Page 77 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

64 THE BLESSING OF JESUS AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY
So Tobias rose up early the next day and taking Thaddaeus came to Abgar. Now as he
went up while the king's grandees were standing present, as soon as he entered a great
vision appeared to Abgar on the face of the Apostle Thaddaeus. And when Abgar saw
this, he did reverence to Thaddaeus, and wonder held all who were standing by, for they
had not seen the vision which appeared only to Abgar. And he asked Thaddaeus, 'Are
you of a truth a disciple of Jesus, the son of God, who said to me, "I will send you one of
my disciples who will heal you and give you life" ?' And Thaddaeus said, 'Since you have
had great faith in him who sent me, I was sent to you for this reason. And again, if you
believe in him, the request of your heart shall be to you as you believe'. And Abgar said
to him, 'I have had such belief in him as to have wished to take force and destroy the
Jews who crucified him, had I not been prevented from this by the Roman Empire',
And Thaddaeus said, 'Our Lord has fulfilled the will of his Father, and after fulfilling it
has been taken up to the Father'. And Abgar said to him, 'I too have believed on him
and on his Father'. And Thaddaeus said, 'For this cause I put my hand on you in his
name'. And when he did this immediately he was healed from the disease and the
suffering he had. And Abgar wondered that just as he had heard concerning Jesus so he
had in fact received through his disciple Thaddaeus, who cured him without drugs and
herbs, and not only him but also Abdus the son of Abdus who had the gout; for he too
came and fell at his feet and received his prayer at his hand, and was healed. And the
same Thaddaeus healed many of their fellow-citizens, performing many wonderful
deeds and preaching the word of God.
And after this Abgar said, 'O Thaddaeus, it is by the power of God that you do these
things, and we ourselves have wondered. But in addition to this I beg you, explain to me
the coming of Jesus, how it happened, and concerning his power, and by what power he
did these things of which I have heard'. And Thaddaeus said, 'I will now be silent, but
since I was sent to preach the word, summon for me tomorrow an assembly of all your
citizens, and I will preach before them'.... So Abgar commanded his citizens to assemble
in the morning and to hear the preaching of Thaddaeus, and after this he ordered him to
be given gold and plate. But he did not receive it, saying, 'If we have left our own things,
how shall we take those of others ?' These things were done in the 340th year.
The extract from Eusebius has been given at length, because it received
wide dissemination in the then civilized world. Upon the story of the evan-
gelization of Edessa rests largely the claim of the city to pre-eminence in
Christendom. Yet the authenticity of the story is doubtful; it may be re-
garded, indeed, as one of the most successful pious frauds of antiquity.
The central feature of the story is, of course, the correspondence with
Jesus—and particularly the letter of Jesus himself, for the letter of Abgar
may have been composed subsequently in order to provide the background
for the letter of Jesus. The appearance very shortly after their death of
'authoritative' documents ascribed to holy personages is a well-known
phenomenon in the Near East and elsewhere; in this way writings were
ascribed posthumously to, for example, Muhammad. This letter of Jesus
cannot, however, have been written by him, nor is it to be assigned to the
years immediately following his death. First, the earliest mention of the
incident is in the time of Eusebius, but the conversion to Christianity of an

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