THE MAP OF THE WORLD HAS BEEN CHANGING AS ASIA MOVED: RECONSIDERING THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES

                                                       

 

By T. James Kodera  

The MAPPA MUNDI, drawn in the late 13th century to be ensconced in Hereford Cathedral in the United Kingdom, places Jerusalem at the center of the world. Crucified Christ on the cross marks Jerusalem. Admittedly, it was an explicitly Christian perspective, but not entirely to the exclusion of the Hebraic, Jewish heritage. At the same time, considering that the Crusades, a Christian military campaign to reclaim Jerusalem from the Muslims, were widely and wildly supported by the Christian Europe at the time, the map perhaps signals an implicit Christian support of the Crusades. The configuration of the map also shows how Euro-centric, if not Anglo-centric, the “map of the world” was eight centuries ago. The top of the map is not the north but the east, where lay the world largely unknown to them. Europe and Africa occupy more than half of the world. The British Isles are larger in relation to the European Continent than today's map shows. Perhaps more important, the contours of the British Isles are much more accurate by today's standards than the way the rest of Europe, let alone of the world, is depicted. To the south is Africa with a prominent identification of the River Nile, which intrigued, if not frightened, the Europeans, for it flowed from the south to the north. Their assumption was that all rivers flowed, had to flow, from the north to the south, and for, in their experience, the north was high and the south was low. In the circular MAPPA MUNDI, the east of Jerusalem is effectively the rest of the world. The Middle East, or West Asia, is large and prominent. Armenia and Syria, the locus of some of the earliest Christian communities in history, are clearly identified, while India is much smaller, only three centuries before the British invasion and occupation of the Subcontinent. China is as small as Italy, France and Spain. Asia Minor, though not identified as such, occupies a prominent place on the map, both in size and location.

Ephesus and other cities where the earliest Christian communities existed are clearly identified. Equally prominent is Scythia, where the nomadic Turkic tribes roamed. It is also the habitat of some of the first non-Indian Buddhists before they journey eastward to China in the early Christian centuries. It is curious that exotic animals dot the map east of the Mediterranean, but few in Africa and none in Europe. Needless to say, the map does not show the Americas, since it was before 1492 when the Italian from Genoa, Christoforo Colombo, journeyed westward by sea across the only pond he and his contemporaries thought existed. Their destination was China and India. Europeans had long craved for spices from India. Colombo had read Marco Polo's travelogue to China, where he reached by traveling entirely on land. Colombo was daring. He thought he could reach the “Middle Kingdom" faster and more easily by traveling on the sea. He was unaware that there was another pond, bigger than the Atlantic, beyond the strange continent he is credited with "discovering." Consequently, Colombo never reached his destination, although he certainly hoped he had come very close. When he reached what we know today as Cuba, he wondered it was Japan, but found no cities at all, although over 200 years earlier Marco Polo had described Cipangu, a mispronunciation of the Chinese for Japan, riben many cities where the houses were made of gold. Colombo found none.  And yet, he persisted in believing that he had come close to China.

What does the 13th century British view of the world tell us? The axis mundi, to use the term made well known by Marcia Eliade, shows their world view, values and hopes. Jerusalem for the 13th century English was the locus upon which their hopes for salvation hinged. The rest of the world was subordinate to the site of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem, literally the “foundation (the Sumerian Yeru) of peace (the Hebrew Shalom; the Arabic Salam)." Jerusalem in the 13th century, inhabited by the Jews and the Muslims alike, was perceived by the British as the pivot of their Christian soteriological and eschatological expectations. Separated from the European continent by sea, the British of the 13th century, most probably, had a deeper yearning than the Continental Europeans, to know not only Europe and Africa but the vast lands farther afield. The separation, if not isolation, may have compounded the British zeal for exploring the world by sea, developing centuries later into the greatest naval power in the world, subjugating much of the world by the end of the 19th century, and continuing into the 20th century. With colonies spread throughout the world, indeed, Britain had become the “Empire upon which the sun never sets."? 

