Problems of Early Christianity

St. Thomas and India

A Letter to the Madras Daily, The Hindu

I have been following the lively debate over St. Thomas and his visit to India. Mr. T. R. Vedanthan strikes me as the most knowledgeable among the various controversialists. But even he has slipped up over the words "all the world" in Mark 16:15.

He feels that they go against his contention that Jesus wanted his mission to be very restricted - indeed to the Jews alone, as Vedanthan concludes from Matthew 10:5-7. Hence he thinks it important to note that the verse in Mark is considered by Biblical scholars to be an interpolation. But he forgets that Matthew himself has the verse: "And the gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then the end will come" (24:14). What is to be realised is that Matthew 10:5-7 refers only to the first mission on which Jesus sent his apostles and that ultimately the Gentiles are not excluded. However, this does not mean that any Apostle would go on such a long journey as to India, for the connotation of the phrase "all the world" is really limited, as becomes evident from Luke 2:1: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." Surely, Caesar Augustus could not institute a census for taxable purposes except within his own dominion: the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire and nothing else is signified by "all the world". Places like India are out of the question.

The limitation under which the missions of Jesus worked is borne out even by the travels of St. Paul who made himself the champion of preaching to the Gentiles. As the Bible testifies, he preached to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Romans - all strictly the people of the regions contained within the Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus's successors Tiberius and Nero whose reigns covered Paul's ministry. No matter how much to the

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non-jews Christianity or, as Mr. Vedanthan would have it, Paulinism masquerading as Christianity was preached in the immediate wake of Jesus' lifetime, none of the Apostles can be thought of as having had an eye on a country as distant as India.

Another equally strong argument against an Indian mission is in Mr. Vedanthan's statement: "There are plenty of references in the Bible to show that the disciples of Jesus expected him to come again and usher in the Messianic Kingdom any moment into Jerusalem." No doubt, as the Scripture says, the exact hour and day are known only to God and the Kingdom may arrive like a thief in the night, but the sense of its imminence and of its certainty in the very near future is everywhere obvious. St. Paul first believed it would occur within his own lifetime. When his health began to fail, he wasn't so sure. But there is no sign that he believed it to be at all far. It is unthinkable in the context of such notions among the early Christians that any Apostle would leave for India in the first century A.D., during which the Second Coming was expected. And after that century no Apostle would be in a position or condition to leave: all would be either dead or too old.

Even apart from these two arguments, there is very little to base ourselves upon with any assurance. Two conflicting legends, dating no earlier than the third century A.D., face us. One holds that St. Thomas preached Christianity in the dominions of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophernes, dated between 20 and 48 A.D., and was there martyred. The other alleges that he was martyred at Mailapur (Mylapore) near Madras. As the historian Vincent A. Smith remarks: "Both stories cannot be true; even an apostle can die but once." Although on the material available Smith considers southern India as a better candidate for the martyrdom, he adds: "But it is by no means certain that St. Thomas was martyred at all. An early writer, Heracleon the Gnostic, asserts that he ended his days in peace." Smith's final judgment runs: "The subject has been discussed from every possible point of view, and

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immense learning has been invoked in the hope of establishing one or other hypothesis, without reaching any conclusion approaching certainty. There is no reason to expect that additional evidence will be discovered" (The Oxford History of India, Third Edition, p. 146).

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