Text · apocryphal apostolic acts
Acts of Thomas
Also known as Acts of Judas Thomas, Acta Thomae
An early third-century Syriac romance of the apostle, composed probably at Edessa before 240 and surviving complete in Syriac and Greek. In it Jesus sells the reluctant Thomas as a slave carpenter to the merchant Abbanes, who takes him to India to build a palace for king Gudnaphar; the apostle gives the money to the poor and is finally speared on the orders of king Misdaeus. It is the earliest known text to put Thomas in India, and Gudnaphar matches a king known from coins.
- Date
- early 3rd century
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Established / referenced — The text, its Syriac original and its early third-century date are established; what it narrates is legend.
Worth knowing
Embedded in it is the Hymn of the Pearl, a Syriac poem older than the Acts themselves. Thomas spends the king's building money on charity, laying up a palace in heaven instead of on earth.
The Acts are legend written about two centuries after the events they describe, and many churches regard them as apocryphal or worse. Proposed dates run from about 180 to before 240; the earliest outside reference is in Origen's lost commentary on Genesis, about 225. The Syriac manuscripts were edited to remove the most Encratite passages, so the Greek keeps the earlier form.
Connections (4)
- Canonised by textThomas the Apostle
The Acts of Thomas, written in Syriac probably at Edessa before 240, is the main early source for the apostle's Indian mission and the earliest known text to send him to India. It calls him Judas Thomas, Judas the Twin, and ends with his martyrdom: four soldiers spear him on a hill on the orders of king Misdaeus, whose wife, son and kinswomen he had converted. Two centuries lie between the apostle and the text, which is why its authenticity is doubted.
- Traditional linkGondophares
One section of the Acts is headed 'concerning his coming unto the king Gundaphorus', and scholars such as M. Reinaud identified this Gudnaphar with the Gondophares known from coins, before it was clear that several kings bore the title. Recent numismatic work by Robert Senior suggests the best fit is the fourth of them, Gondophares IV Sases. Richard Frye notes that the same ruler was identified with Caspar in the Christian tradition of Thomas's visit, so the coin king entered legend twice over.
- Traditional linkTakshashila / Taxila
The Acts set the apostle's first Indian ministry at the court of Gudnaphar in northern India; they do not name his city, and Medlycott and later writers place the court at Taxila because it was the Indo-Parthian capital. Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana offers a Greek parallel, having Apollonius visit Taxila in 43–44 CE under an Indo-Parthian king called Phraotes, dates B. N. Puri places within Gondophares's reign. The location is an inference from the king, not from the text.
- Historical linkEdessa / Urfa
The Acts of Thomas were originally a work of Syriac literature, composed at Edessa before 240 according to István Czachesz, and an Edessene tradition held that they were written when the apostle's relics arrived from India in 232. Christianity is attested at Edessa in the second century, and the oldest dated Syriac manuscripts, of 411 and 462, come from the city. The surviving Syriac copies were later purged of Encratite passages, so the Greek versions keep the earlier text.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Acts of Thomas" and "Thomas the Apostle". M. R. James (trans.), The Apocryphal New Testament (1924; 2nd edn 1953); A. E. Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas (1905); István Czachesz, "The Acts of Thomas", in Apostolic Commission Narratives in the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (2002).
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