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.

Christian Resentment and the Good News of Martyrdom

March 9, 2022 ~ Vincent

I’ve been reading a fair few cultural critiques lately (C.S. Lewis, Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, Andrew Root, and Rod Dreher). Each of these authors is trying to articulate what makes faith in the modern world challenging and the cultural forces that make conversion so unlikely for the average Westerner. And honestly? It’s been kind of a bummer. To be clear, I think there’s immense value for Christians in each of these writers. To share the gospel effectively, we have to understand the people around us. What do they long for? What do they expect? What do they think is reasonable? What parts of the faith will they find to be a challenge? Given the massive cultural shift over the past 50 years, churches need to realize that the mission field has changed and they have to adapt to be effective ministers of the gospel. At the same time, reading these books repeatedly can breed a sense of desperation. It’s clear the Church no longer has the privileged status it once had.

Certain eras just had a tremendous energy around faith. For example, if you’ve ever read the diaries of old Methodist preachers from the earliest days of America, you know that their experiences are totally incomprehensible for a modern Christian. “I preached the gospel in a field today. Five-hundred were converted through the grace of God. Huzzah!” Seriously? How on Earth did you pull that off? To be fair, the diary entries tend to end in mass conversions or the preacher having tomatoes hucked at them, but still! There’s that sense that things are MOVING! Today, there’s not that same movement. Cultural critiques can help us put our finger on some of the factors that have made things harder, but they can’t make them go away. A truth that once seemed so obvious that people might convert on the spot is now so challenging for people to accept that there are active, identifiable cultural barriers preventing people from hearing that good news. It can all start to feel a little hopeless. When you put all those thinkers together, you end up with one massive decline narrative about Christianity in the West.

It’s not just reading philosophy that can lead you to feel hopeless. A lot of churches have pretty strong decline narratives themselves. Mind you, not all. There are some big churches that are doing very well for themselves! But converts to those churches are often drawn from smaller churches, rather than from the ranks of non-Christians. The shrunken churches that are left behind end up with a distinct decline narrative. “There used to be so many more people here.” “Those are the classrooms we don’t use anymore.” “What gets young people to go to church? Why aren’t they coming?” Again, some of this is good. Congregations need to look at the tough realities of their situation! But a lot of it feels hopeless. Looking at the bad is only helpful insofar as it can direct us to the good.

So where’s the hope for Christians in a post-Christian era? How can we stay excited when it feels like things are going downhill?

It can help to remember that the challenges we face aren’t anything near the persecutions that other believers have experienced. There are countries where you can get killed for being Christian. There are places where evangelizing is illegal. What we’re facing? It’s nothing compared to that. And so many of them didn’t face their harsh realities with hopelessness. They were joyful to suffer for the one they loved.

The Martyrdom of Polycarp is a beautiful second-century story of someone was joyful in the face of wild adversity. The culture that second-century Roman Christians were living in was openly hostile. If you couldn’t tell from the title, they killed Christians. In this particular account, they’re going to kill Polycarp (a Christian bishop) if he doesn’t deny his faith make a sacrifice to the emperor (spoiler: he doesn’t). Here’s a community that has EVERY REASON to be frustrated by the philosophy of their day and is facing challenges to ministry that we can’t even fathom— but they don’t express any hopelessness in the story. Just look at this excerpt:

All the martyrdoms, then, were blessed and noble which took place according to the will of God. For it becomes us who profess greater piety than others, to ascribe the authority over all things to God. And truly, who can fail to admire their nobleness of mind, and their patience, with that love towards their Lord which they displayed?— who, when they were so torn with scourges, that the frame of their bodies, even to the very inward veins and arteries, was laid open, still patiently endured, while even those that stood by pitied and bewailed them. But they reached such a pitch of magnanimity, that not one of them let a sigh or a groan escape them; thus proving to us all that those holy martyrs of Christ, at the very time when they suffered such torments, were absent from the body, or rather, that the Lord then stood by them, and communed with them.
Martyrdom of Polycarp, Ch. 2

They saw their bishop get stabbed to death by the authorities, and they’re praising God! Because God is in control. Even if circumstances are horrendous, they trust him. If he wants them to endure, they’ll do it with a smile. There’s not even a hint of fear. All of this is coming to pass because of God, and it will all turn out right because of God.

I’ll skip the bulk of the middle, but feel free to read it over at New Advent here if you’re curious.

After the story of Polycarp’s death, the final chapter ends with this:

We wish you, brethren, all happiness, while you walk according to the doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; with whom be glory to God the Father and the Holy Spirit, for the salvation of His holy elect, after whose example the blessed Polycarp suffered, following in whose steps may we too be found in the kingdom of Jesus Christ!
Martyrdom of Polycarp, Ch. 22

They wish their readers happiness. Not worldly happiness, but the kind of happiness that Polycarp had. The kind of happiness is the kind Paul felt when he wrote, “Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,” (Phil 1:20-21). Real happiness isn’t rooted in culture or circumstance; it’s rooted in God.

The world is different. Converting to Christianity isn’t the obvious choice. Going to church isn’t as common. We won’t likely won’t enjoy the cultural clout and full buildings that we used to, but the happiness that we’re aiming for was never in full buildings or philosophical ease. It’s in loving Jesus and trusting him no matter what.