Possible historical traces in the Doctrina Addai†

Ilaria Ramelli

ilaria.ramelli@virgilio.it
Catholic University of Milan
Piacenza, Italy

Abstract

The Teaching of Addai is a Syriac document convincingly dated by some scholars in the fourth or fifth century AD. I agree with this dating, but I think that there may be some points containing possible historical traces that go back even to the first century AD, such as the letters exchanged by king Abgar and Tiberius. Some elements in them point to the real historical context of Abgar 'the Black''s reign in the first century. The author of the Doctrina might have known the tradition of some historical letters written by Abgar and Tiberius.

[1] Recent scolarship often dates the Doctrina Addai,1 or Teaching of Addai, to the fourth century AD or the early fifth, a date already indicated by Tixeront.2 This Syriac document, first published in the late nineteenth century, narrates the conversion of the Edessan king Abgar 'the Black' thanks to the apostle Addai, who was sent to Northern Mesopotamia directly by St. Thomas, one of the twelve apostles; in his address to the people of Edessa, in the Doctrina, Addai says that he is from Paneas, on the river Jordan. His historicity, at least in its ground, is accepted by Segal and challenged by Desreumaux and by Drijvers, who thinks that this legend arose at the end of the third cent. for anti-Manichaean purposes; some years later, Eusebius found its documents in the Edessan archives (HE 1.13.5) and with his translation offered the oldest extant account of this legend; according to González Núñez, Addai is the same who evangelized Adiabene at the beginning of the II cent. (both in Edessa and in Adiabene people spoke Syriac).3 The Doctrina is full of anachronistic features; the author, who probably worked in the late fourth cent. in Edessa, claims that he used the local archives, and in particular some records written down by the scribe Labûbna, the son of Senaq, the son of Abshadar, and says that the royal archivist, Hannān, had testified to their accuracy: in fact, he appears in the narrative as a contemporary of the events narrated. The introduction of the Doctrina presents this document as "paper of King Abgar son of king Ma^cnu." At the very end of the document Labûbna is referred to as "the king's scribe [sâprâ d-malkâ], the one writing down these things of Addai, the apostle." It is to be noticed that Labûbna is mentioned before as one of the aristocrats of Edessa; according to Traina, he was King Abgar the Great's scribe, in the Severan age.4 Hannān is mentioned at the end of the Doctrina, together with Labûbna, as "the king's trustworthy archivist" (tabûlârâ sharîrâ d-malkâ), who "set down the hand of witness." It deserves attention that he too has an important part in the story of Abgar's alleged embassy to Jesus.

[2] Most recently, Alexander Mirkovic5 studied the Doctrina and, on the basis of language, images and social relations here depicted, convincingly demonstrated that this fiction was written in the IV cent., even though the narrative action is situated in the I cent. This pseudepigraphon, according to Mirkovic, reflects an important phase in the process of Romanization and Christianization of the Syrian aristocracy:6 for this reason Addai's mission is chiefly directed to the members of the Edessan aristocracy and to the king himself, who in the Doctrina looks more like a Roman governor than a ruler of an independent kingdom. The author shows how aristocratic circles became divided at the arrival of the apostle, but assures the Roman authorities that the Christian church is a good place for the young nobles and will make them into loyal Romans. In fact, Labûbna presents Syrians, whose political loyalty to Rome was doubtful,7 as Romans. So he seems to call his community to participate in the new Roman order of Constantine; this attitude fits the emperor's political platform of the restoration of Augustus' Golden Age (reparatio saeculi). The most evident allusion to Constantine's time in the Doctrina is the story, told by Addai to Abgar, of the inventio crucis by Protonike—the alleged wife of the emperor Claudius converted in Rome by Simon, who worked miracles in Jesus' name—, who  clearly is a double of St. Helena, Constantine's mother.8

[3] Sidney H. Griffith too thinks that the author of the Doctrina probably wrote in the late fourth cent. or at the beginning of the fifth—he suggests the reign of Theodosius II, 408-450—, and sees in his enterprise "an apologetic, and perhaps even a polemical agenda, pertinent to the author's own time and place."9 He thinks that the author's aim was to put forward a paradigm of normative Edessan Christianity, supported by local ecclesiastical and historical lore: he hoped that this paradigm would play an authoritative role in the Christological controversies of his own time. In this perspective, the most important part of the document seems to be not the Abgar legend, but the long accounts of Addai's sermons and speeches in which he delivers the Christian message in Edessa, and which appear more central from the narratological point of view.10 It is not by chance that the author calls his work malpānûtâ "teaching" (Doctrina in the Latin title), and not tash'îtâ, "history."11 In fact, if Mirkovic focuses his attention more on the political aspect, Griffith seems to privilege the religious one. So their points of view are largely complementary. Griffith mentions several anachronisms in the Doctrina, such as the author's assumption that a Caesar is subordinate to an Augustus in the Roman empire, a situation that is historically true from the time of Diocletian and Constantine on. The mention of Tatian's Diatessaron ("Every day many people used to assemble to come to the prayer of the liturgy and to the OT and the New of the Diatessaron")12 also suggests that the author of our document is alleging the historical authority of the Diatessaron, perhaps used for quotations also in the letters exchanged between Abgar and Jesus, and is taking a position in the fifth cent. controversy about the Diatessaron: at the time of bishop Rabbula of Edessa (411/2-435/6) a campaign was waged in the city to ban the Diatessaron and to replace it with the Peshitta version of the Gospels.13 Another interesting point is the author's concern to refute the claims of the Manichaeans in Edessa: it corresponds to Ephrem's polemic in the late fourth cent. in this city,14 though he does not mention either Mani or Bardaisan or Marcion, who were all dangerous, or regarded to be such, to orthodoxy.15 Another element can be taken from the Christology that emerges in the Doctrina. Even if no heresiarch is named, from many of Addai's assertions it seems clear that he preaches the Nicene faith, e.g.: "the Son of God is God;" "God was crucified for all people." Not only does Addai's preaching correspond to Ephrem's theological ideas,16 but the latter affirmation, according to Griffith, seems to reflect the position of the miaphysites.17 So Griffith suggests that the author propounds the Christological views associated with Cyril of Alexandria's teaching, in the context of the controversies of his own day, and in particular in the time of bishop Rabbula of Edessa.18 Also the emphasis on some ascetical aspects and  the care of the poor and sick seems to reflect conceptions of Aphrahat, Ephrem and hagiographical texts of the fifth cent.: Addai doesn't accept wealth from Abgar, neither rich burial clothes, although the king supports the building of the local church and Addai's ministries; he recommends his disciples not to love "the profits of this world," and in fact "they did not take silver or gold from any man [...] they were splendidly chaste, pure and holy [...] splendidly engaged [...] in taking on the burden of the poor, in visiting the sick." So, Griffith concludes, "the period that in the ensemble they most immediately suggest is the first third of the fifth century, and perhaps, more specifically, the time of Bishop Rabbula."19 Han J.W. Drijvers thinks that the final version of the Doctrina is probably due to Rabbula himself.20

