that I desired to see, it was necessary for me to make a three days' stay there."

Thomas and India
Eusebius of Caesarea (Historia Ecclesiastica, III.1) quotes Origen (died mid-3rd century) as having stated that Thomas was the apostle to the Parthians, but Thomas is better known as the missionary to India through the Acts of Thomas, written ca 200. In Edessa, where his remains were venerated, the poet Ephrem the Syrian (died 373) wrote a hymn in which the Devil cries,
 * ''...Into what land shall I fly from the just?
 * ''I stirred up Death the Apostles to slay, that by their death I might escape their blows.
 * ''But harder still am I now stricken: the Apostle I slew in India has overtaken me in Edessa; here and there he is all himself.
 * There went I, and there was he: here and there to my grief I find him. &mdash;quoted in Medlycott 1905, ch. ii.

A long public tradition in the church at Edessa honoring Thomas as the Apostle of India resulted in several surviving hymns that are attributed to Ephrem, copied in codices of the 8th and 9th centuries. References in the hymns preserve the tradition that Thomas' bones were brought from India to Edessa by a merchant, and that the relics worked miracles both in India and at Edessa. A pontiff assigned his feast day and a king erected his shrine. The Thomas traditions became embodied in Syriac liturgy, thus they were universally credited by the Christian community there. There is also a legend that Thomas had met the Biblical Magi on his way to India.

It is believed that St. Thomas had come to Kerala, India to spread Christianity. Even today people flock to the Church at Malayatoor. He further moved towards north by coast and reached a small village called Palayur, near Guruvayoor which was a priestly class settlement at that time. Here he conversed with priestly class community of Aryan worship system. Convinced by the Divine power possessed by this foreign monk of new faith, four prominent rich and priestly class families accepted the Christian faith and were baptised by St.Thomas himself. The four prominent high class priestly Hindu families who accepted the new faith were Kali, Kalikavu(Kaliyankal), Pakalomattom & Sankarapuri.

The various denominations of modern Saint Thomas Christians ascribe their unwritten tradition to the end of the 2nd century and believe that Thomas landed at Maliankara or known as Malankara near Moothakunnam village in Paravoor Thaluk in AD 52. This village located 5 kilometers from Kodungallur in Kerala (state), India in AD 52 and founded (St. Thomas) the churches popularly known as Ezharappallikal, meaning Seven and Half churches. These churches are at Kodungallur, Kollam, Niranam, Nilackal (Chayal), Kokkamangalam, Kottakkayal (Paravoor), Palayoor (Chattukulangara) and Thiruvithamkode(Travancore) &mdash; the half church. (See also Saint Thomas of Mylapur).

Visit to Gondophares
The Acts of Thomas describes in chapter 17 Thomas' visit to king Gondophares in northern India; chapters 2 and 3 depict him as embarking on a sea voyage to India, thus connecting Thomas to the west coast of India. Though the Acts are usually considered to be moral entertainments of a legendary nature, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a surviving roughly contemporary guide to the routes commonly being used for navigating the Arabian Sea. At the times the Acts were being composed, and until the discovery of his coins in the region of Kabul and the Punjab, there was no reason to suppose that a king named "Gondophares" had ever really existed. The reign of Gondophares, established by a votive inscription of his 26th regnal year that was unknown until 1872, commenced in AD 21, so he was in fact reigning as late as AD 47. "It is impossible to resist the conclusion that the writer of the Acts must have had information based on contemporary history. For at no later date could a forger or legendary writer have known the name." (Medlycott 1905).

Return of the relics
In 232 the relics of the Apostle Thomas are said to have been returned by an Indian king and brought back from India to the city of Edessa, Mesopotamia, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written. The Indian king is named as "Mazdai" in Syriac sources, "Misdeos" and "Misdeus" in Greek and Latin sources respectively, which has been connected to the "Bazdeo" on the Kushan coinage of Vasudeva I, the transition between "M" and "B" being a current one in Classical sources for Indian names. The martyrologist Rabban Sliba dedicated a special day to both the Indian king, his family, and St Thomas:
 * "Coronatio Thomae apostoli et Misdeus rex Indiae, Johannes eus filius huisque mater Tertia" ("Coronation of Thomas the Apostole, and Misdeus king of India, together with his son Johannes (thought to be a latinization of Vizan) and his mother Tertia") Rabban Sliba

After a short stay in the Greek island of Chios, on September 6, 1258, the relics were transported to the West, and now rest in Ortona, Italy.

