Apostle Thomas

Thomas, also called Didymus (the Twin), was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is named in the apostolic lists of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts. The canonical texts do not record his parentage, birthplace, occupation, or year of birth; like most of the Twelve he is generally presumed to have been a Galilean Jew of the early first century, but that origin is not stated for him personally. The Gospel of John gives him a more individual voice than the Synoptic Gospels, and later Christian memory made him the type of the disciple who moves from hesitation to confession of faith.

John records three sayings of Thomas. When Jesus resolved to return to Judea at the time of Lazarus’s death, Thomas said to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). During the Farewell Discourse he asked how the disciples could know the way, receiving the reply “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:5–6). After the Resurrection he was absent from the first appearance to the gathered disciples and refused to believe without seeing and touching the wounds of Jesus; a week later Jesus appeared and invited him to do so, and Thomas answered, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:24–29). He is also listed among those present at the later appearance by the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:2).

Later Christian tradition concerning his missionary work is not uniform. Origen, as reported by Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century, assigned Thomas the field of Parthia. The third-century Syriac Acts of Thomas, a work of mixed legend and possible historical reminiscence, sends him to India and associates him with a king named Gondophares, a name independently confirmed by coins and inscriptions of an Indo-Parthian ruler of the first century. The Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast have maintained from late antiquity that the apostle landed at Muziris (near present-day Kodungallur in Kerala), established communities later remembered as seven churches, and was martyred on the Coromandel Coast.

According to that Indian and Syriac tradition, Thomas died at Mylapore (now part of Chennai), pierced by a spear. Traditional dates for the martyrdom vary in later sources, commonly clustering in the mid-first century; they are not attested by contemporary documents. A tomb venerated as his has been shown at Mylapore since at least the Portuguese period; the San Thome Basilica occupies the site. Bones claimed as his relics were also honored at Edessa and, from the thirteenth century, in the cathedral of Ortona in the Abruzzo. Whether the Malabar church was founded by the apostle in person cannot be proved from first-century sources, but an ancient East Syriac Christian presence on that coast is historically well attested by late antiquity.

Thomas has been venerated as a saint from the earliest Christian centuries and was never subject to a later formal papal process of beatification or canonization. The Roman Catholic Church keeps his feast on 3 July, a date associated with the translation of relics to Edessa (the older Western date was 21 December). The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 6 October and on the Sunday after Easter (Thomas Sunday). Syriac churches likewise keep July observances. He is regarded as patron of India and of neighboring lands with historic Thomas-Christian connections, of architects, builders, masons, and related crafts, and of those who struggle with doubt.