[4] I agree with the late dating of the final redaction of the document, but I think that there can be also some historical traces in the Doctrina, mixed up with later fictional material. In particular my attention is attracted by the correspondence between Abgar 'the Black' and the emperor Tiberius.21 This section appears to be an isolated nucleus in the narrative texture, originally not belonging to the Abgar legend and integrated into it with difficulty: with a "laborieuse soudure" in the case of ms. Syr. Sin. 30.22 This might be a historical trace integrated in the narrative frame. We shall see that, while absent in Eusebius, it is present also in Moses of Chorene and, in an abbreviated form, in a Syriac Transitus Mariae.23 It is set in the broader context of the legend of the correspondence24 between Jesus and king Abgar 'the Black',25 who ruled Edessa from 4 BC to AD 7 and then, after an interruption attributed to the usurper Ma^cnu IV, again AD 13 to 50. At least, this is the chronology of von Gutschmidt and many other scholars,26 based on the list of Edessene kings included in the Syriac chronicle of Ps. Dionysius of Tell-Mahre or Chronicle of Zuqnîn, written in 77627, and on a synchronism28). But it is more probable that Abgar ruled AD 22 to 25, for three years and a month, and then, after Abgar Hewârâ's usurpation, again AD 31/2 to 65/6, according to Luther's recent hypothesis29 based on the list of the kings (yubālâ d-malke) of Edessa included in the Chronicle of Eliah of Nisibis.30 The latter dating fits the total 38 years of Abgar's reign attested by Moses, PH 2. 34.31

[5] Shortly before Jesus' passion, Abgar sent two of his nobles, Maryahb and Shamashgram,32 and his archivist33 Hannān to "Sabinus son of Eustorgius" (the Roman governor who ruled Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine and Mesopotamia) in Eleutheropolis in Palestine on political affairs. He received them with joy and honour and sent a letter to Abgar. On their way back home they took the road to Jerusalem, where they saw Jesus and heard of his miracles; according to Thomas Ardzrouni, an Armenian historian of the tenth cent., Abgar's evoys belonged to the group of Gentiles who asked Philip to present them to Jesus according to John 12:20-22. González thinks that Thomas surely derived these data from ancient sources:34 I suppose that he got them from Moses, who in PH 2.31 says that Abgar's envoys were the Gentiles of the Gospel episode. Back in Edessa, they informed Abgar, who stated: "These powers are not of men but of God. For there is no one who can revivify the dead, except God alone," the first Christological statement in the Doctrina.35 So Abgar sent envoys to Palestine with a letter for Jesus, written down by Hannān: the king, who was ill, asked Jesus to come to Edessa, in order to heal him and find refuge from the Jews, who wanted to kill him. Jesus received and read the letter on Nisan 12, in the house of Gamaliel, intended to be St. Paul's teacher, the rabbi who spoke to the Synedrion in favour of the Apostles (Acts 5:34; 22:3) and who in the NT apocrypha is for Jesus and his disciples.36 Jesus didn't go to Edessa, but sent a message to Abgar, written by Hannān,37 in which he promised to send a disciple of his to Edessa after his ascension.38 (This narration has many points in common with those of Moses and Eusebius: e.g. the envoys' names, their trip to Eleutheropolis, the figure of Sabinus son of Eustorgius, who becomes Marinus son of Storog in Moses, with the same powers of L. Vitellius in Orient in AD 35-37; the good reception given by the Roman governor to Abgar's envoys, present in Moses too; Hannān/Ananias as intermediary between Abgar and Jesus, in Eusebius as well.) Thus, Addai, "one of the 72 apostles,"39 then called shlîhâ, "apostle," himself throughout the Doctrina, was sent by Judas Thomas, one of the Twelve,40 to Edessa, where he dwelled "in the house of Tobias, the son of Tobias the Jew, who was from Palestine"41—he appears also in Eusebius' parallel passage as Tôbias, and, with a slightly different name, Tûbanâ, in the Acts of Mari, 442—, and he preached the Gospel in Abgar's kingdom. In the meanwhile Hannān, the archivist who accompanied the king's emissaries to Jesus, painted a portrait of Christ that he brought back to Abgar, who enshrined it in one of his palaces; Moses, II 32, asserts that Hannān brought the Saviour's image to Edessa, while Eusebius does not mention it, probably because he was hostile to representations of God: so, his silence is not a valid argument against the supposition that the motif of Jesus' portrait belongs to the original version of the Abgar legend.43 In Edessa, Addai healed both Abgar and Abdû, as we read in Eusebius and in the Acts of Mari, too. The picture is connected to the manifold legend of Jesus' portrait present in Edessa in later time, the mandylion or achiropita (here linked to the tradition of Edessa as "Blessed City," mdintâ mbarraktâ, a title that, according to the Doctrina, seems to be due to Christ's prayer for Edessa in his letter to Abgar: "As for your city, may it be blessed and may no enemy ever again rule over it"),44 which is the subject of the Byzantine Narratio ascribed to Constantine Porphyrogenitus (X cent.). This work seems to preserve very ancient material, such as the information on the friendship between Abgar, correctly called toparkhês of Edessa, and the prefect of Egypt, in my view probably A. Avillius Flaccus, who ruled Egypt AD 32 to 38—just the years of Vitellius' mandate in the Near East and of the Abgar-Tiberius correspondence—and is well known to us thanks to Philo, In Flaccum, 1-3; 25; 40; 116; 158. He was one of the most intimate friends of Tiberius: born and grew up in Rome with Augustus' nieces, he obtained the government of Egypt, a direct possession of the emperor and probably helped the good relationship between Abgar and Tiberius that is evident in their correspondence. 45

[6] In fact, the core of this Abgar-Jesus legend seems to be common with the account given by Eusebius, HE 1.13, who claims that his source was a Syriac document kept in the archives of Edessa: it is the same source of the Doctrina, according to Jullien and other scholars,46 and, according to Moses of Chorene, as we shall see, those were the same archives that Abgar himself, or more probably a homonymous predecessor, conveyed to Edessa, and the same archives that kept the Syriac document that was controlled by the witness Hannān, and on which the Doctrina is based. Eusebius says that still in his time in the Edessan archives there were the documents concerning Abgar, and that he translated them from Syriac (ibid. 1.13.5).47 His report does not include the Abgar-Tiberius correspondence,48 and this suggests that the source of this material may be different. Before recording Thaddeus' mission, he says that King Abgar, "who ruled over the peoples beyond the Euphrates," was ill when the exchange of letters with Jesus took place, and that Jesus promised him to send a disciple: soon after the Resurrection, Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, sent Thaddeus (= Addai), one of the seventy disciples, to Edessa (HE 1.13.4); in the alleged letters of Abgar and Jesus, Abgaros Oukhama is called toparkhês, the right title used, later, by Procopius too, who, moreover, explains it correctly. There is no mention of letters exchanged with Tiberius, but in Eusebius' account we find a very interesting trace of the same theme of the Abgar-Tiberius correspondence as recorded in the Doctrina and in Moses: in the conversation between Abgar and Thaddeus, when the apostle asks him to believe, in order to get cured, the Edessan king says: "I would have wished to take armed forces and to destroy the Jews who crucified him if I had not been prevented by the Roman Empire."49 We read these same words, together with a reference to Abgar's and his predecessors' loyalty toward Rome, also in the Doctrina, in the same context: "I would have wished to take armed forces myself and to destroy the Jews who crucified him, but because of the Roman Empire I had respect for the covenant of peace which was established by me, as by my forefathers, with our lord Caesar Tiberius."50 In fact, Tiberius punished those held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus—as he says in his letter to Abgar—, and thus did what Abgar had wished. In the Syriac letter to Abgar he says that he has already done something and promises to intervene again in this sense.

