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'''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 more information in the
Gospel of John where Thomas appears in several scenes, the best known being where he doubts the
resurrection of
Jesus and demands to feel Jesus' wounds before being convinced (20:24-9) - from which comes the term ''Doubting Thomas''. After seeing Jesus alive and receiving the opportunity to touch his wounds, Thomas professed his faith in Jesus; on this account he is also called ''Thomas the Believer''. 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: ''Tau'ma''. 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 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;
Ephraem 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. The various denominations of modern
Saint Thomas Christians believe that Thomas landed at
Kodungallur in AD
52 and ascribe their unwritten tradition to the end of the 2nd century. 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.
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-Malabar Catholic Church; others resisted 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==
:''"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 which claimed the authority of Thomas, some said, perhaps too loosely, to be espousing a
Gnostic doctrine as Cyril was suggesting, were circulated. 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)
An early, non-Gnostic tradition may lie behind this statement, which also emphasizes the primacy of Matthew's Gospel 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, 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.
==External links==
*
Herbert Christian Merillat, "The Gnostic Apostle Thomas," 1997fr:Thomas ja:トマス (使徒) sv:Aposteln Tomas