It should also be mentioned that the Italian Christoforo Colombo has been renamed first by the Spanish as Christóbal Colón, and then Latinized as Christophoros Columbus and later by the British as Christopher Columbus, intent on discovering and conquering the rest of the world, especially the Americas of which, in fact, stood in the way of his journey to China and India. It is intriguing to see that, while Christoforo Colombo was Anglicized, Marco Polo's name never was. Perhaps, it is because Marco Polo reached his ultimate destination, China, on foot, without getting lost along the way, while Colombo ended up "discovering" the “New World, unbeknownst to himself. His goal was to reach China and India, but his accidental discovery of the New World opened doors to the colonization of much of the non-Western world, first by the Spanish and the Portuguese and three centuries later by the English and the Dutch. What drove the European colonial powers was their embrace of the Christian religion, the missionary zeal, which was not limited to the spiritual conquest by the Bible but also included world conquest by the sword and the gun.

Ironically, the two essential instruments of their global navigation and conquest in search both of converts and colonial subjects, the magnetic compass and the gun powder, had been invented by the Chinese a millennium earlier, for divination and as an elixir for immortality, respectively. 

Conspicuous in its absence is any reference to the Silk Road, although there is ample room on the map to include it. Their omission is striking, even after nearly a millennium and a half since the beginning of the importation of silk from China during the Han Dynasty period (206 BCE - 220 CE) through the first trade route, more accurately routes, that connected the major market outposts of the Roman Empire, northeastern Africa, the Near and the Middle East with Samarkand and dusty market places in the interiors of the Eurasian Continent with Gobi Desert at the center, (the Chinese called this desert "sand sea" 7 ), and other centers farther east. Most important among them was Ch'ang-an (today's Xian), the capital city of T'ang Dynasty China (618-907 CE), and even further east, including Gyeongju, the capital of the Silla Dynasty that ruled most of the Korean Peninsula from the 7th through the 9th centuries, and ultimately, across the South China Sea, Nara, the first major capital of Japan, established in the early 8th century (710). Unless they lived in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, the Europeans of the time had little awareness of the Silk Road, which was ostensibly a trade route. Unless religion was a commodity to be traded in exchange for what the Europeans had desired, such as silk, jade and porcelain from China and spices from India, the overland Silk Road was of little consequence to them. 

The Silk Road overland was unquestionably a trade route, established and sustained by mutual acquisitive interests on the part both of the “Westerners" and the “Easterners." Buddhism was indeed a highly marketable commodity, because of what the Buddhists brought to the Silk Road, goods, ideas and ideals. Indeed, so it is said, silkworm eggs were first smuggled out of China in 550 CE by two Buddhist monks who hid them in hollowed out walking sticks. That is how Buddhism became the first "world religion" in human history. Many of the Buddhists who reached China in the first Christian century were Central Asians, much more than Indians. To be underscored is the mutuality of their fascination and thirst. There was parity between the "East" and the "West.” The “Silk Road” is a Western term, referring to their thirst for silk from China. The Chinese thirsted for what the “West” had to offer, including saffron powder, dates and pistachio nuts from Persia; frankincense, aloes and myrrh from Somalia; sandalwood from India; glass bottles from Egypt, and other commodities that the Chinese did not have. And yet, the omission of the Silk Road in the MAPPA MUNDI may also suggest that, by the time the map was drawn in the 13th The Map of the World Changing as Asia Moved century, the glory days of the Silk Road had waned. 

With the rise of the Mongol rule of China, the Yuan Dynasty, the once vital artery connecting far reaches of the East and the West was being fragmented. It was during these waning days of the Silk Road that Marco Polo journeyed to China. It was not until the nineteenth century, when the merchants and the missionaries sought riches and converts in China and its vicinity, that the East and the West became re-connected. Remarkable then is that the mutual fascination between the East and the West was replaced by the West seeking domination over the East, perhaps culminated with the aftermath of the Opium Wars, also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, (1839-42, 1856-60), when the triumphant British forced the Chinese to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, demanding the Chinese to relinquish anything and everything that the British desired from the Chinese. It was one of the most unequal treaties ever signed in history, evincing the invincible military superiority of the British Empire by the mid-19th century. 