[7] Whereas the legend of Abgar's letter to Jesus and of the latter's response is absolutely unhistorical—even the date given is incorrect,51 and Eleutheropolis did not have this name in the first cent.52—, the correspondence between the Edessan king and the Roman emperor might contain some historical traces. Abgar's letter to Tiberius in the Doctrina stresses the Jews' alleged responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion: since Abgar could not proceed against the Jews himself—as we read in the Doctrina—, he wrote a letter to Tiberius, his "lord," and related to him the crucifixion, with the darkness and the earthquake that accompanied it, even though he was aware that these facts were well known to Tiberius ("although nothing is unknown to your majesty"). He urges the emperor to take measures against the Jews, who, in his view, were responsible for the death of a man who did not deserve it. Tiberius, who shows himself happy at the loyalty of this vassal king ("I received the letter of your faithfulness towards me and it was read before me"), in his answer says that Pilate had already informed his "governor Aulbinus" of this—in fact, Justin and Tertullian mention a report by Pilate on the matter—, and that he, Tiberius, had already removed Pilate with infamy—as he really did through L. Vitellius—, because he had let a man be killed who rather deserved veneration. Finally, he promises punitive action against those responsible: "to take legal proceedings towards those who acted against the law." But first, Tiberius says, he has to settle "the war with the children of Spain, who have rebelled against me;" he concludes his letter rejoicing again because Abgar has written to him showing "loyalty towards me and the covenant of faithfulness, yours and of your forefathers." Another passage, during the first dialogue between the king and Addai, in which Abgar professes his loyalty and that of his predecessors towards the Roman emperor, is perfectly in line with these words.53 The continuation of the document attests that Tiberius, after the war that involved those "children of Spain," punished some Jewish chiefs in Palestine: through the above mentioned Vitellius, in fact, he removed Caiaphas, as attested by Ios. AI 18.4.3. Moses, we shall see, integrates this same material with Tiberius' motion in front of the Senate to recognize the Christians, an important element for the contextualization of our passage, and quotes a second letter of Abgar, a reply to Tiberius.

[8] The reference to the "children of Spain" in Tiberius' letter is generally regarded as an anachronism: so e.g., Griffith54 observes that after the Spanish wars under Augustus there was no serious imperial fighting in Spain until the Goths, Suevi and Vandals invaded the peninsula in 409. So he suggests that the author of the Doctrina is here evoking Constantius' operations against the Visigoths in Spain between 414 and 416.55 He also notices,56 with reason, that the first mention of Spanish rebels in the Doctrina occurs in the account of the Protonike legend, a double of empress Helena's inventio crucis, and that Helena's story first circulated in Greek only in the latter years of the IV cent.57 This suggests that the full form of the Doctrina was composed after the beginning of the fifth cent. All this is perfectly correct, in my view, but the point is that in Tiberius' letter the "children of Spain" probably are not the Iberians (Hiberi) of the Iberian peninsula, but the Hiberi of the Caucasian region, the inhabitants of Hiberia (nowadays Georgia).58 It is true that one would expect a Syriac translator just to represent the original form in transliteration, but in a Greek or Latin original there certainly was not the expression "children of Hiberia", so in this case the Syriac translator would provide something more than a mere transliteration: he found Hiberi or Ibêres in Tiberius' letter, both terms already endowed with a double meaning, and translated "children of ^cspny'", which in turn means both the Iberians of Spain and those of Caucasus: in fact, very similarly, in the Book of the Laws of Countries, the Syriac ^cspny'—the selfsame word employed in our Doctrina—does not indicate Spain, but the Caucasian Iberia, since it is mentioned between Sarmatia and Pontus and the Caucasian peoples Alani and Albani.59 These very Hiberi were employed by Tiberius and Vitellius in the conflict against the Parthians just in the years 35-37, according to Tacitus, Ann. 6.32-36.60 In fact, Vitellius in the Mesopotamian area accomplished a series of military operations in order to stop the initiative of the Parthian king Artabanus, and to liberate Armenia from Arsaces, who was supported by Artabanus himself (Tac. Ann. 6.31). Tiberius chose at first Phraates, then Tiridates, as rivals of Artabanus, and made use of the Iberian Mithridates in order to reconquer Armenia, reconciling him with his brother Pharasmanes, king of the Iberians (ibid. 32). Mithridates then compelled his brother to support his plans of conquest "dolo et vi" (Tac. Ann. 6.33), and the consequent treacherous murder of Arsaces made it possible for the Hiberi to invade Armenia (ibid. 33). The most obvious translation of Tiberius' phrase, with reference to the Iberians, is "who have rebelled against me," but we might also understand: "who have offered resistance, raised disorders, difficulties towards me," or even "who have rebelled because of me" (or "have been stirred up by me"). This would fit the historical situation as well, since the Iberians were not immediately manageable, and were used by Tiberius against the Parthians. 61 The correspondence between Abgar and Tiberius should have taken place just in the years 35-36; seen in this light, the reference to the "children of Spain" (a Semitic periphrasis that stands for "Hiberi") of Tiberius' letter is not an anachronism,62 but a precise historical detail.

