ST THOMAS AND THE CHURCH OF INDIA

Extract from the Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the lost religion
of Taoist Christianity by Martin Palmer

One of the first Christians to visit Gandhara, according to Thomarist Christian legend, was the Aposde Thomas, who preached to the first-century Indian king of Gandhara, Gundephar. The Thomarist Christians trace their Church from the Aposde and have existed in India as a distinct community from at least the fourth century. They bear witness to the belief that St. Thomas preached in India and even, according to their tradition, in China.

On the west coast of India, in the town of Cranganore, Thomas is supposed to have founded his first church in 52 AD, making this one of the oldest churches in the world, before going on to found another six churches along that coast. In ancient times, the traveler from the Roman Empire came to India not by land but by sea. The trade winds and monsoon winds that make it possible to sail from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea had been known to the Greeks since the fourth to third century B.C., and regular trade between Alexandria and India helped to make the fortunes of that great city. Thomarist Christian legend, possibly based on reality, says thatt St. Thomas, the Doubter, came along these trade routes to India in the early to middle decades of the first century: Indeed, Cranganore was a Greek and Roman trading port, and considerable archaeological evidence of this trade has been excavated there. Roman coins from Alexandria are almost as common there as in the great city itself.

St. Thomas first appears in the written records in the Gospel of John as one of the most ardent of the twelve special disciples of Jesus. He declared himself willing to die for Jesus, but, with the other disciples, abandoned Jesus at his time of need and later re- fused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead: "Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe" (John 20:25). When Jesus appeared to him and invited him to touch his wounds, Thomas was over-whelmed with emotion and declared his belief that Jesus was God.

Since his conversion, Doubting Thomas has stood for those Christians who want to test faith for themselves. His later life as a missionary has also been the subject of speculation. It is now accepted by all but the most timid scholars that Thomas did indeed end up preaching in India, where he was martyred. The evidence of the extensive trade routes between the Roman Empire and India plus the testimony of the Thomarist Christians who have existed in India as a distinct community for seventeen centuries confirm this. Western Church tradition says Thomas was appointed to take the Gospel to the Persians, which he did and then moved on to India. The third-century Acts of Thomas, which is found in Greek, Latin, and Syriac versions and was known and revered by Churches East and West, tells of his adventures: his debates with Indian rulers, struggles with the Brahmins who tried to silence him, and journeys beyond India. Even a book published in 1713 on the lives of the Aposdes has Thomas preaching in Persia, Ethiopia, India, the East Indies, and China.

Although mostly the stuff of legend, Acts of Thomas does reflect actual historical events. One of the most delightful stories concerns Thomas and King Gundephar (a historical king who did live at the time of Thomas). It is said that the king asked Thomas to build him a new palace and gave him immense wealth with which to do it. After some time the king wanted to know how the palace was progressing and was told that, instead of building a palace, Thomas was distributing the funds to the poor. The king asked Thomas whether he had built the palace. Thomas replied that he had. But when the king asked to see it Thomas answered, "Yes, but not now. You will see it when you die."

Having converted King Gundephar, Thomas traveled farther south in India to the Chola kingdom on the east coast in the religion of present-day Madras. There he achieved remarkable success in converting the people, but was martyred. Acts of Thomas elabo- rated his martyrdom into a parallel with Jesus' death, involving a plot by the Chola king and an execution by four soldiers, but the truth is probably more prosaic. South Indian tradition has it that his work aroused the enmity of local Brahmin priests. In the course of a riot he was pierced with a lance and died. It is said that he died with the same words on his lips as those with which he greeted the Risen Christ when he appeared to him in Jerusalem: "My Lord and my God."

Although Acts of Thomas is often dismissed as a Christian romantic fiction, oral tradition in India holds to a story that should not be lightly dismissed. Oral traditions in India have often preserved the ideas of written materials that have disappeared from history, but have been verified later by archaeological discoveries, a good example of which is the life of Ashoka, the great Indian emperor of the third century B.C. who converted to Buddhism. Stories of his life have been recounted in India since his time. Yet Westerners, encountering these stories in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, dismissed them as wishful thinking. However, when archaeological discoveries of documents and edicts of his reign established the historical existence of Emperor Ashoka, it became clear that his exploits were even more significant and di- verse than the legends told. So the oral tradition on which the de tails of the Acts of Thomas were based could be historically true.

Certainly, the persistence of oral tradition indicates some likelihood of this, as do discoveries about kings such as Gunaphar and the extent of trade from the West to India exactly in the places that Thomas is supposed to have visited.

Toward the end of the second century A.D., a new mission was sent from Alexandria to India to assist the churches in the Bombay area, now called Mumbai, headed by a great scholar named Pantaenus. From Pantaenus's report, we know that the Church in India used Syriac for its services, as it still does today. After the Church of the East arose, the Church in India looked for leadership to replace the compromised Church of Alexandria and the Church of the West. The Church of the East counted the Church of India as one of its oldest associate Churches, and materials from this Indian Church almost certainly influenced the writings of the Jesus Sutras, as we found in our translations of The Sutra of Jesus Christ.