This is why, when the MAPPA MUNDI was drawn, few Britons cared to know anything about Marco Polo. The Venetian Marco, at the age of 17, started on his journey in 1271 to China with his father and an uncle. They took another overland road, south of the well-trodden Silk Road. After Alexander the Great of Macedonia in the 4th century BCE, Marco Polo is the first known European to have traveled to the East. For him, however, the purpose was not conquest; either by the sword or by a hegemonic religion, but out of curiosity. During the 24 years of his travel, he marveled at what he saw. He concluded that China was the most civilized nation on earth. He particularly favored the city of Hangzhou, which he found far superior to anything in Italy, including his native Venice, which was arguably the most advanced of European cities at the time. However hyperbolic, Marco Polo's travelogue, which he boldly titled DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD, popularly known to later generations as THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO, introduced to Europe what Asia, east of Europe, was like. It took time for it to be disseminated deep into Europe, let alone the British Isles. When the Britons became aware of the thitherto unknown world, their impulse was to explore, invade and conquer with their superior navigation skills and firearms, neither of which would have been possible, as already stated, without two of the greatest inventions of the Chinese, the magnetic compass and the gun powder. 

The 13th century MAPPA MUNDI in Hereford Cathedral, however, only shows a partial map of the world, showing little improvement over earlier world maps. For example, the world map by Claudius Ptolemy, a Greco-Roman scholar who lived in Egypt, included in his GEOGRAPHICA, written circa 150 CE, and preserved in a circa 1,300 CE Latin translations from the original Greek, shows Europe and Asia Minor with uncanny accuracy even by today's standard. But the rest of the world consists only of northeastern Africa and today's Near and Middle East with distorted dimensions and configurations. The earliest extant map of the world, IMAGO MUNDI, from Babylonia circa 600 BCE, incised on a clay tablet, written in the cuneiform script and discovered in the late 19th century, only shows Babylon north of the River Euphrates at the center of the map, surrounded by a circular landmass identifying Assyria, Urartu in Armenia and other cities, all surrounded by a “bitter river" (Oceanus), with seven islands around the "river" in order to form a star with seven points. The "map of the world" shows the cities and "lakes" around Euphrates and little else? None of the extant maps earlier than the MAPPA MUNDI shows the Silk Road, although the Silk Road was unquestionably serving a vital role in the trade between the East and the West, but far from the immediate sphere of their interests. 

The Christians of today and yesteryear have assumed that Christianity is a "Western tradition," and that those who are not of Western heritage have learned Christianity from the Western Christians who had shaped the Christian faith and practice centuries earlier. The assumption of Asian Christians as late comers persists today. As we seek to establish Christianity as a global phenomenon, Christians as world citizens (e.g. the "worldwide Anglican Communion"), time is now ripe for us to re-evaluate historic assumptions about the origins of the Christian tradition. We need, therefore, to reformulate our strategies for the mission and the ministry of the Church with a renewed understanding of the origins, in the plural, of the Jesus Movement, first known simply as the Way." The Way began to spread in multiple directions, after Jesus commissioned the Apostles to "go and make disciples of all nations, Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that I command you; Here I am with you forever, until the end of the age.." (Matthew 28: 19-20). The Way spread into multiple directions, not limited to the west into the Mediterranean world. 

The Book of Acts by Luke informs us that both Peter and Paul carried the Good News of Christ from Jerusalem to small, aspiring but struggling "communities" (term chosen intentionally to refer to the Greek êïéíùíßá, koinonia) first in Asia Minor and then farther west to Rome. The only journey eastward that Apostle Paul made from his native Tarsus in Asia Minor in today's Turkey was to Damascus, where he had intended to persecute the followers of Christ. All his journeys we know from the Book of Acts were to Christian communities west of Jerusalem. Apostle Peter's journey, as far as we can ascertain from the Gospels and the Book of Acts, was also to the west of Jerusalem. We know only of his visits to Antioch in Asia Minor and Corinth in today's Greece. All the Epistles included in the canon of the Christian Bible, the “New Testament," were written to first century Christian communities west of Jerusalem. 

Is this because no apostle of Jesus went east or south or north of Jerusalem? Is it possible that no letters were written by Peter, Paul or any of the other apostles of Jesus to Christian communities, except for those located west of Jerusalem on the northern shores of the Mediterranean? 

