The Apostle Thomas and the Christians of India
AD 52, traditional dateTraditional date
Tradition holds that the apostle Thomas preached in India and died there. The oldest account cited, the Acts of Thomas, sets him at the court of a King Gundaphoros; the tradition of Kerala and Mylapore is attested later. Cosmas reports churches in India about AD 547.
What is told of the apostle Thomas after the New Testament comes from later writings, and they do not agree on where he went. Eusebius, early in the fourth century, cites Origen for a tradition that Parthia was allotted to Thomas (Eusebius, Church History 3.1.1–3).
The Acts of Thomas send him to India. The apostles divide the world by lot, and India falls to Judas Thomas. He refuses to go, and Jesus sells him as a carpenter to Abbanes, a merchant of “Gundaphoros, the king of the Indians” (Acts of Thomas 1–2). Given money to build the king a palace, Thomas spends it on the poor. The king’s brother dies, is shown the palace in heaven and returns to life, and both brothers receive the seal from the apostle (Acts of Thomas 17–27). In the kingdom of another ruler, Misdeus, four soldiers spear Thomas on a mountain. He is laid in a royal tomb, and one of the brethren later carries his bones away to the West (Acts of Thomas Consummation of Thomas).
A king Gondophares is known from coins. The British Museum’s catalogue of 1886 reports that they were found at Begram and in the Punjab, in the north-west of the subcontinent (Coins of Gondophares, British Museum Catalogue (1886) pp. xliii–xlv). The king of the Acts thus bears the name of a ruler of that region, far from Kerala and Mylapore.
In the fourth century Ephrem the Syrian, who spent his last years at Edessa, has the devil lament: “The Apostle whom I slew in India is before me in Edessa.” He speaks of a merchant who brought the bones there (Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns 42.1–3). Gregory of Nazianzus pairs Thomas with India as he pairs Peter with Judaea (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 33.11).
The evidence for Christians in India is separate from the story of Thomas. Eusebius passes on a report that Pantaenus of Alexandria went to India and found that Bartholomew had preached there before him (Eusebius, Church History 5.10.2–3). Cosmas Indicopleustes, about AD 547, knew of a church in Male, “where the pepper grows”, and a bishop at Calliana appointed from Persia (Cosmas, Christian Topography 3 (McCrindle pp. 118–119)). He says that the church on Taprobane belonged to Persian Christians settled there (Cosmas, Christian Topography 11 (McCrindle p. 365)). Copper plates that their editor assigns, from the form of the letters, to the ninth century or the early tenth record a ruler’s grant to a church built at Kollam by a man the text calls Maruvan Sapir Iso (Kollam copper plates pp. 62–63, 66, 69). None of these passages names Thomas.
The southern tradition appears later among the sources cited here. Marco Polo’s book of 1298 says that the body of St Thomas lies in a small town in the province of Maabar, visited by Christian and Muslim pilgrims, and that the Christians who kept the church told how the saint was killed by an arrow shot at a peacock (Marco Polo, Travels 3.18). A chronology published by an eparchy of the Syro-Malabar Church dates his landing at Kodungallur to AD 52 and his martyrdom at Mylapore to AD 72 (Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Melbourne, Significant Dates AD 52 and 72).
How this is dated
Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.
None of the ancient sources cited here gives a year for Thomas’s coming to India. The year shown, AD 52, is the one that the Syro-Malabar Church, one of the churches of the Thomas Christians of Kerala, gives for his landing at Kodungallur, with AD 72 for his death at Mylapore, in a chronology published by its eparchy of Melbourne (Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Melbourne, Significant Dates AD 52 and 72); the page states the dates without naming a source for them.
The oldest account cited here, the Acts of Thomas, is anonymous and carries no date. M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (1924), assigns it to the third century. He reports that by the weight of authority it was composed in Syriac and that the surviving Greek text is a translation, though he thought it still arguable that the work was first written in Greek. Percy Gardner, The Coins of the Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India in the British Museum (1886), likewise speaks of legends of Thomas “dating from the third century”. The King Gundaphoros of the Acts bears the name of a king whose coins Gardner dates not later than the middle of the first century AD (Coins of Gondophares, British Museum Catalogue (1886) pp. xliii–xlv). On that dating a king of the name reigned in or before the apostle’s lifetime. The coins do not mention Thomas.
The entry is placed on the timeline at the traditional year and marked as tradition. The datable evidence for Christians in India, from the report about Pantaenus that Eusebius passes on to Cosmas about AD 547 and the copper plates of Kollam, is set out in the narrative.
Primary sources
The Acts of Thomas
- Acts of Thomas 1–2newadvent.org
- Acts of Thomas 17–27newadvent.org
- Acts of Thomas Consummation of Thomasnewadvent.org
Nisibene Hymns
- Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns 42.1–3newadvent.org
Orations
- Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 33.11newadvent.org
Christian Topography
- Cosmas, Christian Topography 3 (McCrindle pp. 118–119)tertullian.org
- Cosmas, Christian Topography 11 (McCrindle p. 365)tertullian.org
The Travels of Marco Polo
- Marco Polo, Travels 3.18gutenberg.org
In context
Grows out of
- AD 30 or 33, estimated date
Leads to
- 1599 to 1653, firm date