Syriac Christianity
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[BEGINNER]
The Acts of Thomas is the oldest book about Thomas in India โ written in Syriac at Edessa before 240 AD, within 150 years of the apostle's lifetime. It is thirteen short stories (Acts) plus a Martyrdom: the lots at Jerusalem, the sale to Abbanes, the heavenly palace for King Gundaphorus, the serpent and the talking donkey, the conversions of queens, and the spears on the hill. Read it as the early church's beloved romance โ miracle-stories with sermons inside โ not as minutes of a meeting.
[INTERMEDIATE]
Why scholars take it seriously anyway: its King Gudnaphar turned out to be real. Coins and the Takht-i-Bahi inscription (46 CE) prove a Gondophares ruling exactly when the book needs him (see Encyclopaedia Iranica) โ the one hard anchor in all apocryphal Acts. The book's second king, Mazdai, may be a viceroy (Abdagases has been proposed); its geography is the northwest (Taxila region), not Kerala โ the south belongs to Indian tradition, which the book neither confirms nor denies.
Inside the book: the Hymn of the Pearl (a prince rescues a pearl from Egypt โ the soul's descent and return) rides in some copies and is older and greater than its frame; the wedding at Andrapolis, where Christ Himself takes Thomas's shape to preach chastity; Mygdonia, Tertia, Vazan, Siphor โ a whole court converted household by household. Its theology runs encratite (strict continence), which later Syriac editors softened.
Afterlife: Ephrem sang it, Edessa enshrined its hero, the Chronicle of Edessa (394) logged the coffin, Egeria (384) prayed at it โ and Malabar's Christians made its hero their father. For the plain-English telling, see The Carpenter Slave Who Built a Palace in Heaven.
[SCHOLAR]
Critical points: Greek copies sometimes preserve pre-edit Syriac readings (the purged encratite passages); the M. R. James translation (1924) remains the standard English door-in; NASSCAL's e-Clavis entry catalogues manuscripts and scholarship. The Gondophares-I-vs-later-namesake debate (Senior's numismatics) is live and recorded in the story entry โ honest scholarship dates the king, not the miracle.
