A Stone Cross on a Chennai Hill: Did the Apostle Thomas Really Die in India?

On Parangimalai, St. Thomas Mount in Chennai, a stone cross stands behind the altar of a 16th-century Portuguese church. Tradition says the Apostle Thomas was killed with a lance there and buried by the sea at Mylapore. Did it happen? We go through the evidence in the old books: the Little Mount cave, the cross dug up in 1547 and later found to have a Pahlavi inscription, the San Thome tomb, and the relics said to have gone to Edessa. The case for draws on King Gondophares' coins, Ephrem, Ambrose, Gregory of Tours, the Roman sea trade, the Kerala Thomas Christians and Marco Polo. The case against is that nothing survives from Thomas's own time, the Acts of Thomas are legend, and later Portuguese accounts added to the story. As a counterpoint we briefly quote a modern sceptic, Ishwar Sharan, who argues the opposite. We present both sides and don't take one. Hosted by Jay, with Meera and Soons. Soons closes with her Court Report. Sources: A. E. Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas: An Inquiry, with a Critical Analysis of the Acta Thomae (London: David Nutt, 1905); Yule and Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo (3rd ed.); M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (1924); Barlow, The Story of Madras (1921); Penny, Fort St. George (1900). These are public domain in the US. Ishwar Sharan, The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple (Voice of India, 4th rev. ed., 2019) is a modern, in-copyright book, quoted briefly for commentary.