Thomas (Apostle)

Thomas, also called Judas Thomas Didymus or Jude Thomas Didymus, was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels and Acts list this "twin" (Thomas means twin in Aramaic, as does Didymus in Greek) among the apostles (Mt 10:3, Mk 3:18, Lk 6:15), but the Synoptic Gospels say nothing more about him.

Thomas in the Gospel of John

Saint Thomas appears in a few passages in the Gospel of John.

John 11:16: Lazarus has just died, and 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".
John 14:5: During The Last Supper, 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.
John 20:24-29: In Thomas's best known appearance in the New Testament, Thomas doubts the resurrection of Jesus and demands to feel Jesus' wounds before being convinced. Caravaggio's painting, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (illustration below), 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; on this account he is also called Thomas the Believer.

See also Faith and Character of Apostle Thomas by Dr. Mathew Vellanickal and many other articles in St.Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia, ed.G.Menachery]

Name and identity

There has been, and continues to be, disagreement and uncertainty as to the identity of Saint Thomas.

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: Tau'ma. 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, and as early as the Acts of Thomas (written in east Syria in the early 3rd century, or as early as the first half of the 2nd century--a contemporary of the fourth evangelist) he was identified with the apostle Jude, one of the brothers of Jesus (see Desposyni). Gospel of Mark 6:3 quotes the many who knew Jesus and heard him with surprise in the synagogue of his home country:

"Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him."" —King James Bible.

The texts do not anywhere identify Judas Thomas's other twin.

Split identity

One interpretation is that the mainstream Christian tradition, as early as the beginning of the second century, has divided the person of Jude the Twin and rendered the one man as two, both Saint Jude and Saint Thomas. This is not the teaching of mainstream Christian churches, however, who insist on their separateness. See also Saint Jude.

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

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 Turkey, Thomas is often said to have taken it eastwards as far as India. St.Thomas is believed to have been the first Catholicos of the East.

Thomas and the Assumption of Mary

According to The Passing of Mary, an early medieval text falsely 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 ascension 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.The Passing of Mary Thomas's receipt of the girdle is commonly depicted in medieval and pre-Tridentine Renaissance art.

Thomas and Syria

Thomas 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, which lies beyond Parthia to the east, 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. —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.

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 near Moothakunnam village in Paravoor Thaluk in AD 52.This village 5 KiloMeter from Kodungallur in AD 52 and founded 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 — the half church.

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 St. Thomas are said to have been brought back from India to the city of Edessa, Mesopotamia, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written. 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.

While exploring the Malabar coast of west India in 1498, the Portuguese encountered Christians 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, some of whom conformed, to become the Syro-Malankara and Syro-Malabar Catholic churches; others resisted and remained fully within the various Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian traditions. A number have since joined other Christian denominations.

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 (see Socotra).

Thomas may have also travelled to China establishing the first church there.

There is near Chennai (formerly Madras) in India, a small hillock called St. Thomas Mount, where the Apostle is said to have been killed in 78 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.

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."

—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 250 - 300 A.D.) which states that the "three witnesses" committing to writing "all of his words" 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" ( —Pistis Sophia 1:43)

An early, non-Gnostic tradition may lie behind this statement, which also emphasizes the primacy of Matthew's Gospel 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 many 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.

Notes

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