Page 93 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

8o THE BLESSING OF JESUS AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY
were in this same town. But king Abgar grieved over him more than all—he and the
grandees of his kingdom. . . . And with great and exceeding honour he conveyed and
buried him like one of the grandees when he dies, and he placed him in a great sepulchre
of ornamental sculpture1 in which those of the house of Aryu, the ancestors of king
Abgar, were laid. . . . And all the people of the church . . . celebrated the commemora-
tion of his death from year to year.

Our narrator describes the conduct of Aggai and his colleagues as so
meritorious that 'even the priests of Nabu and Bel divided the honour with
them at all times'. Some years, however,

after the death of king Abgar there arose one of his rebellious sons who was not satisfied
with tranquillity, and he sent word to Aggai, as he was sitting in the church, 'Make me a
tiara of gold2 as you made for my fathers of old.' Aggai sent word to him, 'I will not
leave the ministry of Christ.. . and make the tiara of evil.' And when he saw that he did
not obey him he sent and broke his legs as he was sitting in the church and expounding.
And as he was dying he adjured Palut and 'Abshelama, 'Lay me and bury me in this
house for whose truth's sake, behold, I am dying. . . .' And there was a great and bitter
mourning in all the Church and in all the city, beyond the grief and mourning which
was in its community, like the mourning which there had been when the Apostle Addai
died.

This narrative was certainly composed long after the events it purports to
describe, even if we identify Abgar with King Abgar the Great. The state-
ment that it was necessary for the Christians of 'the country of the Assyrians',
presumably Adiabene, to practise their religion in secret seems to imply a
date after 226. With the emergence of the Sasanid dynasty at about that
time, and the growth and influence of the Zoroastrian priesthood it became
impossible for Christian evangelists to work in the Persian empire. That
Persians coming from the East to Roman territory should disguise themselves
as merchants suggests a still later date. Only with the treaty of Jovian in
363 were the frontiers between Persia and Byzantine Mesopotamia clearly
defined; previously they could be crossed with impunity. But the text in its
present form cannot be much later than the end of the fourth century or the
beginning of the fifth century. The Diatessaron, a harmonized, composite
version of the four Gospels, was, our writer maintains, in use at Edessa at
this time.3 The reference may be an interpolation. Nevertheless, the fact that
it appears without any words of condemnation is significant; this version of
the New Testament was superseded in official use at Edessa by the Separate
Gospels before, or at the very latest during, the lifetime of Bishop Rabbula
(died 435 or 436).'

1 See p. 18 above. The royal tomb may have in a text of c. 500. 2 See p. 18 above,
been in the neighbourhood of Abgar's castle, p. 3 Syriac, Evangelion daMehallete.
17 above. Harnack has suggested that SyriacWr- 4 See p. 93 below.
tha, castle, has been corrupted into 'Britannia',

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