Saint Thomas | |
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![]() "The Incredulity of St Thomas" by Caravaggio |
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Apostle | |
Died | c. 72, near Chennai, India |
Venerated in | Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Anglican Church, Lutheran Church, some Protestant Churches |
Feast | Roman Catholic: 3 July (formerly 21 December) Coptic Orthodox: 26 Pashons Eastern Orthodox: Thomas Sunday (Sunday after Pascha), 6 October, and 30 June (Synaxis of the Apostles) |
Attributes | The Twin, placing his finger in the side of Christ, spear (means of martyrdom), square (his profession, a builder) |
Patronage | Architects, India, and others, see [1] |
Thomas the Apostle, also called Judas Thomas, Doubting Thomas, or Didymus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He is perhaps best known for disbelieving Jesus' Resurrection when first told of it, then proclaiming "My Lord and my God" on seeing Jesus. He was perhaps the only Apostle who went outside the Roman Empire for preaching Holy Gospel and the one who spanned the largest area, which includes Persia, India and China. His actual feast day is December 21. It was moved in order to accommodate the commemoration of St. Peter Canisius, who died on December 21.
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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, and Thomas says bravely: "Let us also go, that we might die with him" (NIV).
He also speaks 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 exposition of his relationship to God the Father.
In Thomas' best known appearance in the New Testament, John 20:24-29, he doubts the resurrection of Jesus and demands to touch 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.[1]
There is disagreement and uncertainty as to the identity of Saint Thomas. One recent theory is presented in the book The Jesus Family Tomb. The authors, Simcha Jacobovici and Pellegrino, identify him with two of those who were interred in the Talpiot Tomb, "Yehuda son of Yeshua."
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' 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…"[2]
Thomas is revered as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. For the Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic Churches and the Coptic Orthodox Church he is remembered each year on Saint Thomas Sunday, which falls on the Sunday after Easter. In addition, the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches celebrate his feast day on October 6 (for those churches which follow the traditional Julian Calendar, October 6 currently falls on October 19 of the modern Gregorian Calendar). He is also commemorated in common with all of the other apostles on July 30 (August 13), in a feast called the Synaxis of the Holy Apostles. He is also associated with the "Arabian" (or "Arapet") Icon of the Theotokos (Mother of God), which is commemorated on September 6 (September 19).
The Roman Catholic and Anglican calendars honour him on July 3, the day on which his relics are believed to have been translated from Mylapore, a place along the coast of the Marina Beach, Chennai in India to the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia.
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.
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' doubts, the other apostles are skeptical of Thomas' story until they see the empty tomb and the girdle.[3] Thomas' receipt of the girdle is commonly depicted in medieval and pre-Tridentine Renaissance art.
"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):
Many early Christian writings, which belong to centuries immediately following the first Ecumenical Council of 325, exist about St.Thomas mission.[4]
Part of a series on Christianity in India |
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Background | ||
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Christianity |
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Synod of Diamper |
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People | ||
St Thomas |
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Churches | ||
Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church |
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"It was to a land of dark people he was sent, to clothe them by Baptism in white robes. His grateful dawn dispelled India's painful darkness. It was his mission to espouse India to the One-Begotten. The merchant is blessed for having so great a treasure. Edessa thus became the blessed city by possessing the greatest pearl India could yield. Thomas works miracles in India, and at Edessa Thomas is destined to baptize peoples perverse and steeped in darkness, and that in the land of India." - Hymns of St. Ephraem, edited by Lamy (Ephr. Hymni et Sermones, IV).
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,
St. Ephraem, the great doctor of the Syrian Church, writes in the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisibina" that the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were subsequently buried in Edessa, brought there by a merchant.[19]
A Syrian ecclesiastical calendar of an early date confirms the above. The entry reads: "3 July, St. Thomas who was pierced with a lance in India. His body is at Urhai [the ancient name of Edessa] having been brought there by the merchant Khabin. A great festival." It is only natural to expect that we should receive from Edessa first-hand evidence of the removal of the relics to that city; and we are not disappointed, for St. Ephraem, the great doctor of the Syrian Church, has left us ample details in his writings. [20]
In the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisibina" he tells us the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were subsequently buried in Edessa, brought there by a merchant. But his name is never given; at that date the name had dropped out of popular memory. [21]
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 and a queen 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.