[9] It is not so strange that an exchange of letters between the king and the emperor should be kept in the royal archives of the Mesopotamian city. These archives were also visited by the Armenian historian Movsês Xorenac^ci (Moses of Chorene), who, according to tradition, lived in the fifth cent. AD and wrote the Patmut^ciwn Hayoc^c or History of Armenia: scholars are generally critical of Moses' reliability as a historian, and place him in a later period,63 but a reappraisal of his historical identity, of his importance as a historian and of the traditional dating of his work has been recently offered, above all by Traina.64 He mentions this correspondence in PH 2.33, in the context of the broadest biography that we have of Abgar 'the Black' (PH 2.26-34). He obviously cannot have derived this correspondence from Eusebius, who does not know it. He claims that his source was in the archives of Edessa65 and was due to "Lebubna66 son of Ap^cshadar, who gathered all these facts of Abgar's and Sanatruk's time and put them in the archives of Edessa" (PH 2. 36); in fact, Moses claims that he himself visited Edessa and its archives (PH 3. 62), and may have derived the information directly from Labûbna or perhaps through Mar Abas Katina, a Syriac writer, probably author of a chronicle, of the fourth cent. AD.67 It is true that both Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History and the Armenian version of the Doctrina were among Moses' sources, and that Moses can not always be taken as an independent witness, but in several details his reports differ from those sources and they might derive from another tradition that may provide reliable information; he claims to have, and may have, personally consulted the archives of Edessa. Moses, who probably confuses the historical figures of Abgar 'the Black' and a predecessor of his, begins Abgar's story from the accession of "Abgar, Arsham's son," to the throne, and from his hostility toward Herod the Great in the Augustan age (PH 2.26); Jesus Christ's birth is mentioned, too.68 After Tiberius' ascent to power, Moses recalls Germanicus' mission in the Near East (ibid. 2.27) and the building of Edessa by Abgar, who conveyed there the local gods, the books of the schools annexed to the temples, and the royal archives. Moses correctly places Germanicus' Syrian mission in AD 19 and calls him "Caesar" (so he is also called in Tac. Ann. 2.71): he was entrusted by Tiberius with the control of the Roman Near East because of the disorders that upset these regions, above all the Parthian kingdom (Ann. 2.1-5): he received the imperium maius over the transmarine provinces, while Syria was entrusted to Gn. Piso "ad spes Germanici coercendas" (ibid. 2. 43). Moses also speaks of Germanicus' "triumph," which most probably was the ovation decreed by the Senators, when they learnt that he had elected Artassias king of Armenia (Tac. Ann. 2.64). After Germanicus' death (ibid. 2.71-73) there was a power vacuum that could not be adequately filled by C. Sentius Saturninus, supported by Germanicus' friends and hostile to Piso (ibid. 2.74 and 77), who anyway died at the end of AD 2069. Then Moses mentions Abgar's undefined "plans of rebellion" (xorhi apstambut^ciwn, PH 2. 28-29), that were never realized, but can correctly be placed in the context of a historically attested vacancy in Roman power in the Near East soon after Germanicus' death,70 and a peace mission of this king in "Persia" that seems to date back to the period during which Germanicus in fact was in the Near East, in AD 19-20: in PH 2.30 Moses says that this mission took place "more than seven years before" the alleged correspondence between Abgar and Jesus, which in the Armenian version of Abgar's story is placed in AD 27-28. In Moses' story, "Persia" must mean "Parthia" and/or "Armenia." Moses says that in AD 19-20 on the "Persian" throne Abgar found "Ardashes son of Arshavir" in conflict with his brothers:71 as I tried to demonstrate,72 this Ardashes seems to be a historical figure: in AD 19 on the Parthian throne there was Artabanus, well-disposed toward Germanicus and less toward Tiberius, and on the Armenian throne there was (put on by Germanicus) Zenon called Artaxias, i.e. "Ardashes." Moses presents Ardashes as "son of Arshavir" perhaps because he confuses him with the homonymous Artaxias ("Artaxes" in Dio, "Ardashes" in Moses) son of Artavasd i.e. "Arshavir" (?) linked to the Parthians and well known to Tacitus. Artaxias had begun his reign soon after the death of his father, who ruled in the Augustan age (Tac. Ann. 2. 4): according to Moses, who confuses Abgar and his homonymous predecessor of the Augustan age, Abgar ascended the throne precisely "during the reign of Arshavir," around 4 BC. That Abgar went to Parthia with his army leads us to suppose that his mission had not only a diplomatic aim. Abgar actually aroused suspicions among the Romans that he might have gone there to procure armed forces: so he tried to soothe these suspicions and informed the "Romans' prefects" (gorcakals hrovmayec^cwoc^c)73 of the aims of his mission at once, in order to avoid being suspected of betrayal. At first the Romans did not believe him, because of the hostility of his enemies, among whom were Herod the Tetrarch, Philippus (on whom see Ios. AI 18.137) and Pilate (PH 2.34): in fact, the last was a Roman governor, and the other two were on good terms with Rome: so they could easily put Abgar, their enemy, in a bad light in the eyes of the Romans. Given this hostility between Abgar and Herod, we can well understand Abgar's participation in the war between Herod and Aretas (whose daughter had been repudiated by Herod), that really took place in the early 30s of the I century AD:74 Abgar sent auxiliary troops to Aretas against Herod, who was defeated (PH 2.29):75 Aretas, too, had already been involved in the events of AD 19, when he had been for Germanicus against Piso (Tac. Ann. 2.66). Then Moses tells the story of two envoys of Abgar's, Mar Ihab and Shamshabram, together with their confidant Anan—the same name as in the Doctrina—to Pet^ck^cubin, to the Roman plenipotentiary "Marinus son of Storog," a sort of double of the historical L. Vitellius, in order to let him know the purpose of Abgar's mission and to ask for his support against his own enemies, because of whom the Romans suspected him of a plot. They met Marinus in Eleutheropolis, the same town as in the Doctrina: he treated Abgar's envoys "with friendship and regard" and exhorted Abgar not to fear anything from Tiberius, since he paid the whole tribute (PH 2.30). Here comes, then, the supposed voyage of Anan and the other envoys to Jerusalem, the meeting with Jesus, the alleged correspondence between him and Abgar (PH 2.31-32), the arrival of Jesus' portrait in Edessa, and then Thaddeus' preaching, the conversion of Abgar and many other Edessan nobles, Thaddeus' mission to Sanatruk/Sanadrug, Abgar's supposed kinsman,76 and the correspondence between Abgar and Tiberius. Finally, Moses declares that these letters were at once stored and kept in the archives of Edessa, and that Abgar wrote other letters to "Nerseh king of <As>syria" and "Ardashes king of Persia" and then died after a 38-year reign; his successors turned back to paganism and this caused the Christian preachers' martyrdom (PH 2.34).77 In the letters exchanged with Tiberius, recorded in PH 2.33, Abgar seems to be on good terms with the emperor, to whom Abgar's loyalty was very important, in fact, since he was seeking allies among the Oriental kings against the Parthians (Tac. Ann. 6.31-37; 41-44). In these letters we can see precise references to the historical situation of AD 35-37 in the Near East and exact allusions to the historical actions of L. Vitellius, who, under Tiberius' order, dismissed both Pilate and Caiaphas (Ios. AI 18.90-95).78 These facts find a precise correspondence with what we read in Abgar's and Tiberius' letters: to Abgar's requests the emperor replies that he has already dismissed Pilate—guilty of having yielded to those who wanted Jesus to die, whereas he was worthy of adoration—and promises to punish the Jews, in his view responsible for Jesus' death, as soon as he has settled some problems with the Spaniak^c, i.e. the Caucasian Iberians. This material is common with that of the Doctrina and seems to come from the same source, that cannot be Eusebius, who knows the rest of Abgar's story but not the letters exchanged with Tiberius.

[10] A very important point for our present research is that Moses correctly links Abgar's and Tiberius' letters to the mention of the senatus consultum of AD 35, absent from the Doctrina but historical, or at least attested in far more ancient sources: Moses derives this information from Eusebius, who, on his part, has it from Tertullian.79 In fact, in Apol. 5.2 Tertullian says that the condemnation of Christianity as superstitio illicita resulted from a decision of the Senators when Tiberius, informed by Pilate, in AD 35 proposed in front of the Senate to recognize the Christian religion: the Senators, failing the probatio, refused, and this senatus consultum was probably the first and main juridical basis of the persecutions against the Christians, who, as members of an illegal religion, were liable to death, if accused, tried and found culpable of superstitio illicita.80 Tiberius, according to Tertullian, vetoed the Senate's decision, so that there were no anti-Christian persecutions until the time of Nero, who was the first to give free play to accusations against the Christians: for this reason, Tertullian in the Apologeticum defines Nero as dedicator damnationis nostrae, and in Ad Nat. 1.13.4 speaks of institutum Neronianum, while after Tiberius' veto and until AD 62 the Christians were never condemned as such by any Roman authority. Tertullian would have had nothing to gain from inventing this episode, because it openly contradicts his apologetical line, according to which only bad emperors persecuted Christianity, and because he would have discredited the Christians by recalling their comdemnation due to the Senate, so authoritative an organ, which in fact during the Julio-Claudian age was empowered to decide whether to accept or to reject new deities. Moreover, the dedicatees of his Apologeticum, the Romani imperii antistites, who could consult the Senate's official records, would easily have been able to give the lie to Tertullian's words, if false. In fact, the historical reliability of Tertullian's passage on the s.c. of AD 35, maintained by Sordi,81 seems to be confirmed today by a Porphyrian fragment, F64 Harnack, kept in Macarius of Magnesia's Apocriticus (II 14), which I brought to scholars' attention.82 Porphyry is speaking of Jesus' apparitions after his resurrection in AD 30: he criticizes Jesus because he appeared to obscure people,83 instead of worthy and authoritative (episêmoi, axiopistoi) characters of that time (hoi hama) like Pilate or Herod, "and above all to the Senate and the people of Rome, so that they, astonished by his wonders, would not make, with unanimous decision [dogmati koinôi], liable to death, as impious, those who obeyed (or: were persuaded by) him [...] If he had appeared to worthy and influential men, thanks to them all would have believed, and no one of the judges would have punished them as inventors of absurd tales. For God surely does not like, but an intelligent man does not either, that many people have to undergo the most serious punishments owing to him."84 Here Porphyry is speaking of a unanimous decision of the Senate that, short after AD 30, fixed capital punishment for the Christians: I think that we can identify it with the s.c. of AD 35 attested by Tertullian.

