Indian Christianity Herstory retold through a redaction of the Mar Thoma Slihe purana and the legend of the Wandering Jew

Many eagle ride the wind currents above the Dharmaram. The seduction of Western Empirical Scientific method is to trap disect and measure the animal. The eastern style is to write the Windhover. So let me tell you herstory. Once upon a time Mar Thoma came to India. He was a mysterious carpenter who built seven and a half churches here and was a wonderworker who performed many miracles. He was put to death by a lance from which spilt water and blood and he was buried. But when they came to look for his body the tomb was empty. Some say his followers had taken his remains to the West. This much is revealed to us in the purana or Acts of St Thomas the Apostle. The Syrian Church fathers speak of his coming to Edessa where there too he mysteriously overcame death and still worked great wonders for the people. He appears later as a wanderer through Europe and later America known in one version (that of Michael Lewis in the Monk) as the Great Moghul of India who travels under a curse and can never settle in any one home for the foxes have their holes and the birds of the air their nests but he has nowhere to lay his head. Demons and ghosts fear him he does good wherever he wanders and is known by the fiery cross burning upon his forehead. So who is Mar Thoma Slihe, the Blessed Twin who is sent. In the Gospels he appears as Thomas Didymus, Hebrew and Greek for Twin the Twin. In Mark 9:1 Jesus states that there are some here present who will not taste of death until the Kingdom had come in power. This was taken to mean that some of the apostles may not die before the parousia (cf John 21: 21-23). It is an equally plausible reading that the prophecy is that Apostolic Churches cannot be completely destroyed if read with Matthew 16:18. The debate over the historicity of Mar Thoma appears to me linked to the more hierarchically important truth of purana. Mar Thoma Nasranis have taken criticisms of the historicity of the arrival of Mar Thoma to impute that they have no right to be Indian and Christian. This essay is an Apologia of the Eastern Lung of the Church prescinding the historico-critical debate relying rather on the gifts of the Eastern . The medium is the message. This essay is a Qurbana of Eastern gifts to honour the noble heritage of the Eastern Church.

Both the purana of Mar Thoma and the legend of the Wandering Jew highlight an essential theoandric truth, that if you believe in Christ you will not die, and if you die believing in him he will raise you up. The karmic cycle of Samsara from the Hindu legacy of the Mar Thoma Nasranis is a typology of the eternal life of the Spirit. The Wheel is replaced by the Mar Thoma Sliba. In terms of the myth of the eternal return. If the agricultural cycle happened only once it would be happenstance. It is because it is a repeatable cycle that the coming of the monsoons derive gravity become part of the theandric truth instead of floating away into dark space.

The herstory of Christians in India, the theandric story is one of persecution death and resurrection. The particular purana of Mar Thoma emphasizes the resurrection and the life of the spirit whereas in the Western Church the emphasis is on the agony in the garden and the way of the cross