Saint Thomas' Christians: The Story of How One Skeptical Apostle Brought the Gospel to India in the First Century

History first recorded the existence of the Indian state of Kerala in the third century BCE.  The name originally appeared, chiseled in stone, on an inscription left to posterity by the great Mauryan emperor Ashoka.  Ashoka reigned for more than two decades and in his lifetime he presided over an empire that encompassed nearly the entire Indian subcontinent.

Before the birth of Christ in the last century BCE the Roman historian Pliny the Elder as well as many other ancient travelers made note of Kerala as the Roman world’s leading exporter of spices.  

Located on the west coast of India, Kerala or the place that westerners once referred to as the Malabar Coast after it was “discovered” by Portuguese explorers looking for a quicker passage to the Spice Islands of the east in the late 15th century CE is today one of India’s wealthiest provinces.  It is a province that contains lush verdant tropical jungles, as well as some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.  And with a  population of just over thirty-three million, in a country that contains well over a billion souls, Kerala is considered to be one of India’s most sparsely populated regions.

However, despite being referenced by the legendary Emperor Ashoka, and despite being renowned world-wide since the days of ancient Rome as the international leader in the spice trade, Kerala has one other fascinating claim to historical fame.

Kerala with beautiful coastlines and lush vegetation

The Indian province of Kerala, once known as the Malabar Coast, is home to India’s largest population of Christians!  And the Christians of Kerala trace their holy lineage all the way back to about the year 52 CE and the proselytizing mission of Saint Thomas the Apostle.

Saint Thomas first speaks as a disciple of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  In that Gospel after Lazarus has just died, Jesus is preparing to travel back to Judea to raise him from the dead, but some of the apostles are afraid to travel back to Judea because many there had threatened to kill Jesus and his followers. Of Thomas the Bible first says, “Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go that we may die with him.’”  (NIV John 11:16)

Thomas’ first words in the Gospel encapsulate all that many Christians today know of the original apostle Saint Thomas--that he was a “Doubting Thomas”.  Also, we learn that Thomas may have been an identical twin since he is called “Didymus” in Greek which is another word for twin.  Perhaps, the fact that during a very superstitious time period (the first century CE) that Thomas was most likely an identical twin made him skeptical of the way that all things appeared and made him unwilling to take almost anything he saw at face value.

Thomas’ first utterance in the Gospel is downright sarcastic.  It casts doubt on the validity of the entire mission of Jesus’ original disciples, and yet, Thomas still goes.

He stays with Jesus right up until the very end but openly expresses his doubts all along.  Even after word of the resurrection of Christ has spread through the community of believers, Thomas remains skeptical and says, “Except I shall see on his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25 NIV)

But knowing his character, his skepticism, Jesus obliged Thomas’ open questioning of His resurrection.  After Thomas had touched the wounds of Christ, had seen the wounds on His hands and thrust his own hand into His side he uttered the simple phrase, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28 NIV)

Thomas touches the wounds of Christ in a famous painting by Carravaggio

In a stark turn of events, Thomas the skeptic and the doubter, becomes the first Apostle to proclaim the divinity of Jesus.  After he had seen and believed Thomas became primed and ready to spread the Gospel.  And spread the Gospel he did--all the way to India!

According to tradition among India’s Christians, Thomas landed in Kerala in the year 52 CE to spread the word of Christ.  It is said he resided in India for twenty years before being martyred for his faith in the year 72 CE.

While in India Thomas baptized members of many families who resided near the coastline of Kerala.  Many Christians in India today trace their Christian roots all the way back to these initial Christian converts that were baptized by Saint Thomas just over a decade after the crucifixion  of the Lord Jesus.  Although historians today are not so certain about the validity of these claims as religious historian Robert Eric Frykenberg noted in his work Christianity in India from the Beginnings to Present published by Oxford University Press in 2008, “Whatever dubious historicity may be attached to such local traditions, there can be little doubt as to their great antiquity…”

And, perhaps, the historical record of great antiquity proves that the Mission of the Apostle Saint Thomas to India, the land known to the Romans as Parthia in the first century CE, was not just mere legend passed down from generation to generation via oral history, but instead historical and verifiable fact.