Of the communities to which Paul wrote epistles that are included in the canon of the Christian Bible, three were in Macedonia, which includes today's Greece: Corinth, Philippi and Thessalonica. Three were in Asia Minor or Anatolia, both in today's Turkey: Galatia, Ephesus, Colossae. The only city not in Macedonia or Asian Minor was Rome, far west of Macedonia. Peter is known to have travelled to Antioch, north of Jerusalem, and to Rome where, as the tradition has it, he was crucified upside-down in 64 CE at the hands of Emperor Nero.8 The Pastoral Epistles to Timothy, most probably by Paul, were addressed to Timothy working then in Ephesus. Letter to Titus, putatively also by Paul, was written to support Titus in his ministry in Corinth. Letter to Philemon, yet another letter of Paul while under house arrest in Rome, was written to Philemon of Colossae, who after his conversion needed to reconcile with his slave. Onesimus. Therefore, all three of Paul's "Pastoral Epistles" were addressed to early Christian communities in Asia Minor. The Letter of James, who calls himself a “servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,"' but probably neither of the two James among the Apostles, is a late inclusion in the Canon of the Christian Bible. It sets Jesus' ministry in the Jewish context, putting it back into the Near Eastern context. The two Letters of John, most probably John the Evangelist, the son of Zebedee, were written to settle the claim of "false prophets" who denied the incarnation of God as Christ. The locus of the "heretical" community is unknown, but it is unlikely to be outside the sphere of Paul and Peter's mission. The place of the intended recipients of the Letter of Jude is similarly unknown. The last to be included in the canon of the Christian Bible, The Revelation to John, concerns itself with eschatological issues, related to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Therefore, it has little to do with the concerns of Christian communities far afield from where the Jesus Movement began.

 

The extent of Jesus' own travels, as far as we can tell from the Gospels which tell us almost entirely of only the last three years of his life, were confined to the close environ of Jerusalem. 

The Christian Bible, committed to writing by 150 CE, was judged "divinely inspired" and accepted as such by the 4th century, although not declared a "canon" until the Second Council in Trullo in Constantinople of 692. The "canonization" of any "sacred text" is meant to be a process of inclusion, but it is also a process of exclusion. What was included and what was excluded bespeak the opinions, the world view, of the gatekeepers of the institution of the Church, especially when they met for the Second Council in Trullo. In the preceding six and half centuries since the death and resurrection of Christ, prior to the canonization of the Christian Bible, there may, indeed must, have been travels, both by land and by sea, from the earliest centers of the Church to Christian communities in all four directions, and not just in the west of Jerusalem. There must have been letters exchanged between the known centers of the Church and those far afield, not only west of Rome, but south, north and east of Jerusalem. If so, in the process of canonization, why were they excluded? Indeed, the Second Council in Trullo was attended by 215 bishops, all from the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. Among them, Basil of Gortyna in Illyria, today's Albania, claiming to be the "papal legate" of the Roman patriarchate. 

Included in the "canon" of the Christian Bible are the Good News spread in Jerusalem and its environ and the Epistles written to the earliest Christian communities west of Jerusalem on the northern shores of the Eastern Mediterranean. Excluded are other records, transmitted orally or in writing, that involved the activities of the Apostles and their followers outside the world that mattered to the gatekeepers of the Church up to 692 CE and beyond. 

Christian communities in Asia Minor, could one say that Asia Minor is part of the cradle of Christianity? Could one also suggest that the Christian community was first Asian before it became European? Three Countries before Constantine reigned and Licinius issued the Edicts of Milan in 313 CE, legalizing the Christian worship within the Roman Empire and shortly thereafter establishing Christianity as the State Church of the Roman Empire, Asia Minor was the crucible in which the doctrines and the worship of the Church were debated until “orthodoxy," both for the East in Constantinople in Asia Minor and the West in Rome further west, was firmly established. “The First Seven Ecumenical Councils," convened as much to denounce certain Christological or Trinitarian positions as "heterodoxical" and "heretical" as to establish "orthodoxy," were all held, without exception, in Asia Minor: thrice in Constantinople (381, 553, 680-1), twice in Nicaea (325 and 787), once each in Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). The earliest Councils held west of Asia Minor, or Rome, was in the 12th century, starting with the First Council of the Lateran in 1123 and all the subsequent Councils, the most recent being the Second Council of the Vatican from 1962 to 1965. This is another indication that the beginnings of the Christian tradition are in Asia Minor. Unlike the letters of the Apostles who may have written to, if not travelled to, Christian communities east of Jerusalem that never were included in the "canon" of the New Testament, the importance of the early Ecumenical Councils remain indisputable. They continue to shape the doctrines and the worship of the Church Universal. 

