King of Kings: Abgar and Jesus

March 4, 2026 ~ Vincent ~ Leave a comment

The ancient world was shaped by kings; men whose words were law and whose birthrights were governance. Their will, for good or ill, shaped the world. Stories of such kings converting to Christianity have a special place in Christian legend, as it often resulted in an overwhelming conversion of a nation afterwards. This post details just one such legend.

I used to think that Ethiopia was the first Christian kingdom, mostly because I knew it managed to beat Rome to the punch. Imagine my surprise when I picked up Eusibius’s Church History and came across the story of a king that converted before that: King Abgar V of Edessa (aka the Abgar V of the Kingdom of Osreone or Abgar the Black).

It’s worth mentioning that just because something appears in Eusebius’s history doesn’t mean it’s above suspicion. Eusebius may be the Father of Church History, but a little fact checking is merited. So much of history is collecting stories. Some stories are compelling and have a lot of evidence supporting them, while others are a little more speculative. In the case of King Abgar V, we’re definitely in speculative territory. It’s also worth noting that even double checking Eusibius’s work is a challenge in this instance. Sources about the Kingdom of Osreone and goings on in its capital, Edessa, are rare before the third century. Osreone was a small border kingdom that was gobbled up by Rome in the third century, and pre-Roman records weren’t well preserved. A lot of primary sources aren’t available in English, and the secondary sources are often less than thorough. It was a genuine struggle finding reliable ancient sources on Abgar and Edessa, but I think I managed to find enough to help clarify what is (and isn’t) likely to be true.

In any case, Eusebius reports that King Abgar the V of Edessa holds the unique honor of being the first Christian king. Not only was he the first, but he was so interested in Jesus that he actually wrote a letter to him before he died on the cross! To verify this claim, Eusebius travelled to the royal records in Edessa and found copies of the letter that Abgar wrote to Jesus and the response that Jesus sent back. He even translated them and copied them for his readers! It’s hard to imagine that Eusebius was lying about the existence of these documents. When he shares the content of other documents in his major work Church History, it’s incredibly accurate. For example, in chapter three, he cites letters between a magistrate named Pliny the Younger to the Roman Emperor Trajan regarding what to do with Christian citizens. When compared to Pliny’s records (Epistles 10.96-97), Eusebius’s work is almost verbatim. Again, in chapter four, he accurately reproduces the full account of the Martyrdom of Polycarp. Even his consistent citation of imperial edicts is spot on with independent accounts. Whether or not we find ourselves compelled by the contents of the letters, it’s hard to deny that Eusebius found them and copied them accurately. Here are the letters between Abgar and Jesus, as translated and by Eusebius in the early 4th century:

From Abgar to Jesus:

Abgar, son of Archam, prince of the land, to Jesus, Saviour and Benefactor of men, who has appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting:—

I have heard of You, and of the cures wrought by Your hands, without remedies, without herbs: for, as it is said, You make the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be healed; You drive out unclean spirits, You cure unhappy beings afflicted with prolonged and inveterate diseases; You even raise the dead. As I have heard of all these wonders wrought by You, I have concluded from them either that You are God, come down from heaven to do such great things, or that You are the Son of God, working as You do these miracles. Therefore have I written to You, praying You to condescend to come to me and cure me of the complaints with which I am afflicted. I have heard also that the Jews murmur against You and wish to deliver You up to torments: I have a city small but pleasant, it would be sufficient for us both.

From Jesus to Abgar:

Blessed is he who believes in me without having seen me! For it is written of me: ‘Those who see me will not believe in me, and those who do not see me will believe and live.’ As to what you have written asking me to come to you, I must accomplish here all that for which I have been sent; and, when I shall have accomplished it all, I shall ascend to Him who sent me; and when I shall go away I will send one of my disciples, who will cure your diseases, and give life to you and to all those who are with you.

Anan, Abgar’s courier, brought him this letter, as well as the portrait of the Saviour, a picture which is still to be found at this day in the city of Edessa.