[11] We have to consider the political meaning of Tiberius' project:85 the emperor, who wished to settle controversies without violence, if possible, but consiliis et astu, according to Tac. Ann. 6.32, probably wanted to legalize the new Judaic sect that had thousands of adherents in the popular classes of Judaea, as we know from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and was Messianic without being anti-Roman or insurrectional. Tiberius intended to remove from the Synedrion jurisdiction over this sect—as had been done already in the case of the Samaritans, withdrawn from Judaic religious control and induced to be faithful to Rome—and to help to pacify a difficult province. The importance attributed by Tiberius to his project is shown not only by his immediate veto of the possible accusations that the Senate's refusal could give rise to, but also by the actions in Judaea in AD 36-37 against Caiaphas and Pilate by the imperial legatus L. Vitellius according to Ios. AI 18. 89-90 &122, echoed in Moses and the Doctrina, precisely in Abgar's and Tiberius' letters. Vitellius' commentarii, cited by Tertullian in De anima, 46, are probably the pagan source from which the apologist derived his information on Tiberius' proposal, perhaps known to him also via the apology of Apollonius, a Christian senator sentenced to death under Commodus in183-185 "on the basis of a senatus consultum" (Eus. HE 5.21.4). The Acts of Apollonius, 171 Lazzati, record that the prefect of the praetorium, Tigidius Perennis, was willing to acquit Apollonius, but "the senatus consultum says that it is not licit to be Christian:" this formula, mê exeinai Khristianous einai, closely corresponds to Tertullians' non licet esse vos, direct consequence of the s.c. of AD 35.

[12] An observation can also be drawn from the comparison of the disposition of the material in the Doctrina and in Moses: in our Syriac document Abgar's message to Tiberius is not quoted within the story of the king's envoys sent to Palestine and the exchange of letters between Abgar and Jesus, but at the end of the document, after Addai's preaching and the description of his arrangements for the church in Edessa, and before those for the evangelization of Assyria. Moreover, in Moses, PH 2.33, the letters to Nerseh king of Assyria and to Ardashes, king of Persia, are situated after the correspondence between Abgar and Tiberius, whereas in the Doctrina, 74-76, there is only the letter to Narsai, and this is placed before Abgar's and Tiberius' letters.86 And Moses links this Abgar-Tiberius correspondence to the account of the s.c. of AD 35, which is completely missing in the Doctrina. It seems that Abgar's and Tiberius' letters, absent in Eusebius, are really an independent nucleus, and it might be very old.

[13] The anti-Semitism that evidently characterizes these letters fits well the general anti-Semitic attitude of the Doctrina, of course87—and not the criticism of pagans88—, which might be reminiscent of later polemics,89 but also corresponds precisely to the historical circumstances of AD 35-37. In his address to the people of Edessa, Addai states that Christ "is the God of the Jews who crucified him," and Abgar is said to have written to Tiberius "since he could not pass over into a country of the Romans to enter Palestine and kill the Jews, because they crucified the Messiah." But also Peter, according to the account of the Acts, in his pentecostal speech attributed to the Jews the responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion (Acts 2:22-23: "men of Israel [...] you nailed him to the cross [...] and killed him;" ibid. 36: "that Jesus whom you crucified"). Josephus too, in his Testimonium Flavianum, and Mara bar Serapion, a Syriac Stoic of Samosata, say the same thing.90 In particular, in comparison with Abgar's letter to Tiberius, it may be significant to notice a similar knowledge of Christ and early Christians, a similar hostility towards those who were held responsible for Jesus' death and a similar confidence in the Romans in this letter (Brit. Mus. Add. 14658, eighth cent.),91 which, according to some scholars, was written at the end of the first cent.92

[14] Moreover, the memory of L. Vitellius (Tac. Ann. 6.32.3ff.)93 might be seen behind Moses' Marinus, governor of "Phoenicia, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia,"94 and the Sabinus of the Doctrina, a Roman imperial official in "Eleutheropolis," and perhaps the Albinus95 mentioned as a "proconsul" by Tiberius in his letter to Abgar in the Doctrina96 (and also behind the Licianus/Lucianus of the Paradosis Pilati97). In a Syriac Transitus Mariae, similarly, we find a Sabina98 as the governor entrusted by Tiberius, whose power extended as far as the Euphrates and who acted as intermediary between Abgar and the emperor. All those figures, in fact, are presented as having the powers of Vitellius, and are often mentioned in connection with the contacts between Abgar and Tiberius. It is worth noting that the legatus Syriae's control over Palestine according to our Syriac and Armenian documents fully corresponds to the historical situation of the Tiberian age; in fact, only before AD 70 was Palestine under the supervision of the legatus Syriae or plenipotentiaries like Germanicus in AD 19 or Vitellius in 35; according both to Moses and the Doctrina, the legatus Syriae is in Eleutheropolis, i.e. Baethogabra, near Jerusalem.99

