M.A. / This study investigates the connection between the biblical references to the Gospels in Actae Thoma, or the Apocryphal Acts of Judas Thomas, and the text of the Vetus Syria. The main objective is to verify whether the author of Actae Thoma was dependent on the Vetus Syria which was one of the largest and oldest Syriac text families containing the separate Gospels. An independent study in this regard has not yet been undertaken. Both Klijn and Burkitt touched on the biblical references in Actae Thoma but they did not attempt to investigate the references as the sole object of their research. The present study attempts to investigate all the biblical references in order to verify whether the author of Actae Thoma was indeed dependent on the Vetus Syria. The function of these references within the new context of Actae Thoma is also investigated. The value of the study lies in its contribution to our understanding of the Syriac textual history and of the function of these references. It seems that they were used to propagate the ideals of asceticism, to enhance the figure of the Apostle and bring the reader under the impression that he finds himself in a Biblical milieu. A basis for further study is also provided.

This study brings excerpts from the Acts of Thomas (Act 1.11-16 and Act 3.30-33) together with two Buddhist jātakas (Udaya Jātaka - #458 and Visavanta Jātaka -#69) to consider how stories might have been transmitted in the early centuries of the common era in a milieu of mercantile exchange on the Indian Ocean. The Acts of Thomas is a 3rd century CE Syriac Christian text concerned with the apostle Thomas proselytizing in India. The jātakas are popular didactic narratives with a pronounced oral dimension that purport to be accounts of the Buddha’s previous lives. Syriac Christians possessed knowledge about Indian religious practices linked to renunciation, and it is plausible that they adapted Buddhist jātakas to convey Christian ideas in the account of Thomas journeying to India and converting people there. Epigraphic evidence from the western Deccan in India attests to yavana, or Greek, patronage of Buddhist institutions in cosmopolitan settings where ideas and commodities circulated. Against the grain in scholarship on early Christianity that tends to privilege Latin and Greek sources, this project moves the lens of analysis eastward to consider Indian influence on early Christianity as expressed in the Acts of Thomas. A literary comparison of the texts under consideration with reference to the historical and cultural context of exchange reveals similar models of renunciant practices in Buddhism and Christianity that establishes new grounds for consideration of interconnectivity across ‘East’ and ‘West.’ / Religion