St. Thomas

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St. Thomas’ two skeletons (Mylapore,India; Ortona, Italy)

Can you name the only Saint who left behind his two skeletions?: Onewas the skeleton as a youth (Found in Mylapore, Chennai), and thesecond skeleton as an old man (Found in Ortona, Italy). St. Thomasdeserves a Bollywood movie to celebrate creationism.KalyanaramanFraudulent myth of the tomb of St Thomas by V. SundaramWednesday, 02 July, 2008 , 05:19 PM`Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse thanthey found it'— Charles Dickens (1812-1870)`What have been Christianity's fruits? — Superstition, bigotry andpersecution'.— James Madison (1751-1836)`The Christian god is cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust'.— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)The San ThomeCathedral on the beach

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A Rupees 50 Crore plus mega production in silver screen on St.Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, who is believed tohave spread Christian faith in Tamilnadu and Kerala, is under way.This film is going to be launched as a major project by CatholicArchdiocese on 3 July 2008. This proposed film will deal with the storyrelating to the journey of St. Thomas to Edessa, a town in Syria in 29A.D. His travel through Persia to Taxila in modern Afganistan andreturn to Jerusalem will also be covered. It has been reported that thelegend relating to his reaching Kerala in 52 A.D. and his subsequent20 years of preaching Christian faith in India will constitute the majorpart of the proposed film. St. Thomas's meeting with Thiruvalluvar isgoing to be yet another interesting part of the story.`The Myth of St. Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple' wasthoroughly exposed by Ishwar Sharan in his landmark book, firstpublished in 1991. The second revised edition of this book was broughtout by Voice of India, New Delhi. This interesting book brought outhow history was distorted by our foreign rulers to conceal theirmisdeeds and how even today these fraudulent myths are accepted asreal history by many in this country including the government itself.Long before Ishwar Sharan published his book 1991, one T K Josephwrote a number of books on St. Thomas in the early 1920s. He haddone years of research on the South Indian Tradition, and hadpresented his findings to a number of famous scholars of his time, whohad replied to him by post. For example, in 1926, Prof. E J. Rapson,who had written on St. Thomas in the Cambridge History of Indiawrote as follows to T K. Joseph: `I have read your letter carefully andmy impression is that you have given good reasons for doubting thehistorical truth of the story of St. Thomas in South India'. In 1927,Sylvain Levy, the renowned French Indologist and Scholar, wrote to TK Joseph `You are right in denying any historical value to local legendswhich have nothing to bring to their support. What is known from earlybooks points only to Northwest India, and no other place, for St.Thomas's apostolic activity and martyrdom. This is, of course, meretradition, not real history'. Likewise, in 1952, Prof. K S Latourette, theYale University Church Historian, and author of A History of theExpansion of Christianity wrote to T K Joseph and said, `The evidenceagainst St. Thomas in South India is very convincing'. The same viewwas repeated in 1953 by Father H.Heras S.J., the then Director of theHistorical Research Institute, St. Xavier's College, Bombay when hewrote to T K Joseph `I am fully convinced that the tomb of St. Thomashas never been in Mylapore. I have said that many times'.

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What is interesting to note is that T K Joseph also wrote to theEncyclopedia Britannica Editor at Chicago in 1950 pointing out theglaring errors in the article on St. Thomas in the Encyclopedia's 14thEdition in 1947, he was not successful in getting them corrected.Ishwar Sharan in his book referred to above, has clearly shown thatthe article on St. Thomas in that edition of Encyclopedia Britannica wasgrossly mistaken, not only in factual essentials but also in properinterpretation. In this context the words of Ishwar Sharan are worthquoting, `We can only conclude that the Encyclopedia Britannica'sEditors like their cooked up St. Thomas story and plan to keep it intactfor more editions to come'.The sketch of the originalKapaleeswarartemple on the Beachdestroyed by the Portuguese:Now what is the fraudulent myth about St. Thomas? We are told byCatholic `Historians' that Judas Thomas, a brother as well as anapostle of Jesus Christ landed in Malabar in 52 A.D., founded theSyrian Christian Church, and travelled to Tamilnadu for spreading theGOOD NEWS when he was killed by the `wily Brahmins' in 72 A.D. atthe Big Mount (now called St. Thomas Mount) near Madras at thebehest of a Hindu King named Mahadevan. The San Thome Cathedralon the Beach in Mylapore is built on the spot where the Saint issupposed to have been buried.As Sita Ram Goel puts it `This spot, like many others of the samespurious sort, has become a place of Christian pilgrimage not only forthe flock in India but also for the pious Christians from abroad'. He hadexamined the story of St. Thomas in 1986 when he wrote a book onthe Papacy during the Pope's visit to India. Sita Ram Goel haddiscovered that while some Christian historians doubted the very