[15] It is also very interesting to observe the loyalty motif in the letters: shortly after the correspondence with Tiberius, in the Doctrina Abgar protests his loyalty to Rome: once Addai had performed some miracles in Edessa, he was recognized as the man whom Jesus had promised to send to Abgar, and so was introduced to the king, who, as we have already mentioned in brief, before expressing his faith, explains to the apostle the reason why he did not travel to Palestine himself to see Jesus: "Because that kingdom belongs to the Romans, I have respect for the covenant of peace which was established by me as by my forefathers with our lord Caesar Tiberius." Of course it is not historically true that the Romans did not want Abgar to travel to Palestine, a notion that the author has already presented to explain the reason why the king sent a letter to Jesus instead of going to Jerusalem himself: he did not want to trespass into the territory of the Romans and to precipitate an international incident in this way. The historical situation was not such, and in fact this phrase does not belong to the correspondence, but Abgar's desire to protest his loyalty is historically grounded, and the author of the Doctrina could have found it in the letter of Abgar to the emperor. Moreover, the suspicion that a trip of Abgar to Palestine might raise could have a historical basis in Abgar's immediately previous participation in the war between Herod and Aretas, as an ally of Aretas—an Arab as well100—against Herod, according to Moses, PH 2.29.101 This conflict took place—Moses says in PH 2.34—between the death of John the Baptist in AD 29 and the Abgar-Tiberius correspondence (AD 35-36). Moses seems to derive his information from Ios., AI 18.109-150 and another source concerning Abgar and the part that he played in the war between Herod and Aretas. Thanks, again, to Josephus—who gives us precious information on this conflict, its causes and the interpretation of Herod's defeat as a punishment for the murder of John the Baptist—, we know that in AD 34 Herod and Aretas were fighting (stasiázousin), and in fact the cause of the conflict was the repudiation of Aretas' daughter by Herod, so it began not after 29. From Josephus we also learn that the real war between the two ended precisely in the years of Vitellius' mission in the Roman Near East (AI 18.106), in AD 35-37: Vitellius gave up the punitive expedition against Aretas when he heard of Tiberius' death in AD 37 (Ios. AI 18.120-124). So the problem of the war and of Abgar's position as an ally of a royal enemy of Rome was contemporary with the correspondence between him and Tiberius. Because of the hostility of Herod, Philip and Pilate, Abgar's protestation of loyalty to Rome was not believed by the Romans, and so in his letter to Tiberius he strongly asserted his and his fathers' faithfulness. This fits the political purpose of the author of our document, as rightly shown by Mirkovic, but also corresponds very well and precisely to the historical and political situation of AD 35-36. And this may constitute a reason why the epistolary material was absorbed in the Doctrina.

[16] There is another point connected with Abgar's attitude towards Rome, that deserves to be noticed. The Doctrina presents two figures at Abgar's court in the days of Addai's preaching: Abdu and Sennak; the first is mentioned also by Eus. HE 1.13.18-19: Abdos son of Abdos, and in the Acts of Mari, 4, where he is Abd bar Abdû, one of Abgar's ministers, is healed by Addai together with the king, and is converted. An Abdos is also present in the Narratio ex diversis historiis collecta ascribed to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, where he informs Abgar of Addai's arrival at Edessa. Well, they are historical figures precisely of the time of Abgar 'the Black'. They are well known to Tacitus, who attests that Abdus and Sinnaces, a powerful eunuch and a rich noble, were linked both to the Romans and to Abgar's court (Ann. 6.31-32). They played an important role in the events of AD 35-37 as promoters—without king Artabanus' knowledge—of a Parthian embassy to Tiberius intended to request Phraates as a king instead of Artabanus: in fact, Tiberius supported Phraates. Then, maintaining the same political conduct, according to Tac. Ann. 6.36, Sinnaces persuaded his father Abdageses to desert Artabanus, who was in difficulties because of the Hiberi and of Vitellius, and in AD 37, with his troops, he joined Tiridates, Artabanus' rival, chosen by Tiberius himself (Ann. 6.32), after Tiridates had crossed the Euphrates together with Vitellius (ibid. 37) and before Vitellius went back to Syria. It is evident that the political conduct of Abdus and Sinnaces, who frequented Abgar's court, was pro-Roman. These two notables subsequently had a large fortune in Christian hagiography thanks to the legend or their conversion, supported by Eusebius and the Doctrina. In some ancient sources they appear as martyrs: the Depositio Martyrum and Martyrologium Hieronymianum under "III Kal. Aug." record: "Abdos et Semnes in Pontiani quod est ad Ursum Pilatum;" later sources, among which the legendary Passio, set their story under Decius and describe them as "subreguli in Persia" charged of burying martyrs and transferred to Rome, where they appeared before the Senate, and there was also a certain Galba: spared by the wild beasts, they were beheaded and buried in the Pontianus cemetery, where a painting of the sixth cent. bears the inscription "De donis Dei et sanctorum Abdo et Senne Gaudiosus [fieri fecit]."102 Allard103 remarks that A. and S. surely are not to be set under Decius, who, among other things, never went to Persia, whereas the Passio says that he was there, but suggests no alternatives. I would like to point out the correspondence between the supposed martyrs and Abdus and Sinnaces, mentioned by Tacitus as Oriental envoys at the end of Tiberius' reign and by the Doctrina as notables who listened to Addai's preaching in Edessa. The hagiographical legend of A and S. might be a development of the story of these two men who really lived in the first cent. AD, knew Abgar and were in Edessa during his reign. It seems interesting to me that the earliest Latin redaction of one of the most ancient sources on A. and S., the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, probably derives from a Syriac text of the fourth cent. AD.104 So, in the years of Vitellius' oriental mission, the king and the court of Edessa seem to be in good terms with the Roman emperor.

[17] In the Doctrina the loyalty of Edessa to Rome from the political point of view, stressed throughout the document, might also be a retrojection of the political situation of Edessa under the Romans' rule in the first half of the third cent. AD105 back into the first cent., and correspond to the religious communion with the see of Rome: in the final section of our document the author describes how the ecclesiastical hierachy of Edessa became suffragan to Antioch and ultimately connected with Rome: in fact, the Doctrina, after mentioning Aggai's death by the breaking of his legs on order of Abgar's apostate son—whose apostasy is also mentioned by Moses, PH 2.34—, and after explaining Aggai's inability to lay his hand upon Palut for the succession, says that Palut received the ordination to the priesthood from Serapion, bishop of Antioch, who himself had received his ordination from Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, "from the succession of ordination to the priesthood of Simon Peter who received it from our Lord, and who had been bishop there in Rome 25 years in the days of our Caesar who reigned there 13 years."106 Moreover, in Addai's farewell discourse to the hierarchs he mentions "the Letters of Paul, which Simon Peter sent to us from the city of Rome,"107 together with "the Acts of the Twelve Apostles, which John the son of Zebedee sent to us from Ephesus." Also in the Protonike story we can see a special relationship of the queen with Peter himself, in Rome: Protonike is said to give glory to the Messiah "with those who were followers of Simon, whom she held in great honor," and when she came back to Rome from Jerusalem "she told Simon Peter that which had happened." In this passage a particular conception of the relationship between imperial and ecclesiastical power is clearly involved: it is also the case of Addai's address to Aggai, Palut and Abshlama (he recommends them "to love rulers and judges who have attained to this faith [...] but if they go astray, rebuke them justly").108 What Griffith rightly calls "the Roman connection," noticing that it has both civil and ecclesiastical dimensions in the Doctrina, has also a historical basis in the letters exchanged between Abgar and Tiberius. Abgar was the king of a little buffer state placed in a strategic position between the Roman empire and the Parthian kingdom in a period during which Tiberius strongly wanted to secure the loyalty of the states situated near the Parthian border. While in the rest of the Doctrina Abgar is a client king of Tiberius and then of Claudius, in the letters the matter is not of tributes109 or submission, but of loyalty. We know in fact that these kings of buffer states between the Romans and Parthians were often scarcely trustworthy:110 Abgar himself, according to Tac. Ann. 12.12-14, in the Claudian age first supported and then, having been bribed with money, abandoned the Parthian king imposed by the Romans, as we shall see. An evocation of the Parthian kingdom and its relations with Abgar's Edessa can perhaps be seen in the mention of Narsai as "king of the Assyrians," whose subjects went into the territory of the Romans to see Addai (and here Edessa seems, rather unhistorically, a Roman city, while in other passages of the Doctrina Abgar is said not to be allowed to trespass into the territory of the Romans!).111 It is worth noticing that Narsai's "Assyria", which in the Doctrina seems to be evangelized soon after Edessa and by people coming from Edessa, is considered to be situated outside the territory of the Romans (bêth rhômayê); the author calls its inhabitants "orientals."112 It is probable that this "Assyria" ought to be regarded as located in the territory under Persian hegemony and it may be identified with the region of Adiabene.

