http://voi.org/nsrajaram/column-nsrajaram/riseandfallofindology-i/page-4.html
We next pass into the realm of myth, beginning with stories of St. Thomas
bringing Christianity to India and of his martyrdom in the Mylapore area of
Chennai (Madras). This Thomas, according to texts such as *Acts of Thomas*and
the Gnostic *Gospel of Thomas* was the twin brother of Jesus. The Thomas
myth is not accepted by the Vatican because of a doctrinal problem: Jesus as
the Only Son of God cannot possibly have a twin brother. (Greek for Thomas
is Dydimus, which means twin brother.) There is a community of Christians in
South India that identifies itself as St. Thomas Christians. They believe
that their ancestors were blessed by Apostle Thomas in 52 CE who preached
from the Bible. This has no historical basis.
The Portuguese missionaries who came to India in the 16th century
found that they could not do without a local martyr and created the Myth of
St. Thomas claiming that he was martyred in India. They gave no explanation
as to how they discovered it more than a thousand years later. (Marco Polo
is supposed to have mentioned it but there is no authentic manuscript that
can be attributed to him.) There is even a Mount of St. Thomas in Mylapore
in Chennai with a tomb that is supposed to contain his martyred remains. But
the problem is there are several such memorials spread across Persia, Acre
(Turkey) and a few other places dating to different times, all laying claim
to be the place where Apostle Thomas was martyred and buried.
After examining all the evidence, the late Father Heras, former Director of
the Historical Research Institute, St. Xavier's College, Bombay, said in
1953 that he was convinced that the tomb of St. Thomas was not in Mylapore.
He had earlier said, quite emphatically in *The Aravidu Dynasty of
Vijayanagar*, that the Portuguese account of their discovery of some relics
was "a most barefaced imposture [with] all elements of a forgery."
This is not the end of the story, for while denying the myth the
Vatican wants to have it both ways. On September 27, 2006, Pope
Benedict XVI<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI> gave
a speech at St. Peter's in Rome in which he recalled an ancient tradition
claiming that Thomas first evangelized Syria and Persia, then went on to
Western India, from where Christianity also reached Southern India Syrian
Christians derive status within the caste system from the tradition that
they are converted Namboothiris (Brahmins), who were allegedly evangelized
by St. Thomas after he allegedly landed in Kerala in AD 52.
There are serious problems with this theory: the Namboothiris
started settling in Kerala only from the sixth century onwards, which means
they did not exist at the time the alleged St. Thomas allegedly came to
Kerala. So we have a possibly non-existent apostle preaching in the first
century from a text, the New Testament, dating to the 4th century, to a
people, the Nambootharies who settled in the sixth century or later. In
reality the Pope's original statement at St. Peter's, reflected the
geography of the *Acts of Thomas*, i.e. Syria, Parthia (Persia/Iran) and
Gandhara (Afghanistan/northwest Pakistan)- all far removed from Kerala in
the southernmost tip of India.
