by the Incarnation. At the same time he agrees with the mystical idea of salvation resulting from union with Christ as consisting in the redeemed man becoming a dwelling-place for God. He holds a peculiar doctrine of the Charismata, according to which the privileges of Israel are gathered up in Christ and then distributed by Him, so that the ancient grace of the priesthood is thus transmitted to the Christian Church.
A curious Syrian work of an entirely different character written about this time is the Acts of Judas Thomas,[1] which tells how the apostle went to India and built a palace for the king in heaven. This is a popular religious story, which Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be blended with the classic myth of the Dioscuri. The strange notion underlying this story is that Judas, "not Iscariot," but the other apostle Judas, who is named "Thomas," a word which means "twin,"[2] was the twin-brother of Jesus.[3] The book has been regarded as heretical; and it agrees with Aphraates in requiring celibacy in the baptised. Evidently, then, there was a strong tendency in that direction at Edessa, although it cannot be proved that this entirely dominated the Church in that city even during its free and independent age. The novel contains some mystical elements in the prayers attributed to St. Thomas, indicating that like Aphraates its author was not fettered by the phraseology of Catholic orthodoxy, simply because he was a member of a church that was developing on its own lines without interference from the main body of Christendom.
With the Acts of Thomas is associated a Syrian Christian poem known as the Hymn of the Soul, originally a separate composition but now incorporated in the story. It is not really a hymn at ail, but an allegory in verse telling of the adventures of the soul which has come from
- ↑ Wright's Apocryphal Acts, pp. 159–165.
- ↑ Θωμᾶς = תָּאוֹם. So we read three times in the Fourth Gospel, Θωμᾶς ὁ λεγόμενος Δίδυμος, John xi. 16, xx. 24, xxi. 2.
- ↑ See Rendel Harris, The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends.