St. Gregory of Tours , before 590, reports that Theodore, a pilgrim who had gone to Gaul, told him that in that part of India where the corpus (bones) of Thomas the Apostle had first rested, there stood a monastery and a church of striking dimensions and elaboratedly adorned, adding: "After a long interval of time these remains had been removed thence to the city of Edessa." [22]
The indigenous church of Kerala, India has a tradition that St. Thomas sailed there to spread the Christian faith. He is said to have landed at a small village, at that time a port, named Palayoor, near Guruvayoor, which was a priestly community at that time. He left Palayoor in AD 52 for southern Kerala State, where he established the Ezharappallikal, or "Seven and Half Churches". These churches are at Kodungallur, Kollam, Niranam, Nilackal (Chayal), Kokkamangalam, Kottakkayal (Paravoor), Palayoor (Chattukulangara) and Thiruvithamcode Arappally(Travancore) - the half church. (See also Saint Thomas of Mylapur).
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).
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.[23] The martyrologist Rabban Sliba dedicated a special day to both the Indian king, his family, and St Thomas:
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.
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 Indian Christian tradition, St. Thomas landed in Kodungallur in AD 52, in the company of a Jewish merchant Abbanes (Hebban). There were Jewish colonies in Kodungallur since ancient times and Jews continue to reside in Kerala till today, tracing their ancient history.
In 522 AD, Cosmas Indicopleustes (called the Alexandrian) visited the Malabar Coast. He is the first traveller who mentions Syrian Christians in Malabar, in his book Christian Topography. He mentions that in the town of "Kalliana" (Quilon or Kollam), there is a bishop consecrated in Persia. Metropolitan Mar Aprem writes, "Most church historians, who doubt the tradition of the doubting Thomas in India, will admit there was a church in India in the middle of the sixth century when Cosmas Indicopleustes visited India."[25]
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).
Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller and author of Description of the World, popularly known as Il Milione, is reputed to have visited South India in 1288 and 1292. The first date has been rejected as he was in China at the time, but the second date is accepted by many historians. He is believed to have stopped in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Quilon (Kollam) on the western Malabar coast of India, where he met Syrian Christians and recorded their legends of St. Thomas and his miraculous tomb on the eastern Coromandel coast of the country. Il Milione, the book he dictated on his return to Europe, was on its publication condemned as a collection of impious and improbable traveller's tales but it became very popular reading in medieval Europe and inspired Spanish and Portuguese sailors to seek out the fabulous, and possibly Christian, India described in it.
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 Dioceses of Saint Thomas of Mylapore to which his mortal remains were supposedly transferred.
Earlier, in 1729 the Bishop of Madras-Mylapore doubted whether the tomb in San Thome Cathedral was that of St. Thomas and wrote to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome for clarification. Rome's reply was not published.[26] Again, in 1871 the Roman Catholic authorities at Madras were "strong in disparagement of the special sanctity of the localities [viz. San Thome, Little Mount, and Big Mount identified by the Portuguese after 1517] and the whole story connecting St. Thomas with Mailapur."[27] However, in 1886 Pope Leo XIII stated in an apostolic letter that St. Thomas "travelled to Ethiopia, Persia, Hyrcania and finally to the Peninsula beyond the Indus",[28] and in 1923 Pope Pius XI quoted Pope Leo's letter and identified St. Thomas with "India". These papal statements also reflect the geography of the Acts of Thomas, as does Pope Benedict's statement, and make no reference to South India.
