Thomas
Thomas was one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ. In the Synoptic gospels and the Book of Acts he is listed with the other apostles, but nothing else is written about him.
However, we are provided with far more information in the Gospel of John where Thomas appears in several scenes, the best known being where he doubts the resurrection and demands to feel Jesus' wounds before being convinced (20:24-9) - from which comes the term Doubting Thomas. In three of these passages (11:16; 20:24; and 21:2), Thomas is identified as "Thomas, also called the Twin (Didymus)". The Nag Hammadi "sayings" Gospel of Thomas begins: "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded." The name "Thomas" comes from the Aramaic word for twin. Syrian tradition also states that his 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) he was identified with Jude, one of the brothers of Jesus Christ (Mark 6:3), and thus said to be the twin brother of Jesus.
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.
Thomas and India
Eusebius of Caesarea (Historia Ecclesiastica, III.1) quotes Origen as stating that Thomas was the apostle to the Parthians, but Thomas is better known as the missionary to India. This tradition has been traced back to the end of the 2nd century, and is believed today by the various denominations of Saint Thomas Christians. The Acts of Thomas describes in chapter 17 Thomas' visit to king Gundaphoros in northern India; chapters 2 and 3 depict him as embarking on a sea voyage to India, thus connecting Thomas to the west coast India. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a surviving roughly contemporary guide to the routes commonly being used for navigating the Arabian Sea. But the Acts are usually considered to be moral entertainments of a legendary nature.
Thomas is also part of the legend of king Abgar of Edessa, for having sent Thaddaeus to preach in Edessa after the Ascension (Eusebius, Historia ecclesiae 1.13; III.1; Ephraem also recounts this legend.)
The Portuguese encountered Christians in 1498 while exploring the Malabar coast of west India, who traced their foundations to Thomas. However, they 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-Malabar Catholic Church; others revolted and remained within the Indian Orthodox Church; and a number have since joined other Christian denominations.
No written records of the apostle's voyage to India exist. Modern scholars doubt that Thomas did reach India; K. S. Latourette, in A History of the Expansion of Christianity does not allow the possibility of Christians coming to India by any route before the third century AD. He states that Christianity was brought to India in AD 345 by Syrian Christians fleeing persecution, led by the merchant Thomas of Cana. However, within India, the descendents of Thomas of Cana's (Thoma Kinayi) group maintain a distinct identity within the Christian communities.
Writings Attributed to Thomas
In the first two centuries of the Christian era, a number of writings, some perhaps too loosely said to be espousing a Gnostic doctrine, were circulated that claimed the authority of Thomas. It is unclear 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)
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, that 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, an apocryphal work. 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 1948 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.
No Christian denomination has recognized any of these works as part of the Bible.