[18] We know that some traces of Christianity in this region might go back to the very time of Abgar 'the Black', with the possible conversion of king Izates of Adiabene and his mother Helena, presented by Josephus as a conversion to Judaism.113 According to Ios. AI 20.2.4-5, Izates, in the first years of Claudius' reign, together with his mother, was converted by a certain Ananias—who had the same name of the Christian who in Damascus played an important role in Paul's conversion to Christianity (Acts 9:10-11; 22:12), and of the archivist/courier in the Doctrina—to a particular form of Judaism without circumcision.114 Now, in the self-same years, among the Christians it was an object of lively debate whether to maintain circumcision or not:115 in AD 49 the council of Jerusalem discussed this problem and the decision was taken not to impose circumcision on men converted to Christianity.116 Izates in those same years was friends with Abgar and together with him took decisions in foreign politics (Tac. Ann. 12.12-14).117 In fact, in AD 49-50 Abgar, rex Arabum Acbarus,118 together with Izates who ruled over Adiabene, first supported Meherdates, the Parthian ruler imposed by the Romans, and, together with some inlustres Parthi (Tac. Ann. 12.12), requested Meherdates as king in front of C. Cassius, "qui Suriae praeerat" (ib. 12.11), but then, together with Izates, decided to betray him and, bribed with money by Gotarzes, Meherdates' rival, abandoned the latter. Cassius, who suspected this at once, said to Meherdates that "barbarorum impetus acres cunctatione languescere aut in perfidiam mutari" (ibid.). In fact, for many days Abgar detained Meherdates in Edessa ("fraude Acbari, qui iuvenem ignarum et summam fortunam in luxu ratum multos per dies attinuit apud oppidum Edessam"), and deprived him of precious armed forces, his own army and that of his friend Izates, and so caused Meherdates' defeat. Tacitus comments: "Izates Adiabeno, mox Acbarus Arabum cum exercitu abscedunt, levitate gentili, et quia experimentis cognitum est barbaros malle Romam petere reges quam habere" (ibid. 14). Moreover, Ios. AI 20.3.3. attests that Izates too, just like Abgar, was initially loyal to Rome: he records that when Bardanes, a son of the Parthian king Artabanus, who had been helped by Izates to recover his realm (ibid. 1-2), was going to take up arms against Rome, Izates strongly tried to dissuade him, at the cost of incurring Bardanes' hostility. Abgar, too, was loyal to Rome—like his homonymous predecessor—before Meherdates' affair, as we know from Moses119 and from Procopius,120 even if before AD 35 he may have done something that made him suspect to the Romans. So Izates' conduct reveals deep similarities with that of Abgar: both were allies of Rome before this episode, both seem to have at least known something about Jesus—even if we do not accept the story of their conversion to Christianity, legendary in the case of Abgar, possible for Izates—, and later, in the Meherdates affair, both decided, together, to make a political choice that did not favour Rome. Moreover, Meherdates is certainly mentioned in the Doctrina as father of a wife of Abgar's, Shalmat,121 and is also said to have attended Addai's preaching. Izates too is perhaps present in the Doctrina, which mentions a Bar Zati, i.e. a son of a certain "Zati" who is probably identifiable with our Izates.122 His son, according to the Doctrina, was among the nobles who attended Addai's preaching and were converted. That Izates transmitted his faith to his sons is known thanks to Josephus (AI 20.3.3), according to whom Izates' sons learnt Hebrew (glôttan par' hêmin patrion) and received an education (paideia) characterized by Jewish customs. Moses too in PH 2.35 links Abgar's Christianity with that of the kings of Adiabene (he tells that Helena, the first of Abgar's wives, was converted to Christianity like her husband and after the latter's death was sent to Kharan, Carrhae, by the new Armenian king, Sanadrug, but, as she did not want to live in a pagan land, under Claudius' reign she went to Jerusalem, where, during a famine, she furnished the people with grain from Egypt: here Moses mentions Josephus' authority).123 A further detail might be interesting with reference to the relationship between Adiabene and the Jewish-Christian world. We have seen that, according to the Doctrina, Jesus received Abgar's envoys in Jerusalem in Gamaliel's house: the Jewish Bereshit Rabba attests that Gamaliel maintained close relations with the kings of Adiabene. Besides, Ninive, the main town of Adiabene, was on the road that passed through Osrhoene and was linked to Edessa; then, through Hierapolis in Syria, this road crossed the Euphrates and reached the Roman territory.124 So, in order to reach Adiabene, following the main road, one had to cross Oshoene; on this road there was Carrhae, too, where Izates ruled according to Ios. AI 20.2.2.

[19] Another interesting historical trace in the Doctrina—a trace probably dating back not to the age of Abgar the Black, but to that of his later namesake Abgar the Great, rav, who ruled AD 177 to 212125 as "a client of Roman power from the beginning of his reign"126—is the mention of the church built by Addai with Abgar's generous support. In fact, besides the maintenance of the poor and the sick, the only gift of wealth that Addai accepts from Abgar is devoted to the building of a church in Edessa, which finds a parallel in the big church that Protonike ordered to be built over Golgotha and Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem.127 Moreover, we are said that "Some years after the Apostle Addai had built the church in Edessa, [...] he built churches in other districts as well, both far and near [...] set up deacons and presbyters in them, taught those who were to read the Scriptures [...] and the orders of ministry." This suggests a spread of Christianity from Edessa to the nearby regions, but what is of the highest interest here is the mention of the church in Edessa. From the Chronicle of Edessa, chap. 12, we know that "in the year 624 [= AD 313] bishop Qûnê laid the foundations of the Edessan church; but it was bishop Sa'ad, his successor, who built it wholly and completed the edifice." So, soon after Constantine's victory and conversion a church was built in Edessa. But in the same Chronicle, chap. 1,128 we find that already in AD 202 ("513 of the Edessan era"), under the reign of Abgar the Great, there was a church in Edessa, the first ever attested in that city: I suppose that Addai's church, as mentioned in the Doctrina, could be reminiscent of this church, although some scholars have a more skeptical approach to its existence and think that the first Christian building in Edessa was that of Qûnê.129 In fact, the Chronicon records a big flood due to the overflowing of the river Daysan—that from which the name of Bardaisan, "son of the Daysan," derives —at the very beginning of the third cent.: "in the month of teshrîn herây", i.e. in November, the waters flooded Abgar's palace and also "the area of the sacred building of the Christians that was open to the congregation" (p. 2, l.4), in Syriac b-hayk^elâ d-'idtâ d-krîst^eyanê. Haykal (absolute state), hayk^elâ (emphatic state) is the part of the sacred building open to the congregation of the believers, the laymen: Guidi (p. 3 ll.23-24) translates templum and explains: "h.e. partem ecclesiae ubi populus locum habebat"; Brockelmann translates 1) palatium; 2) templum; 3) sacrarium templi, sacellum templi, navis ecclesiae; 4) ecclesia.130 So not only the presence of Christians is attested in Edessa at the time of Abgar the Great, but also a building dedicated to their religious ceremonies.131  And if the Christian local community had a place of public cult, the destruction of which by the flood was recorded in the local chronicles, it certainly was with the king's consent.