Though there are many historical evidences to support the tradition that St. Thomas came to South India, it has been claimed by few that on Nov. 13, 1952 Vatican officials sent a message to Kerala Christians stating that the landing of St. Thomas at Cranganore on Nov. 21, 52 A.D. was "unverified". [29] But, in a letter written in 1996 to one Ishwar Sharan who had sought confirmation of this official statement, the Vatican's reply was that they "have not found in their Archives the letter supposedly written by this Congregation on 13th November 1952" and that the life of St. Thomas was the object of historical research and not within his Congregation's competence. [30]
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.[31].[32] Syrian Christians derive status within the caste system from the tradition that they are converted Namboodiris, who were allegedly evangelized by St. Thomas after he allegedly landed in Kerala in AD 52. But discrepency exists in this theory as Namboothiris started settling in kerala only from 6th century onwards.Since Pope Benedict XVI's statement was perceived to be a direct violation of their religious beliefs, many Saint Thomas Christians in India condemned this statement.[33]Later, based on the evidences given by Christians from Kerala, the Vatican amended the published text of the same speech with minor modifications.[34]
The Pope's original statement given out at St. Peter's, before it was amended on the Vatican website, reflected the geography of the Acts of Thomas, i.e. Syria, Parthia (Persia/Iran) and Gandhara (Western India/Pakistan).
Thomasine Christianity is found in the southern Indian state of Kerala. These churches of Malabar trace their roots back to St. Thomas the Apostle who according to 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 converted St. Thomas Christians to the Catholic Church. As a result of this foreign intervention into the culture there are several present day St. Thomas churches, primarily in the Catholic and Oriental 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 with a membership approaching four million adherents. The second largest is the Indian Orthodox church which have 3.5 million followers. The Oriental Orthodox church with its rich history is trampled under continued litigation between two parties owing their allegiance to separate primates. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (also known as the Indian Orthodox Church) views itself as an autocephlous Orthodox Church with the Catholicos of the East as their head while, the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church has a local head in the person of the Catholicos of India.
A related, although minor, church in Malankara is the Mar Thoma Church. The church claims membership of 900,000.
Prior to the advent of Roman Catholic Christianity in India in the 16th century, Syrian and Persian Christians in Malabar were called Nazaranis or Nazarenes. The first name indicated the Christian doctrine they followed after the church founded by Thomas of Cana in Malabar was linked to the Nestorian Church of Seleucia in 450 AD,[35] and the second name linked them back to the first Jewish Nazarene Christians who fled to Edessa, Syria, prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 66 AD. Jewish Nazarenes belonged to an ancient sect of which Samson and Jesus were the most famous members -- Nazarene does not refer to the town of Nazareth in Israel, which did not exist till the 3rd century AD.[36]
Bishop Stephen Neill, eminent historian who spent years in India researching the St. Thomas legend, was deeply pained by the spurious St. Thomas histories circulated among India's Christians by various Christian scholars. He writes, "A number of scholars, among whom are to be mentioned with respect Bishop A.E. Medleycott, J.N. Farquhar and the Jesuit J. Dahlman, have built on slender foundations what may be called Thomas romances, such as reflect the vividness of their imaginations rather than the prudence of rigid historical critics." And to the Christian faithful he observes, "Millions of Christians in India are certain that the founder of their church was none other than the apostle Thomas himself. The historian cannot prove it to them that they are mistaken in their belief. He may feel it right to warn them that historical research cannot pronounce on the matter with confidence equal to that which they entertain by faith.[37]
To the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors and clerics, the Americas were simply "The Indies" for most of the sixteenth century.The improbable suggestion that St. Thomas preached in America [38] is based upon a misunderstanding of the text of the Acts of Apostles [39]
Various Eastern Churches claim that St. Thomas personally brought Christianity to China and Japan in AD 64 and 70 respectively. [40]
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:
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.[41] 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.
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Persondata | |
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NAME | Thomas |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Judas Thomas Didymus, Jude Thomas Didymus |
SHORT DESCRIPTION | Apostle of Jesus Christ |
DATE OF BIRTH | |
PLACE OF BIRTH | |
DATE OF DEATH | |
PLACE OF DEATH |