Some, if not many, might argue that Asia Minor at the time of Christ and of the Apostles, and their followers, are not the same as Asia as understood today. How we respond to this question depends on how we understand Asia, where we place Asia on the map of the world. In the 13th century. Mappa Mundi, we saw Asia occupying the eastern half of the world, while the western half consisting of Europe and Africa. In it, Asia is depicted as beginning with Armenia, Syria, Scythia and extending to India and China. Asia is a word, not of Asian origin, but Greek. Asia was originally synonymous with Aegean as in the Aegean Sea. This is why the Greeks referred to the eastern edge of the world known to them as Asia. The Aegean Sea could not move, but Asia could and did. As the Greek and later European view of the world expanded, Asia started moving, as it were, eastward. The easternmost end of the world was no longer the Aegean or today's Turkey, but it had moved to today's Middle East, including Armenia, Syria and Scythia. Three centuries before the first Christians traveling to Asia, Alexander the Great journeyed on land all the way to the northwestern corner of the Indian Subcontinent. For him, and for others who followed in his footsteps, whether they were traders or soldiers, the Khyber Pass, located on the border between today's Afghanistan and Pakistan, allowed a narrow passage through the Himalayan Mountain Range into the fertile soil of Hindustan, the “land of the Sindhu," the Sanskrit for the Indus River, along which were constructed a civilization as old and advanced as the Egyptian. Mesopotamian and Chinese. “Hindu" is of Old Persian derivation, suggesting a significant Persian influence on the Subcontinent over a millennium before the Mughals seized control over the land, starting in 1526. The Mughals were essentially Persians who ruled the area where the “Mongols" lived. To the Persians then, people who lived east of them appeared all the same, whom they called “Mongols." 

It was in the 13th century that Asia moved further east again to include and later center around present-day East Asia; China, Korea and Japan. Marco Polo's travelogue to "the city of Cathay," the capital of China during the Yuan dynasty, a non-Han dynasty that originated in present-day Mongolia sandwiched between China and Russia. A millennium and a half earlier during the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD), a 4,000-mile trade route known to Persians and others as the "Silk Road" was established for Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Romans, and Africans. to obtain silk, jade and porcelain from China and spices from India. Buddhism was a highly tradable commodity on the overland route of the Silk Road. Thus the path of the "Awakened One" reached China in the second half of the first Christian century. The sea route to the south was frequented by Arabs, Persians and others to satisfy their interests, no doubt reciprocated by South Asians Trade along the Silk Road flourished for over a millennium, especially during the T'ang Dynasty (618-907 AD) Who would have known today that the world's most important cities at the time were Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, Turkey, Baghdad in present-day Iraq, and Chang'an, present-day X'ian, China, all of which flourished as trading posts along the Silk Road. Almost equally important was Cochin (Kochi in Malayalam, the state language of Kerala), a port city on the west coast of India where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived harmoniously, all involved in the spice trade.From the mid-19th century, when East Asians began crossing the Pacific in search of menial work first to Hawaii and then to California and other western states, Asia might be said to have become part of North America. Asian Americans, a term coined

1960 in the Bay Area of ​​California, they are not temporary residents of the United States and Canada. They are here to stay. Asia is thus a permanent part of the demographic, cultural and social mix that includes North America. Asia traveled eastward far enough to encounter the "New World," which Christofaro Colombo stumbled upon or "discovered" by accident in 1492 on his way to China and India, which he never, unbeknownst to himself, reached.

