Among the faithful of the Assyrian Church of the East (ACOE) it is well-known fact that their traditional liturgical language—Syriac—is “the language Jesus spoke.” (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, after all, unlike Greek and Latin.) Among the faithful of the ACOE it is also a well-known fact that Jesus founded the church in Osrohene (Edessa) in Syria around the year 30 CE in his correspondence with King Abgar V Ukama. Well, actually the church was more formally established when the apostle Addai was sent to Edessa (either by the apostle Thomas or by Jesus himself) to cure Abgar of his disease after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected. At any rate, the ACOE was established by Jesus, through the apostles’ authority, immediately after Jesus’ earthly life. Among the points of pride the faithful of the ACOE tally to their church’s credit, this is among the most important. Jesus did not correspond with Tiberius Caesar, nor deliberately send an apostle to Rome; Peter took on the task of founding the church in Rome. But Jesus founded the church in Edessa.
Upon the first incision of the historian’s scalpel, complications and counterindications naturally seep from this story. Jesus almost certainly did not correspond with King Abgar V, and the story no doubt post-dates Jesus by at least a century, and probably much more. But instead of simply denying the plausibility of this particular myth, we will do better to try to reach an understanding of the possible meanings and functions of the myth for those who have believed, preserved and transmitted it.
Two more or less authorized versions of the story have survived. The shorter and earlier version is preserved by the fourth-century (CE) ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius relates the story in this way:
The manner of the narrative concerning Thaddeus is as follows. The divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became famous among all men because of his wonder-working power, and led to him myriads even of those who in foreign lands were far remote from Judaea, in the hope of healing from diseases and from all kinds of sufferings. In this way King Abgar, the celebrated monarch of the nations beyond the Euphrates, perishing from terrible suffering in his body, beyond human power to heal, when he heard much of the name of Jesus and of the miracles attested unanimously by all men, became his suppliant and sent to him by the bearer of a letter, asking to find relief from his disease. Jesus did not give heed to his request at the time, yet vouchsafed him a letter of his own, promising to send one of his disciples for the cure of his disease, and for the salvation alike of himself and of all his relations. Nor were the terms of his promise long in being fulfilled. After his resurrection from the dead and return into heaven, Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, was divinely moved to send to Edessa Thaddeus, who was himself reckoned among the number of the Seventy disciples, as herald and evangelist of the teaching about Christ, and through him all the terms of our Saviour’s promise received fulfilment. There is also documentary evidence of these things taken from the archives at Edessa which was at that time a capital city. At least, in the public documents there, which contain the things done in antiquity and at the time of Abgar, these things too are found preserved from that time to this; but there is nothing equal to hearing the letters themselves, which we have extracted from the archives… (Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiasticae I.13.1-5). [Here follow the text of the letters, the content of which Eusebius has already summarized, and the ostensible translation of a Syriac archival document describing Thaddeus’ activity in Edessa.]
The fifth-century (?) Teaching of Addai relates substantially the same story, with only a few differences. In fact, much of the language is very close if not identical. The most important addition to this story is that the scribe who delivers Abgar’s letter to Jesus and returns with Jesus’ reply is also an accomplished painter, and he paints a portrait of Jesus which he carries with the letter to King Abgar, who places the icon in an appropriate place in his palace.
What treasure is there to be found in this myth? The first thing that we should acknowledge about this myth is that it is a foundation myth; it is, in a sense, a creation story. It is not a cosmogonic myth, but rather the story of a foundation of a community. From Jesus’ communication with Abgar and the later fulfillment of that communiqué in the arrival and activity of Thaddeus/Addai, the Christian community of Eastern Syria takes its origin. It is not the creation of a world, but rather the creation of a Syrian Christian identity. Even so, the contours of the story shares in the framework of what Mircea Eliade termed archaic ontology. More specifically, the Abgar Legend is set in a foundational past. As has been mentioned, historians are wont to date the Abgar Legend to at least the third or fourth century CE. In fact, the legend is thought to actually refer to the reign of Abgar IX at the end of the second century CE under whose reign Christianity may have officially become the accepted religion of the Edessene kings. This acceptance of Christianity has then been retrojected back into the time of Jesus. The account in Eusebius ends with the statement, “These things happened in the year 340.” Likewise, the account in the Teaching of Addai places the events in the year 343 “of the Greeks.” Both of these dates point to dates based on the Seleucid ascension to power in ca. 312 BCE, and they therefore indicate a date of 29-33 CE. This exceedingly important detail bestows verisimilitude on the entire story by placing it in illud tempus. The formative age of the beginning in this story is not a primeval time of the ancestors, exactly, but it carries that function nevertheless. The story is deliberately placed in the lifetime of Jesus, but not only so; it is placed in the year of Jesus’ death and resurrection (when Jesus has come to Jerusalem just before being crucified), which could be seen as the most formative time possible for early Christianity.
