to build a palace. Several times the apostle sent for more money, describing to the king the progress of his work from walls to roof; but he was spending all the money he got on widows and orphans and other needy folk. So when Gundaphorus came to take possession of his palace no palace was to be seen. Thomas's friends told him of the Apostle's charities and of the ascetic living of the holy man. "The king having heard this, stroked his face with his hands, shaking his head for a long time." He was about to kill both Thomas and the merchant, flaying and burning them, when his brother died and went to heaven, where he saw a palace, which he was told by the angels Thomas had built for the king. Coming back to life while his body was being put in the burial robe, the prince informed the astonished monarch of what he had learnt in the world above. The result was the conversion of king and people. After the fourth century the connection of Thomas with India was widely accepted both in the Eastern and in the Western Churches.[1]
We have here a double confusion, first in the person of the missionary and then in the country. There are two Thomases and several Indias. Centuries later, a Nestorian missionary named Thomas went to India, and his mission has been transferred to the credit of the apostle; then the word "India" was used in early times very vaguely for the countries about the south of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf—Abyssinia, Southern Arabia, perhaps also Southern Persia.[2] The orthodox tradition of the life of Thomas assigns Parthia as his district.[3] According to
- ↑ e.g. Jerome, Epis. 70.
- ↑ Harnack holds that the reference in the Acts of Thomas is to "the North-West Territory of our modern India" (Expansion of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 299).
- ↑ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1; cf. Clementine Recognitions, ix. 29, and Socrates, Hist. Eccl. i. 19. According to Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5, and Socrates, Hist. Eccl. iv. 8, he was buried at Edessa. The Roman Martyrology reconciles the two stories in a measure by bringing the apostle's bones from India to Edessa, whence they are conveyed by Crusaders to Ortona in Italy. According to Clement of Alexandria, he died a natural death, Strom. iv. 9, 73. See Hastings' Dict. Bible, article "Thomas."