The spread of Christianity further east from Jerusalem into Asia included the southern route of the Silk Road. Traveling by sea was much safer than traveling by land. Pirates operated much more on land, in caves, than at sea. In his travelogue, DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD, Marco Polo stated that when he came to present-day Afghanistan, soldiers hid in caves just like today! This is the context of the journey of the Apostle Thomas to India via the Arabian Sea.

When we learn about Christians from India, we tend to ask them, “How long have you been Christians?” The answer is often, “Two thousand years.” Then we are stunned and don't know what to say next. ? "How can that be?" This may be a question we will ask ourselves if we have the courage. Our problems stem from our poor understanding of the Indian Christian tradition. We assume that those of non-European heritage would have to be "newcomers" to the church as a result of European and North American missionary work around the world. The expansion of Christianity by missionaries beyond the borders of Western Europe began only in the 16th century, after the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation of the Roman Church. In the case of the North Americans, their missionary activities did not begin until 1806, when a handful of Williams College students gathered to pray at the Haystack Monument on the College campus. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the first North American Protestant mission, inspired by the Second Great Awakening and largely Congregational in politeness, proposed by graduates of Williams College in 1810 and established two years later. The London Missionary Society, formed in 1795 by evangelical Anglicans and "nonconformists", mostly Congregationalists, was the first British missionary movement. The main target of their mission was India, as it was already a de facto British colony, although not officially until 1858, when the British Raj agreed to do so. It was followed by the Dutch Missionary Society, founded in 1826. Its early activities were limited to coastal southern China and Indonesia in Java. So how could Indians be Christians for two thousand years?

In 52 CE, the Apostle Thomas is said to have sailed across the Arabian Sea and reached the west coast of India to proselytize among the Jews who had arrived in Cochin in 562 BCE, following the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple in 587 BCE. He arrived at Maziris, an island near Cochin that was wiped off the map in the 14th century due to a massive flood. From there Thomas went to Palayoor, near present-day Guruvayoor, a Hindu Brahmin or priestly community, from where he traveled further south in present-day Kerala state. Until he was stabbed to death in 72 AD in Mylapore, present-day Chennai, he is believed to have founded the "Seven and a Half Churches" in India. Ezhara pallikal, "seven and a half churches" in Malayalam, a Dravidian language related to Tamil, is open to many interpretations. It sounds like Thomas was in the process of starting his eighth church when he was martyred. This interpretation would make sense because the last two of the "seven and a half churches" are located in Tamil Nadu. Eight 'half churches' not far from Chennai. According to the former bishop of the Central Kerala Diocese of the Church of South India, Rt Rev's Thomas Samuel, the Malayalam word for "stop" sounds similar to the word for "beautiful", suggesting that Thomas founded "seven beautiful churches". ."

 He also hastened to add that "church" means "fellowship" in the sense of the Greek koinonia. Malayalam for "beautiful" is azhakulla. Does it sound similar enough to Malayalam for half, ara, arapalli for 'half church' or arapallikal for 'half church'? Maybe somewhat. When rewritten, they appear different. But when spoken and heard, especially by Indians, the distinction can blur. Most people were illiterate then, not only in India but also in the rest of the world. They had to rely on the sound rather than the letters of the words. And yet, what would a "beautiful community" mean? Questions remain.

Despite the rich tradition of the Apostle Thomas's mission to India in the first Christian century, there are many today who would reject it on the grounds that there is no documentary evidence. There are records of his journey to and in India. The first to comment on Thomas' journey to the East is Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (263-339), quoting Origen (185-254?), a "Church Father" from Alexandria, Egypt, who claimed that Thomas, like Bartholomew, were assigned to a mission to the Parthians who lived in the northeastern part of today's Iran. Origen is the first to mention the casting of lots among the apostles to determine where they should go to spread the word of Christ, and that Thomas was assigned to Parthia. Ephrem, a venerable saint of the Syrian Church (306-373), recorded in the 42nd part of his CARMINUS NISIBINA that Thomas was speared in India and that his remains were brought by a merchant to Edessa, an Assyrian city of Syria. in northern Mesopotamia.15 Another early mention of Thomas, although quite brief, comes from Clement of Alexandria († ca. 235). In addition, he mentioned "Thomas' apostolate in Parthia". He agrees with the testimony of Eusebius as quoted by Origen.16 But it is in ACTAS OF THOMAS, the full title ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS, written perhaps as early as 180 230, that we learn more about Thomas as the apostle of India."? The account is summarized thus:

The apostles cast lots where they should go, and India fell to Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus. Tomas was taken by Habban to King Gondofor as an architect and carpenter. He describes the journey to India ... after a long stay at the court, he was made head of the church and went in a chariot to the kingdom of Mazda. There, after performing many miracles, he dies as a martyr.

