The Travels of St. Thomas in the East and the Migration of His Name

• Authors: Robert James
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper explores the two competing traditions about St. Thomas' journeys. In the first tradition, he travels to the north of India whereas in the second he travels to the south. Despite the fact that Christians in the south of India hold him to have been their founding father, the proposal made by this paper is that he actually travelled to the north of India and thereafter into the Parthian Empire, never travelling to southern India. Nevertheless, this paper suggests that very soon after Thomas travelled north, others whom he had converted travelled south and that their traditions with their remembrances of their founder are the ones that now persist in the south.

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: E-Theologos. Theological revue of Greek Catholic Theological Faculty
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 133-143

Dates

published

2011-01-01

online

2011-11-30

Contributors

author

Robert James

• University of Wales, Newport

References

• Farquhar, J. N., ‘The Apostle Thomas in Northern India,’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 10 (1926), 80-111.
• Farquhar, J. N., ‘The Apostle Thomas in Southern India,’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 11 (1927), 20-50.
• Fleet, J. F., ‘St. Thomas and Gondophernes,’ in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 37: 2 (1905), 223-36.
• Gillman, Ian, and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500, Curzon: Surrey, 1999.
• Klijn, A. F. J., The Acts of Thomas, Leiden: Brill 1962.
• Moffett, Samuel H., Christianity in Asia: Volume 1: Beginnings to 1500, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992.
• Senior, R. C., From Gondophares to Kanishka, 1997, 1-10 (Published privately, a copy is held in Cambridge University Library).
• Sharn, Ishwar, The Myth of St. Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple, New Delhi: Voice of India, 1995.
• Thomas, P., Christians and Christianity in India and Pakistan, London: George Allen, 1954.
• Valantasis, Richard, The Gospel of Thomas, London: Routledge, 1997
• Williamson, G. A., and Andrew Louth, Eusebius: The History of the Church, London: Penguin Books, 1989.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10154-011-0013-2