Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] A Letter Written by Jesus anniversary post number 10 by Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth I sometimes get asked if Jesus ever wrote anything. Well, it depends whom you ask.
[00:00:16] As it turns out, we do have a couple of ancient writings claiming to be written by Jesus himself.
[00:00:22] Here is the most famous one that we still have that I blogged about in April 2022 as our anniversary post number 10.
[00:00:31] In an earlier post I talked about whether Jesus could read and came up with the following definite maybe that brought to mind a related Could Jesus write and do we have any ancient works that claim to be written by Him?
[00:00:46] Yes indeed.
[00:00:48] The most famous among scholars anyway is a one time famous correspondence between Jesus and a king who lived in Edessa in Syria named Abgar.
[00:00:58] I translated it for the book I published on all earliest Christian gospels with my colleague Zlatkoplasia called the Other Gospels. Here's what I say there about the letters. The one from Abgar to Jesus, then his response. At the end of the post I give my new translation of the two Jesus Correspondence with Abgar the apocryphal correspondence between Jesus and Abgar Uchama, which means the black King of Edessa in eastern Syria reigning from 4 BCE to 7 CE and 1350 CE, is mentioned in Eusebius, Church History 1:13 5.
[00:01:39] Eusebius claims to have found the letters in the archives of Edessa and to have translated them literally from their original Syriac into Greek.
[00:01:47] The first is a short letter from the king acknowledging Jesus miracle working powers and asking him to come to Edessa to heal him of his illness and at the same time to escape the animosity of the Jews in his homeland.
[00:02:01] In his reply, Jesus blesses Abgar for believing without seeing an allusion to John 20:29, but informs the king that he cannot come because he needs to fulfill his mission, that is by being crucified.
[00:02:18] After his ascension, however, he will send an apostle to heal the king.
[00:02:23] This is the first instance of an apocryphal letter written in Jesus name. For a later example, see the narrative of Joseph of Arimathea.
[00:02:32] He is never said to have written anything in our gospels apart from an episode in the apocryphal story of the woman taken in adultery found in later manuscripts of John 7:53 8, 11.
[00:02:45] These two letters lie at the heart of a widely known legend about Abgar, ruler of Edessa. According to the story known from both Eusebius and a Syriac source called the Doctrina Adai, after Jesus death, his apostle and brother Judas Thomas sent a colleague Adai named Thaddaeus by Eusebius, who heals Abgar and converts the city of Edessa to the Christian faith.
[00:03:11] There are grounds for thinking, however, that the fuller legendary narrative was composed after the apocryphal correspondence itself was known and circulated, and that it is roughly based based on the correspondence or on storytellers knowledge of a similar correspondence.
[00:03:26] For one thing, there is a basic inconsistency between the letter and the legend.
[00:03:31] The former indicates that Jesus will send an apostle to Abgar, the latter indicates that his disciple Judas Thomas does so.
[00:03:39] Moreover, we have an historical account from the end of the 4th century of the pilgrim Egeria, who goes to Edessa and reports what she finds there.
[00:03:48] She knows about the correspondence but betrays no knowledge of the legend.
[00:03:52] Travels of Egeria 1719 finally, we know that the correspondence did circulate independently in a separate manuscript tradition.
[00:04:02] In fact, citizens of Edessa in later times considered the correspondence significant for its magical powers as containing a letter from the Son of God himself.
[00:04:11] According to later tradition it was brought forward in times of war, miraculously scattering the armies, laying siege to the city.
[00:04:19] Thus Travels of Egeria. 18 eventually a copy of the correspondence was affixed to the city gates to ward off its enemies.
[00:04:28] This miraculous character of the correspondence was based in no small measure on the last line of Jesus letter, which is not found in Eusebius account, but is present both in the surviving Greek fragments of the letter and in the account found in the Doctrina Adai, where Jesus assures Abgar that your city will be blessed and the enemy will no longer prevail over it.
[00:04:51] This line itself can still be found in inscriptions, ostraca and amulets.
[00:04:57] The legend as a whole was in wide circulation.
[00:05:00] It is preserved in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Arabic, Persian and Slavonic.
[00:05:06] HJW drivers makes a complex but convincing argument that it was generated at the end of the third century among the proto Orthodox minority of Christians in eastern Syria to counter the religious claims of the Manichaeans for Mani, the founder of their religion.
[00:05:23] If the letters are earlier than the full legend, they may have arisen sometime in the early part of the third century, possibly in Syriac.
[00:05:31] Eusebius and the surviving Greek fragments of the Doctrina Adai appear to represent two different Greek translations of the correspondence. The translation here is of Eusebius from the edition of Schwartz, which is the earlier version.
[00:05:46] Jesus correspondence with abgar from Eusebius Ehi 13 copy of the letter written by the ruler Abgar to Jesus and sent by him to Jerusalem through his courier Ananias, the ruler Abgar. Uchama to Jesus, the good Savior who has appeared in the region of Jerusalem. Greetings. I have heard about you and your healings which you perform without medications or herbs.
[00:06:13] As the report indicates. You make the blind see again and the lame walk. You cleanse lepers, you cast out unclean spirits and demons. You heal the chronically sick, and you raise the dead.
[00:06:26] Having heard all these things about you, I have concluded one of two either you are God and do these things having descended from heaven, or you do them as the Son of God. For this reason, now I am writing you asking that you take the trouble to come to me and heal my illness. For I have heard that the Jews are murmuring against you and wish to harm you. My city is very small and esteemed, and it can accommodate us both.
[00:06:55] The reply sent by Jesus to the ruler Abgar through the courier Ananias.
[00:07:01] Blessed are you who have believed in me without seeing.
[00:07:04] For it is written about me that those who see me will not believe in me. And those who do not see me will believe and live.
[00:07:12] But concerning your request for me to come to you, I must accomplish everything I was sent here to do.
[00:07:18] And after accomplishing them, ascend to the one who sent me.
[00:07:23] After I have ascended, I will send you one of my disciples to heal your illness and to provide life both to you and to and to those who are with you.