Let’s begin by pointing out just a few of the obvious reasons why these letters aren’t trustworthy:

Notice that Jesus referenced John 20:29 in the opening of this letter (“because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed”). He says this is what has been written about him. Unfortunately, this is something that couldn’t have been written about him at this point, given that Jesus said this to Thomas AFTER his resurrection, not before.
A document that was hand-written by Jesus would have been a MASSIVE deal to the ancient church. The New Testament Scriptures were chosen partially based on their apostolic credentials. A connection to one of the twelve apostles ensured that the document represented the best of Jesus’s teachings and was not only inspired by the Holy Spirit, but fully legitimate. Something that people really thought was written by Jesus? They’d have put that in the Bible in a heartbeat.
Finally, notice how strangely orthodox Abgar is. He describes Jesus as “God, come down from heaven to do great things, or… the Son of God.” Wow! He was so close! He almost recognized Jesus’s role in the Holy Trinity at a time when even the apostles were struggling with it. Funny how uncanny his instincts were given that he had never met Jesus and wasn’t Jewish.

There are other problems that I’ll leave you to catch on your own. The bottom line is that these aren’t particularly compelling documents.

On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that this legend is incredibly cool. You can’t get much better than a story about your king personally reaching out to Jesus and acknowledging his greatness and divinity. That’s top tier. Not only that, but he offers to let Jesus live with him in Edessa so he can get away from the coming violence in Israel? If that’s your king, he’s unbelievably rad.

While the document itself is more legend than reality, it’s hard to deny that, at minimum, it’s pointing towards some very true realities about the ancient world. Even the most critical historians admit that Abgar’s great, great grandson, King Abgar IX was definitely Christian and made the Kingdom of Osreone legally Christian in the early third century. That’s earlier than Ethiopia (330) and Rome (380), making it still the oldest Christian nation, even if we completely disregard the letters as a forgery. That alone ought to suggest that there may have been significant Christian history before that time. But is there any chance that any of this particular legend is true?

Eusebius records that the disciple who witnessed to Abgar V after Jesus ascended into Heaven was one of the 72 disciples mentioned in Luke 10: a disciple named “Thaddeus,” or Addai in the local Syriac. If we can show that Addai existed and has some form of historic record aside from just witnessing to Abgar V, that goes a long way towards indicating that there’s more to this than just a legend. Luckily for us, there is indeed a document that verifies the independent history of Bishop Addai: The Doctrine of Addai (Syriac, 4-5 c.). This brief document contains the history of the first three bishops in Edessa: Addai (the first bishop who was sent to the region by the apostle Thomas), Addai’s successor Aggai, and the third bishop in the region, Palut. Sure enough, Addai does things apart from witness to Abgar V in this document! Unfortunately, the things he does aren’t at all possible. For example, he converts Protonice, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, to Christianity by showing her incredible miracles. That would be really impressive… if Claudius ever had a wife named Protonice. Not only that, but Protonice goes to take a little tour of Jerusalem with Addai and finds the true cross in a story that sounds a lot like the story of Helena (Constantine’s mom), which was a story that would have existed by the time this document was written. A massive portion of Addai’s story in this document focuses on his relationship with the king and how he built up Christianity in the region until he died and basically everyone famous in Edessa went to his funeral and cried, regardless of their religion. This document makes the letters seem feasible in comparison.

The final straw is the details provided during the explanation of Palut’s (the third bishop’s) ordination. Apparently after the grand funeral of Addai, King Abgar V passed away and Aggai took over until he was martyred by increasing persecution in the region. Then we get to Palut! Since Aggai died before he could ordain Palut as a bishop, Palut was ordained by Serapion, Bishop of Antioch, who was ordained by Zephyrinus, Bishop of Rome. Here’s the problem… Serapion was the Bishop of Antioch between 191 and 211. Zephyrinus was the Bishop of Rome from 199-217. Zephyrinus wouldn’t have been able to ordain Serapion as a bishop, given that Serapion was ordained as a bishop first! Not only that, but both men are from around the 3rd century, when the king of Edessa would have been Abgar IX, who is the first recorded Christian king that a majority of historians consider the first Christian king of Edessa.