If we are to take the Abgar Legend as a genuine myth, however, we will see that although it does function in this community-creating, foundational mode, it pulls against the reins of Eliade’s theories. “An object or an act becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats and archetype” in Eliade’s “primitive ontology.” “Thus,” writes Eliade, “reality is acquired solely through repetition or participation” (Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 (1954)] 34). When Eliade adduces the example of the mythicization of an historical person into a hero, he points to the assimilation of the historic person to the archetypal, mythical antecedent. This could be said to be the case with King Abgar, if indeed the historical referent is Abgar IX who is being assimilated to Abgar V in order to participate in the time of the beginning. But this is no mere “regression into a mythical time before Creation” (57), nor is it the “abolition of history” (53). If indeed the historical acceptance of Christianity under Abgar IX is injected into reign of Abgar V, we have a dense notion of time and history. First, we have a repetition of Abgars; Abgar the IX could be seen as a repetition of Abgar V. But that is not the focus of this story. The point is not that Abgar IX is assimilated to the mythic Abgar V and therefore becomes a mythicized hero. Abgar IX is not even mentioned. Neither is this story a repetition in the sense that the time of Abgar V is repeated in the fourth-century community of Edessa. Second, the story of Abgar could be understood as participation in the primordial time; by virtue of its very existence the Edessene Christian community partakes of the creational activity of Jesus, Abgar and Thaddeus/Addai. To interpret the story in this way, however, would be to ignore the mode of participation. This notion of participation is not ahistorical, but rather indicates participation as a historical cause of prior events. The Abgar Legend does not mythicize history; it historicizes myth. This is a myth in historical form.
We have to ask why, then, the Abgar Legend has set the coming of Christianity to Edessa in the formative time of Jesus’ last days and the birth of Christianity in the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection. The motivation seems fairly straightforward. In his letter to Jesus, Abgar attempts to persuade Jesus to come live in Edessa with him. The Gospels (particularly the Gospel of John) frequently mention the “murmuring” of “the Jews” against Jesus. Jesus’ contemporary Abgar has heard similar reports: “I heard that the Jews are mocking you, and wish to ill-treat you.” His solution is a change of location: “Now I have a city very small and venerable which is enough for both [of us]” (Eusebius, HE I.13.8-9). Until its fall to the Sassanid Persians in 609 and Muslim expansion in 638, Edessa was the premiere center of Christianity east of Antioch, with a vibrant literary and liturgical tradition. The Christian culture of Edessa is given a long pedigree in the Abgar Legend. But the Syriac tradition sat uncomfortably with the rest of Christianity. On the border with Parthia and later Persia, Edessa was far less Roman than the rest of early Christianity. The liturgical language was neither Greek nor Latin, but rather Syriac. Whereas most of Christianity fell within the Roman Empire, a great deal of its early literature partook of the utopian vision of Hellenistic culture to which the Romans were heir. Early Christian Greek literature, for instance, extends from France in the North and West, to Egypt in the South, to Antioch in the East. Syriac literature was far more localized, and Syriac-speaking Christianity was on the locative side of Jonathan Z. Smith’s utopian-locative pole.