There are other sources that confirm these early references to Thomas as an apostle in India. The "doctrine of the apostles" refers to the letters written by Thomas of India.19 Gregory of Nazianzus (330–389), Archbishop of Constantinople, writes:

What? Aren't we apostles strangers among the many nations and countries in which they spread? ... Peter was a Jew, but to Gentiles Paul was Luke to Achaia, Andrew to Epirus, John to Ephesus, Thomas to India, Mark with Italy?

Ambrose of Milan (d. 397) wrote: "He knew that the apostles were sent without delay according to the words of our Lord Jesus... Even kingdoms surrounded by rugged mountains.

A problem accessible to them, as India to Thomas, Persia to Matthew." There are later witnesses to Thomas in India from others, including Jerome (342-420), Gaudentius, Bishop of Brescia (d. 410), Paul of Nola (d. 41,431), Gregory of Tours († 594) and Bede the Venerable (673-735).

With this documentary evidence, we can infer, if not establish, that the Apostle Thomas actually traveled to India via the Arabian Sea in the middle of the first century and established Christian communities in present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu. For those outside India, early Christians in India were variously called St. Thomas Christians, Nestorians, Syrians, and sometimes Malabar Hill Christians by Portuguese writers of the time and subsequent missionaries from Rome. The designation "Christians of Saint Thomas" is found as early as the end of the eighth century, when a war of words broke out between the bishops of the province of Fars in southern Persia and their patriarch Timotheus (779–823):

It is said that until the time of this Timotheus the bishops of the province of Fars wore white robes like secular priests, ate meat and married, and were not under the jurisdiction of the Catholics of Seleucia. They said: "We were evangelized by the Apostle Thomas and we have no share with the Sea of ​​Man". However, Timothy united them and joined them to himself.

In Kerala, where the largest Christian community lived, they were known in Malayalam as "Mâr Thomas Kostyanikal", or Saint Thomas Christians. In India, the earliest Indian Christians were known by the honorific title "NasaGi Mapi7a".

In light these assertions, including a number of documentary records, the tradition of St. Thomas Christians lives on. For the scholars with their own exacting standards and expectations, the evidence may leave room for doubt and further authentication. But the evidence of early Christian communities in Asia Minor and farther west might leave as much room for similar skepticism. Archeological evidence would pose similar problems in that they are never enough to satisfy scholarly demands for certitude. Sometimes, ancient origins are concocted ex post facto with the aid of political, economic and military prowess that would permit questionable distortions of scant evidence, documentary or otherwise. In the case of Christian communities, west of Jerusalem, including India, Western skepticism that instinctively favors the West over the rest of the world, may obfuscate the evidence that are indeed exist. The evidence that may very well have existed once may have been obliterated by the zealous opponents of the Christian, especially outside of Western Europe with no government sanctioned religion, as was the case with the Roman Empire and the Roman Church. St. Thomas Christians of Kerala, India, have enjoyed protection and patronage but Kerala is but a small corner of the Indian subcontinent that was invaded and ruled by a series of temporary powers that be, including Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu. 

What conclusion, if any, might be drawn from This small study that scanned much of the globe, going back to some of the earliest "world maps"? When all is said and done, when dealing with communities that profess ancient origins, perhaps the most eloquent and persuasive evidence is the "tradition," often orally transmitted, that lives on today. Oral transmission, from the elder to the novice, often in secrecy; lies at the heart of a living tradition. Apostle Paul's admonition, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," may shed a light. This study points to the possibility that a study of history, historical inquiry, is always contemporary, informed and shaped by our understanding of our own times and places. If so, our historical understanding must change over time, across cultures. Only then, can we embrace multiple histories, for there must are multiple vantage points from which to understand the past, leading to the present.