The difficulties to justify this particular legend are much too great to overlook, and this comes from someone who looked at as many other sources as I could to try to find a way to make the legend work. Regardless of which additional documents I included, these two documents are both foundational to the Abgar/Addai mythos, and anything that comes afterwards is a clumsy effort to try to massage the obvious errors in those documents.

I sadly have to admit that it seems almost certain that the claim that Abgar V of Edessa was the first Christian king isn’t true. The letters that it’s based on have clear historical errors and the legends that the disciple that converted to him have clear historical errors. That said, I do think there’s evidence that the legend points to a reality that we can count on. There was indeed a king named Abgar (IX, not V) that converted to Christianity due to the influence of a growing Christian community in Edessa, likely led by a very real bishop named Palut. Everything before that point is shrouded enough by legend that it’s not a reliable source to use. Was there someone named Addai? Maybe, but his resume would have been so radically different from the Addai of legend that it’s not even worth comparing the two.

All signs bring us back to somewhere in the early third century, where a king named Abgar (IX) saw a growing Christian population, probably led by a bishop named Palut, and was indeed converted through the influence of someone from the community. So, to be fair, the first Christian king WAS an Abgar of Edessa! The legends seem concerned with establishing an impressive lineage for the first Christian kingdom, which is a shame, because I’d say having the first Christian king is impressive enough without the exaggeration (though the exaggeration is still highly rad).

Heroes of Old… and Me! Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus

March 14, 2022 ~ Vincent

While I was doing a little more digging on Polycarp, I ran across an account of him in Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus (aka On Illustrious Men). According to Jerome, Polycarp was a student of the Apostle John, which delighted me to no end. What a neat little detail! The Biblical era is so often made it’s own little self-contained thing, so when you see those moments where apostles interacted with the generations that followed, it just makes their work seem infinitely more real. They weren’t just storybook characters; they actually lived, met people, taught them, and made leaders in the early Church. Of course, it’s not undisputed. As with all ancient history, some people think it’s true, and some people think it’s false. This particular claim has some heavy hitters weighing in behind it (Tertullian, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Jerome) and the timelines totally line up, but ancient history is always a little sketchy. There just aren’t those ironclad sources that you have today. This meme sums it up nicely:

The sources we have in this case are a little stronger than a cousin’s friend’s dream, but you get the picture. Modernity favors exactitude, whereas ancient history is full of legends. Me? I think it’s reasonable to say that Polycarp and John met. Polycarp was a notable bishop in modern Turkey that lived through the first and second centuries. John the Apostle would have been alive and in modern Greece. It makes sense that they would have interacted. Between the timeline, the geography, and the sources, it works.

But that wasn’t the only treat in De Viris Illustribus. It had a few other treasures that are worth sharing, one which is Jerome trying to determine the authorship of various Biblical books. De Viris Illustribus is basically a who’s who of people who wrote noteworthy books for the Church. Naturally, Jerome starts with the New Testament writers, which quickly leads to conversations about who wrote what. After all, how can you bring up Paul and his writings without saying what he wrote? So did Paul actually write Hebrews? Did Peter write 2 Peter? Jerome doesn’t seem to buy either. Which is kind of nice, actually. Even though Jerome isn’t 100% sure about the authorship, he still considers the books canonical and crucial for Christians. In the modern era, questions about authorship often feels like a litmus test to see if you’re really a real Christian. It’s nice to see that things aren’t always as black and white as we think. Great saints have asked questions that we might reject offhand today. Maybe we can afford to be a little gentler when such matters come up.

I also just appreciated the nature of the book itself. Like I said, it’s a list from a big-shot theologian saying who wrote things worth your attention in the Church world. That’s something that’s shockingly rare in the modern era! If you don’t go to seminary, you may not know who is worth reading and who isn’t. I remember being a new Christian and just kind of buying Christian books at random, hoping that they were legit. A lot of what I got wasn’t worth reading. People need to know who is worth engaging with! And Jerome doesn’t pull any punches either. This isn’t a little list of authors who are comfortable and safe. There are heretics on this list! There are non-Christians! Mind you, he tells his readers why each source is worth reading and warns them about what they are, but the point stands that he’s not just filling people up with his own ideas. He’s preparing them for a greater conversation in the world at large.