Tradition, and maybe history, holds that Thomas the Apostle is the founding father of both the Syriac and Assyrian Churches of Eastern Christianity.  

The Catholic Saint Ephrem, also known to posterity as Ephraim the Syrian, a respected Deacon and Christian theologian who lived during the fourth century CE in present day northern Iraq, wrote extensively during his lifetime about the founders of the eastern Christian Church.  Saint Ephrem, in his writings, gave special attention to Saint Thomas the Apostle’s Mission to India in the first century after Christ’s resurrection.

Saint Ephrem from a Byzantine mosaic

In a work of devotional Christian hymns written in about the year 350 CE, not surprisingly known as The Hymns of Saint Ephrem he writes of Thomas the Apostle’s Mission to India that:

“It was a to a land of dark people he was sent,

To clothe them by baptism in white robes.

His grateful dawn dispelled India’s painful darkness.

It was his mission to expose India to the Once-Begotten.”

-from The Hymns of Saint Ephrem

Is the testimony of Saint Ephrem of Edessa from the fourth century CE irrefutable historical proof that Saint Thomas the Apostle brought the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the people of India in the first century after the Resurrection?  No, not exactly.  

But it is definitely irrefutable proof that the legend of Saint Thomas the Apostle’s Mission to spread the Word of the Lord to India and to found a Christian Church in east Asia dates back a long, long way.  And, clearly based on the testimony of Saint Ephrem, the early fathers of Eastern Christianity believed that it was Saint Thomas the Apostle who had indeed founded the Christian Church in east Asia.

Eusebius of Caesarea was one of the most learned theologians of the early Roman Catholic Church.  He was a teacher to the Emperor Constantine, the man who made the Christian Church Roman in the 4th Century.  Eusebius was the first Catholic Bishop of the eastern Roman  Church that encompassed the lands of Syria and Palestine.  Today many Christian scholars consider Eusebius to be the father of ecclesiastical history for the historical works that he wrote regarding the founding of the early Christian Church.

Eusebius records in Book III of his Church History that the apostles, “Thomas and Bartholomew were assigned to Parthia and northwest India,” after the Ascension of the Lord.  Eusebius goes on to state that, “India and all countries bordering it, even to the farthest seas…received the apostolic ordinances from Judas Thomas who was a guide and ruler in the church which he built.”

No less an authority in the early Roman Catholic Church than Eusebius himself credited Saint Thomas with not only going to India to spread the Gospel of Jesus but he also credits him with both founding and ruling a Christian Church there in the middle of the first century CE.

Eusebius

Thomas is said to have preached the Gospel up and down the Malabar Coast and to have founded churches and gained converts throughout the province of Kerala.  Tradition holds that Thomas was martyred after being stabbed through the heart with a spear by locals that were afraid of conversion to Christianity on July 3 in the year 72 CE. Catholics, and many other Christians around the world, observe July 3rd as the Feast of Saint Thomas Day for that reason.

 Saint Ephrem says only that, “Thomas was killed in India and his remains were taken to the city of Edessa.”

We can never be certain of why or when the Apostle Thomas went to India.  We know, most likely, that he was martyred there for his faith, and that he must have gained at least a few converts to belief in the teachings of the Lord Jesus, or he probably wouldn’t have stayed for nearly two decades spreading the good news in Kerala.

Today, more than 18% of Kerala’s population is Christian, and a disproportionate number of India’s practicing Christians (nearly half) reside within the borders of the province of Kerala.  Many of these believers call themselves St. Thomas Christians, and despite losing nearly all contact with the western church during the Dark Ages from roughly the 7th Century until the 12th Century CE these St. Thomas Christians still practice a faith not all that dissimilar from Roman Catholicism and other forms of Christianity practiced throughout the world.

Christian Church today in Kerala

India’s Christians, though a minority are fiercely devout and proud of their long lineage, which many to this very day, trace all the way back to the original skeptical Apostle “Doubting” Saint Thomas.