It’s well known that nothing Jesus wrote, if he wrote anything down, has survived history. (There’s his dust-text he wrote with his finger during one episode recounted in the Gospel of John, but that certainly disappeared within moments of his writing it.)
And then there’s his letter to Abgar V, the toparch of Osorëne in Edessa, that Eusebius of Caesarea claimed in around 312 CE to have read in the Edessene library and translated from Syriac into Greek.
Say what? Yes, we do have a potential letter written by Jesus that appears in a couple of independent sources, the earliest of which was Eusebius in the early 300s.
Here's the text, straight from Eusebius:1
ΤΑ ΑΝΤΙΓΡΑΦΕΝΤΑ ΥΠΟ ΙΗΣΟΥ ΔΙΑ ΑΝΑΝΙΟΥ ΤΑΧΥΔΡΟΜΟΥ ΤΟΠΑΡΧΗΙ ΑΒΓΑΡΩΙ
Μακάριος εἶ πιστεύσας ἐν ἐμοί, μή ἐορακώς με. γέγραπται γὰρ περὶ ἐμον τοὺς ἑορακότας με μὴ πιστεύσειν ἐν ἐμοί, καὶ ἴνα οἰ μὴ ἑορακότες με αὐτοὶ πιστεύσωσι καὶ ζήονται. περὶ δὲ οὗ ἔγραψάς μοι ἐλθεῑν πρὸς σέ, δέον ἐστὶ πάντα δἰ ἃ ἀπεστάλην ἐνταῡθα, πληρῶσαι καὶ μετά τὸ πληρῶσαι οὕτως ἀναληφθῆναι πρὸς τὸν ἀποστείλαντά με. καὶ ἐπειδὰν ἀναληφθῶ, ἀποστελῶ σοί τινα τῶν μαθητῶν μου, ἵνα ἰάσηταί σου τὸ πάθος καὶ ζωήν σοι καὶ τοῖς σὺν σοὶ παράσχηται.
(Transliteration)
TA ANTIGRAFENTA YPO IISOU DIA ANANIOU TACHYDROMOU TOPARCHI AVGAROI
Makarios ei pisteusas en emoi, mē heōrakōs me. gegraptai gar peri emon tous heōrakotas me mē pisteusein en emoi, kai hina oi mē heōrakotes me autoi pisteusōsin kai ziontai peri de hou egrapsas moi althein pros se, deōn esti panta di ha apestalēn entautha plērōsai kai meta to plērōsai houtōs analifthinai pros ton aposteilanta me. kai epeisan analiftho apostelo soi tina tōn mathētōn mou, hina iasētai sou to pathos kai zōēn soi kai tois syn soi paraskitai.
And here’s Jeremy Schott’s recently published translation:2
THE REPLY OF JESUS TO THE TOPARCH ABGAR, VIA THE COURIER ANANIAS
Blessed are you who have believed in me, without having seen me. For it is written about me that those who have seen me will not believe in me, even in order that those who have not seen me will believe and shall live. But about what you wrote me, that I come to you—it is necessary to fulfill everything for which I was sent here, and after fulfilling it thus to be taken up to the one who sent me. Yet, once I am taken up, I will send one of my disciples to you, in order to cure your ailment and to offer life to you and those with you.
Is this letter authentic? Did Jesus really compose a reply to Abgar V that was sent via a courier named Ananias? These questions have been debated by scholars, but to my surprise, I’ll admit, the source and its discussion have remained quite muted within historian circles. I find mentioning the source itself usually comes as a surprise to my colleagues who are generally well acquainted with early Christianity.
Consensus View
Historians and scholars since the 1700s have treated the letter to Abgar V as an apocryphon of 4th-century Christian literature, meaning, they don’t regard its provenance as reaching to the historical Jesus but rather originating among believers after Jesus. They usually reference the text as “the Abgar legend,” “Abgar tradition,” or “Abgar correspondence,” and not as a primary source authored by Jesus.
But what exactly is behind this letter, whether Eusebius actually translated a primary text in the early 300s or invented the text, remains debated. The arguments range from contending that the text constitutes a forgery to the text functioning as a defense of Jesus against a separate forgery. Let’s break these down and see whether the letter remains plausibly authentic.
Two Camps
James Corke-Webster observed in 2017 that only two substantive studies of the Abgar correspondence had been undertaken: one by Walter Bauer in the 1930s and another by Alexander Mirkovic in 2004. Bauer postulated on other evidence that Kune, a 4th-century bishop, had forged the letter and passed it off to Eusebius to shore up Edessa’s reputation as an apostolic city. Because Edessa previously had been tagged as a site of heresy among certain bishops, Bauer reasoned Kune had enough incentive to portray the toparch/king of the region, Abgar V, as not only a converted Christian but the recipient of the living Jesus’s admiration.3 Other scholars extended Bauer’s analysis, demonstrating other instances where Eusebius recirculated (unwittingly) false traditions.4
Mirkovic regarded Eusebius as legitimately curating sources from what Edessene collections had provided him, but nevertheless delivering a dubious letter to counter anti-Christian repudiations of the humble, pastoral Jesus with anti-Pagan challenges of his own. The publicized Memoranda of Pilate that the Roman emperor Maximin Daia used as a pretext for persecuting Christians was provably forged, but served as polemical fodder among Pagan Romans against Christianity into the 300s. Mirkovic detects Eusebius responding to this forgery with the Abgar letter.5 Along a similar line of thinking, others have found reason to suspect later copyists of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History of inserting the Abgar letter into the narrative, not Eusebius himself.6
Speculation
Sources like the Abgar letter leave us to speculate, really. We don’t have a way to examine whatever Eusebius may have had as a source—the effort to identify a manuscript that predates Eusebius containing anything similar to the text of the letter in any language has come up drier than the Atacama. We’re left either taking Eusebius at his word or otherwise comparing this text and its context against other texts reliably established as contemporaneous to either Jesus, Abgar, or Eusebius. Put simply, that comparison makes the text taste of 4th-century rhetorical “flavor,” not a 1st-century saying of Jesus or of earliest followers of Jesus.
