The Early Christian History of Edessa

The stage for the setting of Christianity in the Syriac-speaking East is the city of Edessa (modern-day ‘Urfa’ in southeastern Turkey), the capital of the small kingdom of Osrhoene. Located on a tributary of the mighty Euphrates, it laid on one of the greatest trade routes to the East that went through the ‘Great Syrian’ desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north.

The city already existed before the Seleucid period (336-323 B.C.) and was re-founded by the Greeks who gave it the name of ‘Edessa,’ or ‘Urhai’ in Syriac (the root of the Greek ‘Osrhoene’ and the Turkish ‘Urfa’). It was ruled by a series of monarchs of Arab origin and became the capital of an independent city-state sometime in 130 B.C. with the defeat of the Seleucids by the Parthians who pushed the Greeks back into Asia Minor, and later became a Roman colony in 214 A.D. By 258 or 259, it was already a part of the Persian Empire under the Sassanids.



King Abgar Ukkama (‘The Black’) reigned over the kingdom of Edessa from 4 B.C. to 50 A.D., however it is only with Abgar IX (179-214 A.D.) that there is any certainty concerning the reception of Christianity by the monarch. According to others, it is Abgar ‘VIII,’ since a coin of this monarch issued between 180 and 192 depicting his head shows a cross on his headdress.

The so-called Chronicle of Edessa, a sixth-century Syriac document originally penned in Estrangelo, narrates that in a flood which damaged the city of Edessa in 201 the Christian temple was destroyed.

The Doctrine of Addai

An important document narrating the establishment of Christianity in the Syriac-speaking East is the so-called Doctrine of Addai the Apostle, written in Syriac and come down to us in its final form sometime between 390 and 400, and which contents are certainly earlier than the date of its writing. This document chronicles the coming of Addai (Thaddaeus) believed to have been one of the Seventy-Two disciples (cf. Lk 10:1) sent by Thomas, one of the Twelve, to the small kingdom of Osrhoene or Edessa (in Syriac Urhai), some 160 miles east of Antioch. The Doctrine of Addai recovers the letter of Abgar to Jesus and the Lord’s response, promising eternal life to the king and the inhabitants of his suzerain kingdom for believing in Christ’s name, and also that the enemies of the realm should not prevail over it. According to the tradition, the apostle Addai came to Edessa in the year 343 of the Greeks (32 A.D.),

…in the reign of our master Tiberius, the Roman Emperor, in the reign of king Abgar, the son of king Ma’nu in the month of October, and early on the twelfth day, Abgar Ukkama sent Marihad and Shamshagram, chieftains and honored men of the kingdom, and with them Hannan, the faithful archivist, down to the city called Elev-theropolis but in Aramaic Beth Gubrin, to the Venerable Sabinus, son of Eustorgius, a representative of our master, the emperor, he who ruled over Syria and over Phoenicia and over the whole country of Mesopotamia.

The emissaries are sent to the Holy City to see Christ and record his deeds to Abgar, and

…when Marihab, Shamshagram and Hannan, the archivist, saw these men, they too, went with them to Jerusalem, they saw many men coming from far away to see Christ, because his wonders had been rumored to distant countries. And when Marihab, Shamshagram and Hannan, the archivist, saw these men, they too, went with them to Jerusalem. And when they came to Jerusalem they saw Christ and they rejoiced together with the crowd that was attached to him, and they saw the Jews, too, standing in groups, and meditating on what they out to do with him, because they were puzzled, seeing numbers of their own people ready to profess him, and they stayed in Jerusalem ten days. And Hannan, the archivist, wrote down what he, himself, saw of the doing of Christ, besides all the rest that he had done, before their coming to Jerusalem. And they set out and came to Edessa.

The emissaries of the Edessene king continue to recount all that they saw Christ do and say in the Holy City. When the king had heard about all of the marvelous deeds of Christ he sent them on another journey to Jerusalem:

And when king Abgar heard this, he was much surprised and astonished, he and his great men who stood before him. And Abgar said to them: ‘These mighty acts are not of man, but of God because nobody but God only can call the dead to life again.’ And Abgar desired to set out to Palestine in order to see with his own eyes all the doing of Christ. But as he could not go over the land of the Romans, not being his possession, and as he did not want to be the cause of bitter enmity, he wrote a letter and sent it to Christ by means of the hand of Hannan, the archivist, and he set out from Edessa on the 14th day of Adar (March) and he entered into Jerusalem on the 12th day of Nisan (April) on the fourth day of the week. And he found Christ in the house of Gemaliel, the high priest of the Jews…

