Jesus wrote me a letter…

#59: “Jesus wrote me a letter…” by Brendon Wahlberg
“Give me a ticket for an aeroplane, Ain't got time to take a fast train, Lonely days are gone, I'ma goin' home, Jesus just wrote me a letter. Well he wrote me a letter, Told me he couldn't live without me no more, Listen mister can't you see I gotta get back to my Jesus once more, anyway…”
Oh, sorry, I do get carried away sometimes. Those are just some lyrics by Wayne Carson Thompson, from a song “The Letter”, with just a few changes for fun. I added Jesus in there because of this month’s topic. Did you know that there is an old Christian legend that Jesus once wrote a letter to a King, and that it was saved for posterity? Really: if you look at the Christian Apocrypha, you’ll find the story of how King Abgar V of Edessa wrote a letter to Jesus, and Jesus wrote back. This is remarkable because as far as we know, Jesus did not leave anything behind that he personally wrote. Jesus left so few actual traces on this earth that the scanty historical record allows some extreme skeptics to even question whether Jesus actually existed, or whether the gospel writers made him up! So an actual letter claiming to be written by Jesus would be a big deal indeed.
But I won’t string you along. Although many people in the time of early Roman Christianity and the Middle ages believed in this letter wholeheartedly, today we know it to be inauthentic. Today we merely call it the “Legend of Christ and Abgar.” The story goes like this…
Edessa was a city in Mespotamia (now modern Turkey). Around the year 200CE, King Abgar IX and the royal family of Edessa converted to Christianity. But no one is sure how long before that Christianity came to Edessa, and how it got there. The famous historian of the early church, Eusebius, thought he had the answer. While writing his book, “History of the Church” around 325CE, Eusebius collected and preserved every document and scrap of information he could find about the beginnings of Christianity. We are grateful to him for quoting and including so many things that would otherwise be lost now. But he was extremely enthusiastic about his faith, and it seems he could be taken in by a fake set of letters (which he found in the Records Office at Edessa and translated from Syriac), simply because it was so exciting to him to have letters to and from Jesus among his source documents.
In Book 1 of his history, Eusebius says that because of Jesus’ power to cure diseases, the Lord became famous far and wide, excitedly talked about in foreign lands very remote from Judea. One day, the King of Mesopotamia, Abgar, who was dying of an incurable disease, heard Jesus mentioned continually as a miraculous healer. Abgar sent the following letter by carrier to Jesus.
“Abgar Uchama the Toparch to Jesus, who has appeared as a gracious savior in the region of Jerusalem – greeting. I have heard about you and the cures you perform without drugs or herbs. If report is true, you make the blind see again and the lame walk about; you cleanse lepers, expel unclean spirits and demons, cure those suffering from chronic and painful diseases, and raise the dead. When I heard all this about you, I concluded that one of two things must be true – either you are God and came down from Heaven to do these things, or you are God’s Son doing them. Accordingly I am writing to beg you to come to me, whatever the inconvenience, and cure the disorder from which I suffer. I may add that I understand the Jews are treating you with contempt and desire to injure you: my city is very small, but highly esteemed, adequate for both of us.”
Jesus sent Abgar the following reply: “Happy are you who believed in me without having seen me! For it is written of me that those who have seen me will not believe in me, and that those who have not seen will believe and live. As to your request that I should come to you, I must complete all that I was sent to do here, and on completing it must at once be taken up to the One who sent me. When I have been taken up I will send you one of my disciples to cure your disorder and bring life to you and those with you.”
Now, during his ministry, Jesus had chosen about seventy disciples to carry his word for him. (Luke 10:1) After Jesus was taken up to Heaven, one of the seventy, named Thaddeus, was chosen to fulfill Jesus’ promise to Abgar. Thaddeus went to Edessa, armed with the power to cure diseases. Thaddeus told Abgar that “in proportion to your belief shall the prayers of your heart be granted.” Laying hands on the King, Thaddeus instantly cured him. Then Thaddeus preached the gospel to all the people of Edessa.
Eusebius wasn’t the only writer to report these events. Another document, the “Teaching of Addai (Thaddeus)”, written around 400CE, retells the legend and elaborates on it. This was about 75 years after Eusebius, remember, so it is understandable that the legend would have grown in the telling. In the new version, another line is added to the end of Jesus’ letter. It reads as follows: “And your city shall be blessed forever, and the enemy shall never overcome it.” This addition made the people of Edessa believe for a long time that they were protected by God from any conquerors…until finally they were conquered during the crusades.
Another new addition to the legend was the story of how the courier, who went back and forth between Jesus and Abgar, happened to be a painter. He had been asked to paint a portrait of Jesus, which then became the very first Icon of the Lord. But the legend did not stop growing there. Eventually, it was said that the portrait of Jesus was not painted by a person, but instead that Jesus had pressed a cloth to his face and transferred his image to it. This Icon, which brings to mind the more famous Shroud of Turin, vanished during the crusades.
Okay, so how do we know that the letter of Jesus to Abgar is inauthentic? The text of the letter seems to be taken from a couple of places in the gospels. In fact, the letter to Abgar actually quotes a harmony of the gospels (known as the “Diatessaron”), written by a second century Christian named Tatian. What is a harmony of the gospels? It is well known that among the four gospels, there are many small differences. A harmony is when all four gospels are combined into one and revised so that those differences are erased. Tatian’s harmony was written until around 175CE, so a letter from Jesus, written around 30CE, should not be quoting that gospel harmony.
So what really happened? I suppose that the Christianity came to Edessa, and that someone invented the legend in order to make Edessa more special. Possibly Abgar IX, converting in 200CE, inspired a story about the earlier Abgar V, and the letters were created as proof, sometime between 175CE (writing of the “Diatessaron”) and 325CE (Eusebius quotes the letters). The letters became very popular as a legend, which grew until it was retold and expanded around 400CE (writing of “Teaching of Addai”). The letters were copied and translated many times, used in liturgies, written on talismans and amulets, and even carved on stone and metal. Abgar was made a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
What is the moral of our story, besides the obvious lesson about gullible historians? Well, I think there is something deeper to be understood here. The letter to Abgar says: “Happy are you who believed in me without having seen me! For it is written of me that those who have seen me will not believe in me, and that those who have not seen will believe and live.” If you think about it, every Christian alive today is like Abgar. We are born, we grow up, and how do we learn anything about Jesus? We can’t go to Judea and see Jesus, even if we have time to take a fast train. We can’t even write him a letter. We have come onto the scene two thousand years too late. All we have that we can see is a book of ancient writings and what our parents and teachers tell us. Our only choice is to believe in him without having seen him. Whether or not the letter of Jesus was authentic, which is doubtful, it still has an important message to impart to us – happy are we, blessed are we, who have believed in Jesus without having seen him. Ours is the gift of life through him.