Image: Icon of King Abgar, tenth century, St. Catherine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai. Abgar is depicted holding the "Mandylion" or "Image of Edessa," a piece of cloth upon which supposedly the face of Christ appeared.
I have another installment to the series on Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: Book 1, chapter 13: Listen here.
Notes and Commentary:
In this chapter Eusebius relays a tradition about the
ministry of Thaddaeus [described in EH 1.12 as one of the seventy apostles of
Luke 10, rather than one of the twelve as in Matthew 10:3]. This ministry
involves taking the gospel to King Abgar, “the celebrated monarch of the
nations beyond the Euphrates.”
Eusebius claims to have taken this information from Syriac documents
taken from the archives of Edessa.
They include a letter sent by Abgar to Jesus asking him for
healing, through the courier Ananias and a reply letter from Jesus by the same
courier in which he promised to send to Abgar one of his disciples after he is “taken
up.” This material is clearly legendary, though Eusebius accepts it as
authentic. If authentic it would be the only extant written material from
Jesus.
It also includes a report that after Christ’s ascension,
Judas/Thomas sent Thaddaeus to Abgar. Thaddaeus heals Abgar and other of this
subjects and preaches to them. The report ends by saying this happened in the 340th
year. A note from Lake explains this means the 340th year of the
Edessene era, which began in 310 BC, and which would date Thaddaeus’s mission
as taking place in AD 30.
JTR
1 comment:
Hi, where is the note from Lake as the Hendrickson translation of EC states “340 AD”(which I figured was a mistake or an admonition the story somehow was later and had something to do with Agbarus VIII and Ephraim’s influence from a later period when Edessa was converted, not during the actual time of Jesus. Thanks!
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