Finally, I think it’s just nice to have a list of heroes. Some of the details in here are a blast! For example, he says that James the Just prayed so often that his knees “had the hardness of camel’s knees,” (Ch. 2). He says that Ignatius of Antioch’s last words before he was martyred in the arena were “I am the grain of Christ. I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I may be found the bread of the world,” (Ch. 16). Polycarp is said to have met one of the first big heretics of the Church (Marcion) while they were both trying to prosthelytize in Rome and their meeting sounds like something straight out of a movie. Marcion walks up to him and asks, “Do you know us?” Polycarp responds “I know the firstborn of the devil,” (Ch. 17). Not only are these great Christians and great thinkers, but they ooze personality. Jerome even adds himself to the list as the final person of note, which is hilarious. I’d call him out for being cocky, but since his writings have survived since the fourth century, I have to admit that he wasn’t wrong.

In any case, it was a joy finding this old list of heroes worth reading. Feel free to check it out here if you demand more, or make your own list. Share it with your fellow Christians at church! Who knows how it might help someone? But a word to the wise: probably don’t add yourself as the last person on the list.

The Apostle Peter Had a WIFE?!?!

February 14, 2021March 13, 2021 ~ Vincent

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not in the top 1 percent of pastors for Bible memorization. Some people out there know every verse by heart, and the appropriate chapter and verse number. Not I. I know the broad strokes pretty well, but I can easily get stumped by the smaller stuff. For example, I played an old Bible Trivia game with my wife a few months back (more fun than it sounds, I swear), and one of the questions was about Samson violating his nazarite vows by eating honey out of a dead lion corpse. I had no memory of this happening and was thoroughly grossed out (if any of YOU break a promise to God by eating honey out of a dead lion corpse, I will judge you so hard, and not just for the promise-breaking). I’d still give myself maybe a 6.5 or 7 out of 10 on the pastor Bible memory scale, but on the whole, I rely on looking stuff up rather than just knowing it.

But this… this threw me.

Did you know Peter had a WIFE??? And this isn’t some lame, click bait title that refers to some apocryphal (non-canonical) book to get to a crazy conclusion. It’s in the New Testament:

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.
Matt 8:14-15, NIV

How do you get a mother-in-law without a wife? You don’t. You need a wife to get a mother in law. This isn’t a one-off story either. It’s also recorded in both Mark and Luke.

Another passage that seems to confirm the rumor is 1 Corinthians 9:5:

Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?
NIV

Why would Paul specifically reference Peter (the Greek translation of the Aramaic name Cephas) to prove that he has the right to get married unless Peter was actually married and traveling with his wife? It’d be a pretty poor example otherwise.

Historically, there’s only one person I’ve ever heard someone talk about Peter’s wife: my mom. She brought it up to me a handful of times when we were chatting, and I always just nodded my head and smiled thinking, “ok, mom, whatever you say…” I’d never heard it in church. I’d never heard it in seminary. It’s just not all that popular to talk about! Probably because Peter’s wife never actually appears in the Bible. She’s just referenced indirectly. Nevertheless, it seems like a pertinent detail to me! My whole mental image of Peter is changed if he had a wife!

Looking around, it’s pretty rare to see someone challenge that Peter was married. Obscure though the reference in the Gospels may be, it is largely accepted as a legitimate translation. Peter was married. The bigger question in the tradition doesn’t seem to be “was Peter married,” so much as “was Peter’s wife alive at the time of the Gospels?”