Indian legacy
Southern India had maritime trade with the West since ancient times. Egyptian trade with India and Roman trade with India flourished in the first century AD. In AD 47, the Hippalus wind was discovered and this led to direct voyage from Aden to the South Western coast in 40 days. Muziris (Kodungallur) and Nelcyndis or Nelkanda (near Kollam) in South India, are mentioned as flourishing ports, in the writings of Pliny (23-79 AD). Pliny has given an accurate description of the route to India, the country of Cerebothra (the Cheras). Pliny has referred to the flourishing trade in spices, pearls, diamonds and silk between Rome and Southern India in the early centuries of the Christian era. Though the Cheras controlled Kodungallur port, Southern India belonged to the Pandyan Kingdom, that had sent embassies to the court of Augustus Caesar.

According to tradition, St. Thomas landed in Kodungallur in AD 52, in the company of a Jewish merchant Hebban. There were Jewish colonies in Kodungallur since ancient times and Jews continue to reside in Kerala, tracing their ancient history. The Jewish Christians (or Nazareens) were supported from Mesopotamia and Persia, since ancient times.

As recorded in the Travancore Manual, around 345 AD, Thomas Cana (Kona Thomas) merchant and missionary, visited the Malabar coast. He brought to Kodungallur a group of four hundred Christians from Bagdad, Nineveh and Jerusalem. Cheraman Perumal, the King, gave him grants of privileges. (Reference Manuscript volume dated 1604 AD kept in British Museum).

In 522 AD, Cosmos Indicopleustes visited the Malabar Coast. He is the first traveller who mentions Syrian Christians in Malabar. He mentions that in the town of 'Kalliana' (Quilon or Kollam), there is a bishop consecrated in Persia. There is a copper plate grant given to Iravi Korttan, a Christian of Kodungallur (Cranganore), by King Vira Raghava. The date is estimated to be around 744 AD. In 822 AD two Nestorian Persian Bishops Mar Sapor and Mar Peroz came to Malabar, to occupy their seats in Kollam and Kodungallur, to look after the local Syrian Christians ( also known as St.Thomas Christians).

In the 13th century, Marco Polo, who visited South Indian cities of Kayal in the East Coast and Kollam (Quilon), mentioned in his writings about the Syrian Christians of Quilon and also about the Thomas tomb on the East Coast, near Kayal, confirming the tradition that St Thomas died in South India.

While exploring the Malabar coast of Kerala, South India after Vasco Da Gama's arrival in Calicut in 1498, the Portuguese encountered Christians in South Western India, who traced their foundations to Thomas. However, the Catholic Portuguese did not accept the legitimacy of local Malabar traditions, and they began to impose Roman Catholic practices upon the Saint Thomas Christians. The Udayamperoor Synod (Synod of Diamper) in 1599, was an attempt by the Portuguese, to Latinize the local Christian rites. In 1653, the Syrian Christians split from the Latin Church controlled by the Pope of Rome. The Orthodox faction remained fully within the various Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian traditions. During the British rule in India, protestantism flourished among the Christians.

On the isolated island of Socotra south of Yemen in the Arabian Sea, a community of Christians had been attested as early as ca. 354 by Philostorgius, the Arian Church historian, in his narrative of the mission of Bishop Theophilus to the Homeritae (Medleycott), and was confirmed by medieval Arab sources. They survived to be documented in 1542 by Saint Francis Xavier, whom they informed that their ancestors had been evangelized by Thomas (Medlycott 1905, ch. ii). Francis Xavier was careful to station four Jesuits to guide the faithful in Socotra into orthodoxy (letter, April 15, 1549). Socotra had been briefly garrisoned by Albuquerque, but after the Mahra sultans from the Horn of Africa conquered Socotra in 1511 almost all traces of the Thomas Christian community in Socotra had been utterly effaced.

Though the mortal remains of Thomas, were removed to Edessa in the 3rd century from India, and from Edessa to Italy, an attempt was made by the Portuguese in the 16th century, to trace the original tomb of Thomas. Finally they settled on Mylapore near Madras (Chennai), as the site where Thomas was martyred.

Near Chennai (formerly Madras) in India stands a small hillock called St. Thomas Mount, where the Apostle is said to have been killed in 72 AD (exact year not established). Also to be found in Chennai is the San Thome Cathedral Basilica to which his mortal remains were supposedly transferred.

