2 - Christianity Comes to India
from PART ONE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2009
Summary
THE THOMAS TRADITION AND NORTH INDIA
And while he thus spake and thought, it chanced that there was there a certain merchant come from India whose name was Abbanes, sent from the King Gundaphorus, and having commandment from him to buy a carpenter and bring him unto him.
Now the Lord seeing him walking in the market-place at noon said unto him: Wouldest thou buy a carpenter? And he said to him: Yea. And the Lord said to him: I have a slave that is a carpenter and I desire to sell him. And so saying he showed him Thomas afar off, and agreed with him for three litrae of silver unstamped, and wrote a deed of sale, saying: I, Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, acknowledge that I have sold my slave, Judas by name, unto thee Abbanes, a merchant of Gundaphorus, king of the Indians. And when the deed was finished, the Saviour took Judas Thomas and led him away to Abbanes the merchant; and when Abbanes saw him he said unto him: Is this thy master? And the apostle said: Yea, he is my Lord. And he said: I have bought thee of him. And the apostle held his peace.
The story of the coming of Christianity to India cannot start in any place other than the opening chapters of the Acts of Thomas. This extensive and interesting work was almost certainly written in Syriac, perhaps in the third century after Christ.
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- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Christianity in IndiaThe Beginnings to AD 1707, pp. 26 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984