There isn’t a ton of evidence to make things clear. We have the verses from earlier, and then we have a few references from the Church Fathers. Clement of Alexandria writes:

They say, accordingly, that the blessed Peter, on seeing his wife led to death, rejoiced on account of her call and conveyance home, and called very encouragingly and comfortingly, addressing her by name, “Remember thou the Lord.” Such was the marriage of the blessed and their perfect disposition towards those dearest to them.
Clement, The Stromata, Book VII

This is where things are a bit murky. Eusebius references Peter’s wife as well, but uses Clement’s citation to do so:

Clement, indeed, whose words we have just quoted, after the above-mentioned facts gives a statement, on account of those who rejected marriage, of the apostles that had wives. “Or will they,” says he, “reject even the apostles? For Peter and Philip begat children; and Philip also gave his daughters in marriage. And Paul does not hesitate, in one of his epistles, to greet his wife, whom he did not take about with him, that he might not be inconvenienced in his ministry.”
Eusebius, Church History III.31

Eusebius’s source is of especially poor quality, not only because it’s a secondary reference, but also because he references Paul having a wife. Paul directly writes that he is unmarried in 1 Corinthians 7:8. Certainly not a slam-dunk of a source, which leaves our primary patristic source as Clement.

Clement is a relatively controversial source to have. He was the teacher of Origen, a wildly popular Christian teacher and theologian in the early church, but he was anathematized (declared no-good) after his death for a variety of theological oddities, such as the belief in the existence of human souls before human birth and belief in potential of souls to be saved and fall again after death. The Alexandrian school of the early church was famous for their thinkers, but they were also heavily influenced by native Greek philosophy. They adopted its best pieces to develop their theology, while publicly rejecting other popular pieces that they saw as competing with the Gospel. It’s only natural that Alexandrians like Origin and Clement thought in ways that seem jarring to us today. Clement was also venerated in the Roman Catholic church until the 16^th century when he was removed from the calendar by Pope Clement the VIII for being too controversial (or because he wanted to the top Clement in Church history and he had to dethrone this guy to get there). Either way, Clement is famous enough to have clout, but also controversial enough to raise an eyebrow.

The evidence for Peter’s wife being dead hinges on her absence in the Bible. If he’s married, where is his wife? Why isn’t she there? At minimum, she ought to be with her sick mother, right? Fair point. Unfortunately, it also has to contend with the 1 Corinthians reference. I regularly found the attempts to dismiss that passage clumsy. Some commentators said that “wife” didn’t actually mean wife in that context. Whenever I hear someone try to get clever with translations, I settle the matter by looking at the different translations in the most popular Bibles. NIV? Wife. NRSV? Wife. ESV? Wife. NASV? Wife. You get the picture. The lone outlier is the King James Version, which says “a sister, a wife,” which still comes across to me as a Shakespearean attempt to say “a sister in the faith aka a believing wife” given the context. In any case, I’ll take the legion of Bible translators that worked on all these versions over lone wolves that swear they have better translation skills. But there’s still the big question, “If Peter is married, why are there so few references to his wife?” That’s something I can’t answer.

I suppose the evidence could lead in either direction, depending on how you think. It’s not like this is a hill anyone really needs to die on. Peter’s marital status is not doctrinally crucial. The Scriptures were not written to illuminate Peter’s love life.

I stumbled down this whole rabbit hole last week after I found a reference to her in Martyrs Mirror (the Anabaptist martyr collection from last week’s entry). It portrayed her as an early martyr for the faith and illustrated the devotion to God that both of them had in their marriage. Personally? I love the idea. Not only is the evidence reasonable enough for my tastes, but I love the possibilities it brings to the table. It adds another woman in the apostolic era worthy of respect. It adds a married man among the disciples. They support each other in the faith, even through pain and suffering. I love it! Hopefully that excitement isn’t outweighing my logic. I totally acknowledge that the evidence is a little scarce for a figure as public as Peter. But even if I’m wrong and Peter was a widower, I think the story of Peter’s wife has so much to offer. It gives us a picture of a man that wasn’t just passionate about Jesus; he was someone who was alive! He lived! He loved! He lost! That is so human, and a human faith is one that grows deep roots in our souls. I hope that this little journey helps me share the story of the first generation of Christians in a more human way.