Pope Benedict XVI's controversial statements
On September 27th 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave out a speech in the Vatican in which he recalled an ancient tradition claiming that Thomas first evangelised Syria and Persia, then went on to Western India, from where Christianity also reached Southern India. . Since this statement was perceived to be a direct violation of their religious beliefs, many Saint Thomas Christians in India condemned this statement. Later the Vatican amended the published text of the same speech with minor modifications owing to the anger expressed by the Saint Thomas Christians.

St. Thomas Christians
Thomasine Christianity is found in the southern Indian state of Kerala. These churches of Malankara trace their roots back to St. Thomas the Apostle who according to history and local tradition arrived along the Malabar Coast in the year A.D. 52. In the Syriac tradition, St. Thomas is referred to as Mar Thoma Sleeha which translate roughly as Lord/Saint Thomas the Apostle.

St Thomas christians had a unique identity till the arrival of Portuguese in India, who forcively converted st thomas christians to the Catholic church. As a result of this foreign invention into the culture there are several present day St. Thomas churches, primarily in the Catholic and Orthodox Traditions. The largest church in terms of membership is the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, a major archepiscopal church in communion with the Bishop of Rome a membership approaching four million adherents. The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is the newest sui iuris church in the Catholic communion with five hundred thousand (500,000) members.

The Orthodox church with its rich history in trampled under continued litigation between two parties owing their allegiance to separate primates. The Malankara Orthodox Church (also known as the Indian Orthodox Church) views itself as an autocephlous Orthodox Church with His Holiness, the Catholicose of the East as their head while the opposing faction, the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church has a local head in the person of His Beatitude, the Catholicose of India. However, the Catholicose of India is still subject to the authority of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch. The two Orthodox churches are reputed to have 2.5 million adherents amongst themselves, but with their constant litigation they are prone to go astray towards the Pentecostal churches and to the Syro-Malankara Church. As a result of the elevation of the Syro-Malankara Church to the level of a major archepiscopal church, the Syro-Malankarese are styling their head, Major Archbishop Moran Mor Baselios Cleemis as a Catholicose in his own right.

Another important church in Malankara is the Mar Thoma Church (full name is the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church). The church claims membership of 900,000. The Mar Thoma Church is unique in a sense since it is an Eastern Church with reformed doctrines. Mar Thoma Church has a great tradition of upkeeping St Thomas traditions and indigenous status of the church.

Thomas in Latin America
In early post-Colombian times some identified Saint Thomas as the apostle who brought The Word to the Mesoamerican civilizations.

To the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors and clerics, the Americas were simply "The Indies" for most of the sixteenth century. It was inconceivable for them that so large a portion of humankind was overlooked in carrying out Christ's Great Commission : " Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature". Soon the missionaries started discovering footprints of St. Thomas.

The discoverer of the footprints was Father Nobrega, whose mission was to Brazil. Father Nobrega reported that the local tribe called Thomas "Zum," (Sumé) or "Pay Zum", "Pay," it seems, being the name given to any local priest or holy man. He is also linked to the legend of a transcontinental path, starting in S&atilde;o Vicente, Brazil and ending in Inca Peru, known in Tupi as Peabiru. Such path was allegedly called St.Thomas' way ("Caminho de São Tomé", in Portuguese) by the Jesuits.

Similar local holy men, and even footprints, were found in other places in Paraguay, Peru, and Ecuador. One missionary sent a rock, bearing foot like impressions, from Chile to Rome, for examination by experts. A Portuguese missionary report of Thomas's martyrdom says that his footprint was embedded in the rock on which he stood when struck down. (Adam's Peak, the highest point in Sri Lanka, also boasts what Christians hold to be a footprint of Thomas, while believers of other religions attribute it otherwise.)

The idea of an apostolic evangelization of the New World gradually took hold among some people living in Latin America. It was comforting to believe that the new religion had links with their old one. In Mexico the original inhabitants, encouraged by some of the missionaries, could find comfort in identifying Thomas with Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent god. The Acts of Judas Thomas, placing Thomas in "India," provided at least a legendary basis for identifying the apostle who must have evangelized Mexico. Quetzalcoatl was a twin, and so was Thomas. Despite criticism from less imaginative and more solid scholarly sources, these views apparently had a considerable following.

