Acts of Thomas
An apocryphal book recounting the missionary activities of the Apostle St Thomas. Gundaphorus, an Indian king, sent a merchant to Syria to obtain a skilled architect. The merchant met Jesus, who ...
Adam's Peak
Śrī Pada. Sacred mountain in Śri Lankā, at the top of which (a place of pilgrimage) a hollow shape is identified by adherents of the relevant religions as the footprint of Adam, the Buddha, Śiva, or ...
Addai
The traditional founder of the Church at Edessa. In Syriac tradition he was one of the 72 (or 70) disciples of Lk. 10: 1. According to the Doctrine of Addai he was sent by St Thomas the Apostle to ...
angelic
The Angelic Doctor another name for St Thomas Aquinas.the angelic salutation another name for the salutation.
Apocryphal New Testament
Christian writings not included in the authoritative canon of the NT which claim to be reminiscences of the life of the young Jesus and his miraculous powers, or supplements to the book of Acts about ...
Apostle
From the Greek apostolos, meaning one who is sent and enjoys the authority of the agent who instructs him. There was already a Jewish functionary, called a shaliach, who was trusted with the ...
Appearances of Christ After the Passion
Are variously reported in the Gospels, there being 11 different episodes in all. In pre-Iconoclastic art, only the Doubting of Thomas (Jn 20:24–29) and the Chairete (Christ's meeting with two ...
Art and the Bible.
Early Art. Stories from the Bible had become the subject of a developed narrative art by the middle of the third century CE in the synagogue discovered at Dura‐Europos, where ...
Bodleian Library
The library of Oxford University, one of six copyright libraries in the UK. The first library was founded in the 14th century, but was refounded by Sir Thomas Bodley (1545–1613), English scholar and ...
Book of Thomas
One of the Coptic documents found at Nag Hammadi in 1945–6. It professes to contain ‘secret words’ spoken by Jesus to St Thomas; its main themes are ethics and eschatology.
Christianity in China
According to legend, St Thomas the Apostle preached in China. The Sigan-Fu stone shows that missionaries from the Church of the East reached China in the 7th cent.; Syriac Christianity survived there ...
Church of the East
(or Assyrian Church of the East),often misleadingly called the Nestorian Church. The Church in Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq) was outside the Roman Empire and took no part in the great Councils, ...
Didymus
(the Gk. form of the Heb. ‘Thomas’, i.e. ‘twin’).An alternative name in Jn. 11: 16, 20: 24, 21: 2 for the Apostle Thomas.
Edessa
Hellenistic capital; cradle of Syriac Christianity, it rose to be Syria’s most important see before seizure by the Arabs c.640. Captured by the Byzantines in 944, it became the centre ...
Gospel of Thomas
An apocryphal Gospel of which a Coptic version was found at Nag Hammadi in 1945–6. The Greek original perhaps dates from c.150, the Coptic from c.350. It professes to be the work of St Thomas. It is ...
imitation
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery often said in mitigation of apparent borrowing of someone's ideas; proverbial saying, early 19th century.Imitation of Christ English name for Thomas à ...
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Christianity in
There are some ambiguous references to Christianity in India (and possibly Pakistan) in the 4th cent., but the earliest clear testimony is the assertion of Cosmas Indicopleustes that there were ...
invincible ignorance
In theological terms, ignorance which the person concerned does not have the means to overcome; the term is a translation of scholastic Latin ignorantia invinciblis, in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas ...
Jesus seminar
A group of American NT scholars who from 1985 attempted to assess the authenticity of Jesus' reported sayings in the four gospels and the Gospel of Thomas by means of voting with beads of different ...
John Duns Scotus
(c. 1265–1308),Scottish theologian and scholar. A profoundly influential figure in the Middle Ages, he was the first major theologian to defend the theory of the Immaculate Conception, and opposed St ...