In Smith’s critique of Eliade, he advocates more attention to the periphery and not simply to the center. To that end, Smith suggests a “dichotomy between a locative vision of the world (which emphasizes place) and a utopian vision of the world (using the term in its strict sense: the value of being in no place)” (Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Wobbling Pivot,” Journal of Religion 52.2 [1972] 101). It is not difficult to see how the Abgar Legend legitimizes a locative practice of Christianity. Although Jesus declines to take up Abgar’s offer and come to stay in Edessa, the description by Abgar of a “small and venerable” city reveals its importance as a center for Christian devotion. The addition of the mandylion (image of Christ) in the version from the Teaching of Addai is indicative here. We know from later sources that this particular relic was in fact in existence and venerated in Edessa at least by the fourth century CE. Early Christian religion was basically utopian. Like Alexander, wherever Christ was present, there was the Center. In Edessa, the mandylion (whether painted by Hannan the scribe or miraculously produced by Jesus himself) represented Christ’s presence, just like imperial icons and their religious progeny. The image of Christ thus provided the gravity for a sacred Center, a locativization of a utopian religion. And it accomplished this largely by means of a local myth. The mandylion is only in Edessa, sent from Jesus to King Abgar. This locative concern highlights the political concerns of the myth. As Carrasco argued, “[Smith’s] locative view…in which everything has value and even sacrality when it is in its place, is an imperial view of the world designed to ensure social and symbolic control on the part of the king and the capital” (Carrasco, "Star Gatherers and Wobbling Suns," History of Religions 26.3 [1987] 287-88). No doubt, a strong motivation for the mythographer of the Abgar Legend is its legitimation not only of the local Edessene cult, but also of the local monarchy. Abgar is presented as a friend of Christ, unlike the Jews, and implicitly unlike the Romans. In a time when the Roman Church was gathering primacy like a rolling snowball gathers snow, the Abgar legend emphasizes the local dynasty over the imperial system. But it is, nevertheless, not an anarchic story. It is extremely comfortable with the idea of monarchy, and serves to condone Abgar and his line through Jesus.
There is, nevertheless, a tension in this myth between the locative and the utopian. First, although Jesus does send an icon in his stead (in one version), Jesus does not actually come to Edessa but remains in Jerusalem, arguably the more central Sacred Center. We are left with a bit of a conundrum. Edessa is portrayed as the Sacred Center that it is, but it is a center on the periphery. Jesus remains in Jerusalem, but he sends an apostle (actually, an apostle sends an apostle). The authority for the Edessene locative Christian religion is twofold: first, from the interaction between Abgar and Jesus, and Jesus’ promise that he will send an apostle; second, from the actual founding of Christianity in Edessa through Thaddeus/Addai. Since Jesus does not come in person, there is always something missing from the locative schema, and Smith’s categories seem to falter. The religion may be utopian, but in Edessa, is it performed “in locative voice”?
In short, then, the Abgar Legend can be seen as a foundation myth that establishes a locative version of a generally utopian religion, and legitimates the political structures that are tied with the performance of the religion in Edessa. But to leave the matter in the past would be unfortunate. As Wendy Doniger hesitantly notes, “myths are remembered precisely because they are about the sorts of events in the past that are not bound to the past, that continue to be given meaning in the present” (Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Other Peoples’ Myths [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988] 31). The materially locative concerns of the Abgar Legend are now moot. Edessa is no longer a great bastion of Christianity in the East. It is has since been thoroughly Arabicized and Syriac Christianity in general has dwindled, and is in fact more populous outside of Syria. Of the churches that still prize the Abgar Legend and the apostle Thaddeus/Addai is the ACOE, which is headquartered (if anywhere) in Chicago. But that does not mean that the myth is no longer important. The faithful of the ACOE still employ the myth in particular in their “discussions” with Roman Catholics. The ACOE was founded thirty years before Peter founded the church in Rome. Sometimes the point in these discussions is that the church begins with Jesus’ correspondence with Abgar; sometimes the Church of the East begins with the preaching of Addai. Either way, the myth is employed to privilege the Church of the East over against the Roman Catholic Church, and the papal mythology in particular.
This last point leads us to some concluding remarks. As Doniger reminds us, “a myth is a part of a larger group of narratives, a mythology. A myth cannot function as a myth in isolation; it shares its themes, its cast of characters, even some of its events with other myths” (Doniger, Other Peoples’ Myths, 31). The Abgar Legend and the mythology of Edessene Christianity invite comparison with the mythologies of other forms of Christianity. Papal and Edessene mythologies share a basic cast of characters because they share the mythological terrain of the Bible. The Church of Rome has its foundation myth with Peter, and to a lesser extent Paul, as the founders; the Church of the East adopted a foundation myth with Jesus, and to a lesser extent Thaddeus/Addai (via Thomas), as the founders. The vitality of the Abgar myth lies precisely in that contrast. The myth is a story upon which the truth of the identity of the Church of the East is based (cf. Doniger, Other Peoples’ Myths, 35), and only with reference to this myth can talk of a mutual Christian identity with Roman Catholicism be negotiated. Syriac Christianity, despite its locative myths, is largely practiced outside of Syria, but even so the locative Abgar myth remains a source of identity-formation for members of the Church of the East.
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