The primitive church historian Eusebius bishop of Caesarea (ca. 264-340) narrates what many scholars have called the ‘legendary’ letter of Abgar V, king of Edessa, to Christ seeking healing from his illness. The letter is quoted in Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica (I, 13:5-10) and preserves the Greek recension of the letters. Thus, Eusebius’ Greek source and the Syriac Doctrine of Addai, constitute the twofold source of the letters of Abgar and Christ. The first of the letters is that of Abgar to Jesus:

Abgar Ukkama, the Toparch, to Jesus the good Savior who has appeared in the district of Jerusalem, greeting. I have heard concerning you and your cures, how they are accomplished by you without drugs and herbs. For, as the story goes, you make the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, and you cleanse lepers, and cast out unclean spirits and demons, and you cure those who are tortured by long disease and you raise dead men. And when I heard all these things concerning you I decided that it is one of the two, either that you are God, and came down from heaven to do these things, or are a Son of God for doing these things. For this reason I write to beg you to hasten to me and to heal the suffering which I have. Moreover, I heard that the Jews are mocking you, and wish to ill-treat you. Now I have a city very small and venerable which is enough for both.

Jesus then replies to Abgar by way of the king’s emissary and scribe Hannan (‘Ananias’ in the Greek form):

Blessed are you who did believe in me not having seen me, for it is written concerning me that those who have seen me will not believe in me, and that those have not seen me will believe and live. Now concerning what you wrote to me, to come to you, I must first complete here all which I was sent, and after thus completing it be taken up to him who sent me, and when I have been taken up, I will send to you one of my disciples to heal your suffering and give life to you and those with you.

Eusebius of Caesarea is said to have visited Edessa sometime in 323, where he is alleged to have found the records of the letters in Syriac and which he most probably made use of as sources for his history of the events. He states with regard to the Abgar who heard of the preaching and divine healings wrought through Christ, “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.”

The Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius then continues to narrate the outcome of the letters and the mission of Addai, who is identified with Thaddeus one of the Twelve in the Syriac version (cf. Mt 10:3) and one of the Seventy-Two in the Eusebian tradition, making use of a Syriac source:

Now after the ascension of Jesus, Judas who was also Thomas, sent Thaddaeus to him as an Apostle, being one of the Seventy, and he came and stayed with Tobias the son of Tobias. Now when news of him was heard, it was reported to Abgar, ‘An Apostle of Jesus has come here, as he wrote to you.’ So Thaddaeus began in the power of God to heal every disease and weakness so that all marveled.

And when Abgar heard the great and wonderful deeds that he was doing, and how he was working cures, he began to suspect that this was he of whom Jesus had written saying, ‘When I have been taken up, I will send to you one of my disciples who will heal your suffering.’ So he summoned Tobias, with whom Thaddaeus was staying, and said, ‘I hear that certain man of power has come and is staying at your house. Bring him to me.’ Tobias came to Thaddaues and said to him, ‘The toparch Abgar summed me and bade me bring you to him in order to heal him.’ And Thaddaeus said, ‘I will go up since I have been miraculously sent to him.’ These things were done in the 340th year [29 A.D.]

It is clear from the tradition that Addai was a Jew and that he had close ties with other Jews residing at Edessa. The fact also remains that there existed other nations (‘Gentiles’) in the small kingdom, and the vast majority held on to the old Assyro-Babylonian religion of their forefathers, with minimal influences from the Hellenic culture. The same is true of the city of Harran near Edessa, which enjoys close ties to the Abrahamic tradition; it too enjoyed pagan religion and cult. Syriac was the spoken and written language of the kingdom, as the many tombstone and monumental inscriptions (some of which pre-date the Christian era) indicate.

The multi-cultural city of Edessa was thus early-on evangelized by apostles from Jerusalem, and the existence of Jews in the city provided the crucible for the growth of the faith of Christ, and the existence of merchants and silk-traders provided the personnel for the apostolic work and the spreading of the faith. According to L. Tang: “Even in the country of Assyrians, new converts taught their sons and daughters of their own people and built houses of prayers there secretly, through the danger of fire-worshippers and the adorers of water.”

Even though the letters were condemned as ‘apocryphal’ in the West by Pope Gelasius in 494, the Syriac-speaking churches of the East certainly considered them to be founded upon historical truth. The famed theologian St. Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306-373) refers to the Abgar tradition, though not necessarily to the letters themselves, in his Testament: “Blessed is the town in which you dwell, Edessa, mother of the wise; by the living mouth of the Son has it been blessed by the hand of his disciple. That blessing will dwell in it until the holy one reveals himself.”

The portrait of Christ which Ananias is reported as having brought back with him to Edessa was known to have been brought to Constantinople from Edessa in 944 A.D. However, the letters are referred to in a letter addressed to Augustine of Hippo in 429, and are also known to Jacob of Serug (451-521) and in the chronicle of Joshua the Stylite – which refers to the event of warding off the Persian king Kawad from besieging Edessa in 503 A.D.