St Thomas in Rome?

Keenir

Banned
What if, instead of St. Paul going to Rome to preach and die, and St. Thomas going to India to preach....what if St. Thomas had gone to Rome & St. Paul had gone to India?

thoughts?
 
What's the incentive? Paul's big asset was that he was a Roman citizen which gave him a certain amount of leeway.

Thomas would just be some provincial subject. There'd be nothing to stop any local governor having him clapped in chains and executed post haste.

As far as India goes your guess is as good as mine about how well Paul would have done. It's not as if Thomas had any real influence on doctrine or theology- he merely converted. Developments in India will pretty much go along with however Christianity develops in the Levant. If it never really spreads beyond it's initial beginnings due to Paul not being present to make it palatable to Gentiles, it might just be seen as another weird sect of Judaism.
 
What's the incentive? Paul's big asset was that he was a Roman citizen which gave him a certain amount of leeway.

One of his major qualities was that obviously, he could preach quite well in Koine/Greek.
And most probably he was not able to do so in Latin or other languages - perhaps the reason why he never went to Spain, as he had originally intended (seems as though only in Rome he was told that nobody would understand Greek in Spain).

How far could he have gone to the East with Greek?
Certainly still some distance, but of course not to India ...
 
One of his major qualities was that obviously, he could preach quite well in Koine/Greek.
And most probably he was not able to do so in Latin or other languages - perhaps the reason why he never went to Spain, as he had originally intended (seems as though only in Rome he was told that nobody would understand Greek in Spain).

How far could he have gone to the East with Greek?
Certainly still some distance, but of course not to India ...

Well, Thomas would have done most of his preaching in Hebrew- his initial converts were among the Jews of South India. Paul, however, was much more motivated about spreading his new religion to non Jews. Since it's highly unlikely that he's going to get executed in India, he might well have a longer life and time in which to learn Tamil.
 

Cook

Banned
Thomas would just be some provincial subject. There'd be nothing to stop any local governor having him clapped in chains and executed post haste.

Call me funny but I don’t see being beheaded (Saint Paul) or Crucified upside down (Saint Peter) as being good results.

I dodged Sunday school as much as possible, even as a little tacker it’s more fun fishing for Julgies in the river than hearing about old guys in togas; but wasn’t Saint Peter the key guy to go to Rome?

I assume we are talking about the historical perspective and not about to receive a sermon from the True Believers.
 
Well, Thomas would have done most of his preaching in Hebrew- his initial converts were among the Jews of South India. Paul, however, was much more motivated about spreading his new religion to non Jews. Since it's highly unlikely that he's going to get executed in India, he might well have a longer life and time in which to learn Tamil.

Floc, the OTL Saint Thomas Christians in India were just a division of the Jews who lived in the region and converted, or the majority of them were originary from other religions?
 
Floc, the OTL Saint Thomas Christians in India were just a division of the Jews who lived in the region and converted, or the majority of them were originary from other religions?

A minority were converted Jews, the majority would have most likely been converted Buddhists- at the time Buddhism in South India was going into it's final decline in the face of Hinduism. The details aren't very clear though.
 
Call me funny but I don’t see being beheaded (Saint Paul) or Crucified upside down (Saint Peter) as being good results.

No but at least Paul had quite a bit of time before he got executed. Traditionally Peter spent most of his time in Antioch before going to Rome much later.


I dodged Sunday school as much as possible, even as a little tacker it’s more fun fishing for Julgies in the river than hearing about old guys in togas; but wasn’t Saint Peter the key guy to go to Rome?

I assume we are talking about the historical perspective and not about to receive a sermon from the True Believers.

IIRC originally there was a bit of a split between Peter and Paul- Paul (as a Hellenised Jew) was very much in favour of actively spreading Christianity and adapting it to the Hellenised world while Peter accepted Gentiles but was still somewhat more in favour of having them adapt more towards Jewish Christian practice than the other way around.

There was certainly some rivalry between them-Paul talks about how Peter gave in to pressure to separate himself from the Gentile Christians at meals and such (in Galatians).

Essentially, though Peter may have gone to Rome it was still Paul who was the big mover and shaker, who adapted this Jewish sect to the Hellenised world.
 

Cook

Banned
I am rapidly being reminded why hunting Julgies in the river was so much fun.
I’ll upgrade to Marron now though.

Marron.jpg
 
One of his major qualities was that obviously, he could preach quite well in Koine/Greek.
And most probably he was not able to do so in Latin or other languages - perhaps the reason why he never went to Spain, as he had originally intended (seems as though only in Rome he was told that nobody would understand Greek in Spain).

Hmmm... Never heard THAT before. I always assumed that he preached in Latin in Rome. But that was an assumption, I can't point to any evidence.

OTOH, he was a Roman Citizen - and by birth, I think. While that certainly doesn't prove he spoke Latin, I rather imagine it suggests strongly that he did. Still, Latin would have been his fourth language (behind Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew).

Didn't he use 'Paul' in the Gentile community because it was Latin? If he didn't speak Latin, wouldn't he have picked something Greek?
 

Philip

Donor
perhaps the reason why he never went to Spain, as he had originally intended

There are some latter accounts that he did make it to Spain, but the reason normally given for him not going is his imprisonment/execution.

I suspect there would have been Greek speaking communities (Hellenized Jews?) within the larger cities of Iberia. Even if there were not, Paul had a history of taking assistants with him. Why not take a Latin speaker with him to Spain?

Hmmm... Never heard THAT before. I always assumed that he preached in Latin in Rome. But that was an assumption, I can't point to any evidence.

I would lean the other way. The Epistle to the Romans was written in Greek. If he could write Latin, I suspect Romans would have been written in Latin (assuming the Christian community in Rome was Latin speaking as well).
 
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