Page 89 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

76 THE BLESSING OF JESUS AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY
How long before the time of Procopius was the letter of Jesus inscribed on
the gate of Edessa? It was not there (as we have seen) in the time of St.
Ephraim. Nor can it have been inscribed before 378. The author of the so-
called Romance of Julian was familiar with the topography of Edessa,1 and
he has a curious account of a blessing sent to the city by Constantine the
Great, but removed by the Arian Emperor Valens who died in that year. He
does not mention the letter on the gate. The inscription was not on the wall
during the visit of Egeria, probably in the middle of the fifth century. We
may therefore assign its appearance in writing on the city gate to the second
half of the fifth century.

The 'letter of Jesus' had acquired the function of a palladium to protect
the city of Edessa from her enemies. In time a rival claimant appeared, the
portrait of Jesus. In the Syriac Doctrine of Added, which cannot have been
composed, at least in its present form, before about 400, (though its contents
may, in fact, be earlier) we are told that two 'chiefs and honoured men' of the
court, together with Hannan, Abgar's secretary, visited the Roman governor
in Syria. Thence they went to Jerusalem. Hannan saw Jesus and wrote down
his Acts; on returning to Edessa he related to Abgar all that he had witnessed.
Abgar sent him back to Jerusalem with a letter to Jesus couched in language
closely resembling that of the letter in Eusebius. The account of this second
journey of Hannan to Jerusalem has an artificial ring. He left Edessa on 14
Adar (the day of the Jewish festival of Purim, one month before the Passover),
and found Jesus at Jerusalem on Wednesday 12 Nisan (three days before the
Passover) at the house of Gamaliel the High Priest.2 Jesus made a reply to
the letter of Abgar—orally, not in writing. Hannan, however, was also the
royal painter, and

he took and painted a portrait of Jesus in choice paints, and brought it with him to his
lord king Abgar. And when king Abgar saw that portrait he received it with great joy
and placed it with great honour in one of the rooms of his palace. And Hannan the secre-
tary3 related to him all that he had heard from Jesus, his words being set down in writing.

The text goes on to relate the subsequent arrival at Edessa of Addai, his works
of healing, and the evangelization of the city with the approval of Abgar.4
In the Doctrine of Added, that is, in the early fifth century, the portrait has
a comparatively minor role. But an analysis of later allusions to the portrait

1 The Jews of Edessa, alleges the author of no comment. For the interval of three days see
the Romance, offered to open to Julian the p. 79 below on the death of Addai; on the
South gate of the city—the appropriate gate, significance of this period of time see the
as he was on his way to Harran; and Jovian, on present writer's The Hebrew Passover, 1963,
his return from Persia, entered Edessa, it 144. The implicit reference to Purim may
is claimed, through the East gate. suggest Jewish influence in this narrative.
2 The improbability of Hannan's arrival at 3 Syriac, tabular a, see p. 20 above.
Jerusalem just before the Crucifixion requires 4 See pp. 78 f. below.

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