Thanks Karthik. I have heard that too. I doubt the authenticity of it though.

I have heard another story ..I am not sure of the authenticity though….
When 12 tribes of Isreal migrated to different places…one tribe landed in India…Now story goes that St Thomas came down to convert them.. and they contitute the present day orthodox…again ..I am not sure of the authenticity though..

Again convesrsion from chritsianity to islam is relatively easy but i guess the conversion from Paganism to Christainity would have been difficult..atleast in egypt

The first Christians in India were not Syrians fleeing from Roman persecutions as it is widely believed.
I thought I would provide a brief time line of Christianity in India to provide some more clarity around your comment.

St. Thomas came to India to Kerala (Crangannore) in AD 52 through established trade routes and setup seven churches by converting prominent Nambudiri families. This set of Christians were known as the St. Thomas Christians & were to become the foundation for Christianity in India. After St. Thomas’s death in Mylapore, the successor of St. Thomas kept ties with the eastern Church.

While the St.Thomas Christians welcomed the Christians from the middle east fleeing persecution, there is no evidence of a mass exodus till AD.342 when around 72 families from Edessa fled Syria to settle in Kerala. These families became the ancestors of the Knanaya Christians ( numbering around 300,000 today ).

The traditions of the St. Thomas Christians remained untouched till the 15th century when Portuguese started enforcing the conversion to Catholicism that you referred to in your comment. The St. Thomas Christians looking for leadership & to stave off the Vatican ordained the Bishop of Antioch as the leader of the Indian Church & that is how the term “Syrian Christian” took root.

Without delving into a lot of details, the original St. Thomas Christians rebelled against the Syrian Bishop after couple of years and broke away to form the “Syrian Orthodox Church” ordaining a local bishop in Kerala as the head of its church. The section that continued to support the Syrian Bishop became the Syrian Jacobite Church. The St. Thomas Christians who converted to Catholicism under the influence of Portuguese became the Syrian Catholic Christians. Anglican Missionaries in the late 1700′s converted some of the Orthodox Christians into the Protestant faith & these Christians became the CSI (Christians of South India ) & CNI (Christians of South India ) that currently follow the Anglican rites.

The reason Vatican does not seem to endorse the claims of St. Thomas as the founder of Indian Christianity is mainly due to the rebellions that the Indian Christians had against the Vatican during the 15th & 16th century.

Hope I have not bored you with a lot of History.

~Joe

On Syrian Christians, you must have heard right. the Coptic Christians in Greece were also persecuted by the Romans before Constantine’s famous embrace of Christianity.

If you visit Santhome Church in Mylapore, Chennai you will hear about St. Thomas’s visit to India. St. Thomas Mount is also named after the apostle.

There are some records of Pharoahs defeating Israelites. And given that Egypt is quite close to Jerusalem, jews must have lived in egypt as well. At present, only a few jews still live in Egypt. But there is no record of the famous story of Moses which is there in the Old Testament.