Still, the evidence for a forgery, even admittedly for Bauer, is quite weak. Like famous relics in medieval Christianity, this text doesn’t need outright fabrication to surface and recirculate; plenty of fervent believers already accustomed to retelling what they heard during assembly meetings of fellow believers could very easily have passed along a folktale about Jesus writing to King Abgar that could have become a written account in Syriac that Eusebius one or two centuries later could then have regarded as a reliable historical document.
Hypothetical Writings of Jesus
For the sake of curiosity, what if we take this letter to be authentic? It would suggest a few things about Jesus on its own, even while we ignore, say, the Four Gospels and other accounts of the historical Jesus.
For one thing, it would suggest Jesus attracted the attention of social elites 500 miles away from Galilee, particularly as a miracle-healer. Eusebius introduced the letter describing Abgar as having an affliction of leprosy and writing to Jesus via the courier Ananias seeking his audience and to be healed by him. Jesus’s reply tells Abgar that Jesus cannot leave his present mission, but will dispatch a disciple to cure Abgar’s ailment. This presents Jesus as willing but not necessarily available to bring healing to anyone in any place. This perpetuates the Jewish Jesus, the version described in Acts in early debates over Jesus’s audience being Jews/Israelites or on the other hand, as Paul insisted, being universal to Jew and Gentile. But it also traces a middle ground within that debate—having Jesus express openness to the Edessene ruler while staying located within Judaea.
The letter also suggests Jesus dispatched disciples to perform healings on his behalf, something that occurs with the Twelve and the Seventy in the Four Gospels. What is striking to me about this letter is that it doesn’t function as a healing agent itself—if we’re considering ancient holy relics, a handwritten letter by Jesus would certainly attract attention among earliest Christians as possessing inherent divine power. In my own speculation, I’d easily accept that a folk tradition would have a letter written by Jesus itself promising healing powers upon receipt of the letter. But that’s not here in the letter at all; a disciple will visit Abgar and offer the miracle, and what’s more, will “offer life to you and those with you,” in other words, Jesus’s gospel.
Ascension Rhetoric
The Jesus apparent in this text isn’t all that disagreeable from the Jesus of the Gospels, if I’m honest—except in one implication. “Once I am taken up, I will send one of my disciples” jumps off the page as an anachronism. Had it said something to the effect of “Once I fulfill all my Father has given me to fulfill,” or “Once I accomplish what God has commanded me,” I would sincerely find this text challenging to dismiss. But with such a direct allusion/reference to the Ascension, this breaks from the pre-Atonement/pre-Resurrection rhetoric Jesus employed.
The closest Jesus gets in the Gospels to alluding to an ascension to God’s presence is actually referencing raising up the temple in three days, something cryptic enough that his immediate audience took him to mean rebuilding a demolished temple, not rising from the dead. And the resurrection traditions also stop with Jesus rising from the dead; only in Luke does Jesus ascend into heaven. (The original ending of Mark does not include the Ascension; the longer ending that does is a later emendation brought by Christians after they had developed such a tradition. John makes references to “ascension,” which can and probably do refer mostly to rising from the dead; in one instance, the resurrected Jesus tells Mary Magdalene he had not yet ascended to his Father. Other references to the Ascension into heaven appear in later New Testament epistles.) This idea of Jesus ascending into the presence of God, and his ascension being itself a necessary part of his divine mission as expressed in the Abgar letter, is idiosyncratic of Pauline Christians after Jesus, not contemporaries of Jesus reporting on Jesus’s sayings. It just looks very out of sequence, a retrojection by later believers.
What do we conclude, then? I shrug at it. Who knows. My own authenticity-meter tilts toward unlikely originating with Jesus, but some ideas expressed in the letter being potentially authentic to things Jesus said. It is a surprise when it appears in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History. It just shows up suddenly, which makes me wonder whether Eusebius really had access to a document as he prepared his own narrative. But like James Corke-Webster, I can’t get around the intentionality Eusebius betrays in his use of the document. It appears rather clear that Eusebius wanted to enhance Jesus’s reputation among certain Pagan and elite Christian audiences. Like many biographers today who selectively present sources to arrive at a version of their subject they prefer to other representations, Eusebius wanted a Roman Jesus, a commanding figure with influence, reputation, diplomacy, and elegance of rhetoric. This much really spills off the page across the whole Ecclesiastical History, and the Abgar letter suits such a presentation perfectly. Whether this is Jesus really speaking, I suppose it devolves from a matter of historical inquiry into a matter of faith.
1 This is the critical text edition developed by scholars based on all extant manuscripts of Eusebius’s Ekklēsiastkē istoria [Ecclesiastical History] in Eusebius Werke, translated by Eduard Schwartz and Theodor Mommsen, 9 vols. (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1903), 1:88–89.
2 Eusebius of Caesarea, The History of the Church: A New Translation, translated by Jeremy M. Schott (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 73.
3 James Corke-Webster, “A Man for the Times: Jesus and the Abgar Correspondence in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History,” Harvard Theological Review 110, no. 4 (October 2017): 563–587; Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, translated by the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins (London: SCM Press, 1934).
4 Sebastian Brock, “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity,” in Eusebius, Christianity and Judaism, edited by Harold Attridge and Gohei Hata (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 212–234.
5 Alexander Mirkovic, Prelude to Constantine: The Abgar Tradition in Early Christianity(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004).
6 Timothy Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 129–30.