The indigenous inhabitants of Mexico had allies. A growing number of Spanish immigrants and their descendants, the Creoles, who had committed their lives to the New World, found in the legend of apostolic conversions a means of reducing their emotional, cultural, religious, and eventually their political dependence on Spain. Like their Syrian Christian counterparts in Southern India, Creoles in Mexico, including clerics, increasingly resented the superior airs of a ruling class sent out from a foreign land to be their overlords.

In effect, the supposed apostolic evangelization of Latin America gave Christianity in these lands a direct independent link with one of Jesus' disciples, reducing the Christinization carried out by Spanish and Portuguese clerics to the status of "a secondary foundation" - with a corresponding reduction in the prestige and legitimacy of the conquistadors under whose wing these missionaries had come, and of the colonial rule established by these conquistadors. By claiming St. Thomas as their founder, Latin American Christians were no less than rejecting the status of a late off-shoot of the Spanish and Portuguese Churches and claiming to be co-eval - if not senior - with Iberian Christianity itself.

Due to such implications, the church hierarchy was far more reluctant to give to the Latin American legends and myths associated with St. Thomas the same kind of credence which it gave to the equivalent myths of the Syrian Christians in South India - where direct Iberian colonial rule was limited to small enclaves and there were not such far-reaching implications.

Thomas in East Asia
Various Eastern Churches in China and Japan claim that St. Thomas personally brought Christianity to China and Japan in AD 64 and 70 respectively. This view is promulgated by the Keikyo Institute.

Writings attributed to Thomas

 * "Let none read the gospel according to Thomas, for it is the work, not of one of the twelve apostles, but of one of Mani's three wicked disciples."
 * &mdash;Cyril of Jerusalem, Cathechesis V (4th century)

In the first two centuries of the Christian era, a number of writings were circulated, which claimed the authority of Thomas, some of them said, perhaps too loosely, to be espousing a Gnostic doctrine, as Cyril was suggesting. It is unclear now why Thomas was seen as an authority for doctrine, although this belief is documented in Gnostic groups as early as the Pistis Sophia (ca AD 250 - 300) which states that the "three witnesses" committing to writing "all of his words" are Thomas, along with Philip and Matthew. In that Gnostic work, Mary Magdalene (one of the disciples) says:
 * "Now at this time, my Lord, hear, so that I speak openly, for thou hast said to us 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear:' Concerning the word which thou didst say to Philip: 'Thou and Thomas and Matthew are the three to whom it has been given... to write every word of the Kingdom of the Light, and to bear witness to them'; hear now that I give the interpretation of these words. It is this which thy light-power once prophesied through Moses: 'Through two and three witnesses everything will be established. The three witnesses are Philip and Thomas and Matthew" ( &mdash;Pistis Sophia 1:43)

An early, non-Gnostic tradition may lie behind this statement, which also emphasizes the primacy of the Gospel of Matthew in its Aramaic form, over the other canonical three.

Besides the Acts of Thomas there was a widely circulated Infancy Gospel of Thomas probably written in the later 2nd century, and probably also in Syria, which relates the miraculous events and prodigies of Jesus' boyhood. This is the document which tells for the first time the familiar legend of the twelve sparrows which Jesus, at the age of five, fashioned from clay on the Sabbath day, which took wing and flew away. The earliest manuscript of this work is a sixth century one in Syriac. This gospel was first referred to by Irenaeus; Ron Cameron notes: "In his citation, Irenaeus first quotes a non-canonical story that circulated about the childhood of Jesus and then goes directly on to quote a passage from the infancy narrative of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2:49). Since the Infancy Gospel of Thomas records both of these stories, in relative close proximity to one another, it is possible that the apocryphal writing cited by Irenaeus is, in fact, what is now known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Because of the complexities of the manuscript tradition, however, there is no certainty as to when the stories of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas began to be written down."

The best known in modern times of these documents is the "sayings" document that is being called the Gospel of Thomas, a noncanonical work which some scholars believe may actually predate the writing of the Biblical gospels themselves. The opening line claims it is the work of "Didymos Judas Thomas" - who has been identified with Thomas. This work was discovered in a Coptic translation in 1945 at the Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi, near the site of the monastery of Chenoboskion. Once the Coptic text was published, scholars recognized that an earlier Greek translation had been published from fragments of papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus in the 1890s.