mission · 55 · India
Eusebius says that Pantaenus, the teacher of Clement of Alexandria, went out as far as India and found the gospel of Matthew there in Hebrew letters, left by Bartholomew, who had preached among them before him (HE 5.10). The notice is early and oddly specific — it is not the shape a legend usually takes — but what a second-century Alexandrian meant by India is not certain, and may as easily have been southern Arabia or the Ethiopian coast as the subcontinent. It is kept as tradition, and the ambiguity is part of the record rather than a flaw in it.
To carry the gospel east of the empire.
A copy of Matthew in Hebrew, found there a century later — or so Pantaenus reported.