From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

To this appealing letter of the King the Savior replied:

Blessed art thou who hast believed in me without having seen me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen me will not believe in me and that they who have not seen will believe and be saved. But in regard to what thou hast written me, that I should come to thee, it is necessary for me to fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I have fulfilled them thus to be taken up again to him that sent me. But after I have been taken up I will send to thee one of my disciples, that he may heal thy disease and give salvation to thee and to those who are with thee.[301]

The letter of Our Lord, as given by Eusebius, was subsequently amplified as is seen in an apocryphal work known as “The Doctrine of Addai.” I refer to it because of the concluding sentence of the letter in which Jesus is made to say to Abgar regarding Edessa, “And thy city shall be blessed and the enemy shall not prevail against it for ever.”

It was because of this promise of Our Lord, that His letter to Abgar became doubly precious in the eyes of the King and of his people. For they regarded it thenceforward as a palladium of their beloved city and felt sure that they would never again be at the mercy of their foes.

Chosroes, resolved to show to the Edessenes the futility of the promise on which they so confidently relied, and determined at the same time to prove the falsity of the Savior’s words, proceeded in the year 544 to lay siege to the place. The besieging Persians pushed their work so vigorously that the inhabitants of the beleaguered city were almost in despair. In this extremity, according to the legend, the King of Edessa went to the gate with the letter of Our Lord and, unfolding it and holding it aloft, reminded the Savior of His promise, that no enemy should ever prevail against it. Immediately an impenetrable darkness enveloped the foe and prevented it from advancing further.

During several months Chosroes blockaded the city without, however, being able to effect an entrance. In despair the discomfited and exasperated Chosroes tried to reduce the city to submission by cutting off its water supply. But no sooner did he achieve his purpose than a number of magnificent fountains issued forth within the city and his nefarious design was frustrated. The Persians were thus compelled to raise the siege.

But this was not the only occasion on which the city was thus rescued from its foes. For every time thereafter, the story continues, that the Edessenes were beset by their enemies, it sufficed to produce the letter of the Savior and read it before their enemies to compel them to withdraw.

I have selected this as a type—probably the most beautiful type—of many similar legends that were long current in the Orient. Indeed, not a few of them retain their old-time popularity not only in the East but in the West as well. This is particularly true respecting the legend of Abgar. But what will appear more remarkable to readers of our critical and skeptical age, is that in every century of the Church, from the third to the nineteenth, there have been eminent scholars who have maintained the authenticity of the correspondence between King Abgar and Our Lord. Among them it suffices to mention such distinguished authorities as Tillemont in the seventeenth century, Assemani in the eighteenth and Rinck, Cave, and Cureton in the nineteenth.

It was because of the belief in the genuineness of the letter of Our Lord to King Abgar that it was during the Middle Ages regarded as a panacea for disease and as an amulet or talisman against all kinds of dangers—“against lightning and hail and perils by sea and land, by day and by night, and in dark places.”[302] It was doubtless because of this widespread belief in the phylacteric efficiency of this letter that the custom prevailed in England as late as the last century, and traces of it still exist to-day, for people to hang up a copy of the letter in their homes.[303]

Interesting, however, as is the correspondence in question, it is now pronounced by the general consensus of scholars to be apocryphal and must, therefore, be relegated to the limbo of many similar fictions with which the mythopœic East has in every age supplied the credulous and wonder-loving West.