Bethlen Almanac 1999 (Ligonier)
Cikkek - Articles
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA My Lord and my God! (John 20,28) This is what Apostle Thomas said to Jesus when he recognized the resurrected Jesus and made his confession. This sentence became the title of the Church of the East or in other words Thomas Christianity. The history of the Church of the East goes back to the time of Jesus. We all know that before His Ascension, Jesus commissioned the apostles, “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16: 15) Apostle Thomas went to the Orient to spread the Gospel. According to tradition after being the missionary in Egypt and Ethiopia he went to Mesopotamia (at that time it was the Parthian Kingdom till 221 AD when the Sassanidan Persians conquered them) and in 52 AD he arrived in South-India. In that year he founded seven Christian communities of which we still have the evidences. It is not easy to reconstruct the community life and liturgy of those churches for we lack information. What we know for sure is that there was a Gospel by Apostle Thomas which was found in the area of Nag-Hammadi Copt Monastery in 1945 by an Egyptian shepherd called Muhammad Ali Al- Samman. In a huge clay jar they found other Gospels too (Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Gospel of Truth, etc.) and early Christian writings. We also know for sure that the Gospel of Thomas was a very popular and widely known Gospel at that time, surprisingly it was more popular than the other later canonized Gospels. This one is different in style and structure than the other four. It is easy to tell after reading it that this Gospel reflects the Oriental spirituality and way of thinking. Most likely this Gospel was also popular in South-India. Beside the spirit of the Thomas Gospel, the Church of the East was strongly influenced by the Parthian Christian Priesthood. We have information about the strong connection between the Dravidian, Sumerian and Egyptian cultures and trades. This vital circulation of cultures was the reason that the Parthian priesthood tradition was channeled into the Indian Christianity at the arrival of Apostle Thomas. In the fourth century Syro-Persian missionaries arrived in South-India which changed the feature of their Christianity into a 224