[20] In fact, it is even probable that Abgar the Great was a Christian himself: his conversion is much debated among scholars; I provided a full discussion of this issue in a previous work.132 We know that he forbade a ritual practice of masculine mutilation—in some sources assimilated to circumcision133—in honor of Taratha-Atargatis, mentioned also in the Doctrina as a local pagan deity: the episode is attested in the Book of the Laws of Countries by Bardaisan's school134 and by Eus. PE 6.10.44. From the first, who was a contemporary of Abgar, or more probably from his school that recorded his information, we know that the king's decision was due to his conversion to Christianity: "In Syria and in Edessa the men used to excise their virility in honor of Atargatis, but when king Abgar believed [hymn], he ordered that every man who was circumcised should have his hand cut off." Of course there is a difference between emasculation and circumcision, but firstly it disappears in Eusebius' parallel text, which in both cases speaks of a "mutilation" (apokoptein),135 and secondly it is evident that the Book of the Laws of Countries says that Abgar's decision was due to his new faith. In Syriac m^ehaym^enâ, "believer," is usually synonymous of m^eshîhayâ, "Christian,"136 and for Bardaisan, who undoubtedly was a Christian, just as for his followers, "to believe" obviously refers to the Christian faith. Besides, the historian and chronographer Sextus Iulius Africanus, who lived at Abgar's court as instructor of his son and was a Christian, too,137 defines Abgar as a "holy man," hieros anêr (ap. Eus. Chron. a. 220 Chr. 214 Helm; Sync. Chronogr. I 676, 13 Bonn; 359B, from Africanus'chronographical work), and probably means that Abgar was a Christian; it is significant, too, that Abgar entrusted his son to a Christian instructor as Africanus, who moreover was a Roman. And from Dio, 72.12.1, we know that Abgar's decision to forbid those ritual mutilations was presented by him as an attempt to make his subjects adopt Roman customs.138 Eus. HE 5.23.2-4; 24.1 says that in the time of Pope Victor, a local synod was held in Edessa on the problem of the Easter date, which was the object of a lively debate in those days. All the paroikiai of Osrhoene took part in it, and its proceedings were communicated to Victor.139 And a libellus synodicus published by Mansi, I, 727-728, relates  that at the end of the second cent. AD, in the time of the Roman emperor Commodus, the metropolitan bishop of Edessa had eighteen suffragan bishops, among whom were also those of Adiabene, a nearby region.140 We must remember that the libellus is mostly considered unreliable about the number of the suffragan churches—even if it includes the suffragan bishops of both Osrhoene and Adiabene—, that it probably retrojects an institutional situation of later times, and also that the full historicity of Eusebius' account has been challenged. Anyway, from Abercius' Epitaph,141 a precisely datable and reliable document, we know that at the very beginning of the third cent. AD Christianity had already spread in the regions situated East of the Euphrates. In fact, Abercius, who was a Christian, says that he saw all the Syrian cities, including Nisibis, and that he crossed the Euphrates, and "everywhere" he "met brothers of the same religion," i.e. Christians.142 In an Edessan inscription of the third cent. the mention of baptism and faith in resurrection makes its Christian character fully evident.143

[21] I think that it is probable that in the Severan age not only were there Christians in Edessa (at least Bardaisan was a Christian and his disciples were Christians), but the king himself perhaps converted to Christianity. So, Abgar the Black's alleged Christianity has often been seen as a retrojection of the possible conversion of the Great,144 and I think that the Doctrina might contain traces and echoes of this, such as the conversion of the Edessan king and the building of the first church. Abgar the Black's conversion is not historical, whereas I believe that his exchange of letters with Tiberius might contain historical traces, especially if put in the historical context of Tiberius' knowledge of Christ and Christians (perhaps thanks to Pilate), of his proposal to the Senate, and of Vitellius' political and military mission in the Near East soon after the s.c. of AD 35, precisely in the years of Abgar's and Tiberius' letters.

[22] Moreover, the new chronology proposed by Luther for Abgar the Black fits the relationship between Abgar and Tiberius better than the old one: the period of Abgar's removal from his reign, AD 26 to 30, coincides with the years of Seianus' greatest power, and the second time he ascended the throne in AD 31 exactly corresponds to the year of Seianus' downfall and to the very date given by the Doctrina (year 343 of the Greeks = AD 31/2) for the beginning of the relationship between Abgar and Tiberius that led to their exchange of letters; 145 in addition, this date perfectly fits the above mentioned friendship of Abgar and Avillius Flaccus, prefect of Egypt AD 32 to 38. Like Abgar, Avillius was hostile to the Jews and Herod; just like Abgar, he was a friend of Tiberius', and, soon after his death, he was removed by Caligula. Abgar's first acts of foreign politics are characterized by an evident good will towards Tiberius, who, attentive to the situation in the Near East at the beginning of the thirties,146 in AD 31 probably helped him to recover his throne after Abgar Hewârâ's usurpation, in order to secure an ally against Herod. We have seen that Abgar supported Aretas against Herod just at the beginning of the thirties of the first cent. AD, in a conflict that ended precisely in the years of Vitellius' mission in the Orient and of Abgar's and Tiberius' letters, in which we see their uniformity of views, in respect to the Oriental situation, and Abgar's loyalty towards the emperor. Under Caligula, Avillius, Abgar's friend, fell into disgrace, and under Claudius Abgar's conduct toward Rome became more ambiguous: we have mentioned his defection together with Izates of Adiabene. Claudius, nobilitatibus externis mitis (Tac. Ann. 12.20), didn't punish this disloyal act, and so Abgar remained on his throne till the time of Nero. The son of Gotarzes' successor, Vologeses (ibid. 14), continued ruling the Parthians, and took part in the war between Armenians and Iberians that also involved the Romans (ibid. 44), when he tried the invasion of Armenia before AD 54 (ibid. 50) and again in AD 55 (Ann. 13.6), when Nero had entrusted the government of Armenia to Domitius Corbulo and sought to create a net of allies among the Oriental kings. "Socii reges, prout bello conduceret, parere iussi" (Ann. 13.7-9): among these kings, according to the new chronology, there was Abgar too, whose support was to be precious, because the situation near the Oriental border was unstable. In AD 58 the Armenians, dubia fide, called now an army, now another, and inclined to submit to the Parthians, whose king Vologeses sacked the lands of those whom he deemed loyal to the Romans (ibid. 34; 37). All this may have contributed to remove Abgar from loyalty towards Rome.147

[23] In conclusion, I suppose that the Doctrina might contain some historical traces, especially in the correspondence between Abgar and Tiberius, even though wrapped in a legendary dress.

_______

Notes

† This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the SBL International Meeting, Groningen, July 26 2004, Ancient Near East section: I wish to thank very much all those who discussed it and so helped to improve it, including the referees of the journal.

1 Extant in mss of the fifth-sixth cent. AD: Brit. Mus. 935 Add. 14654 and 936 Add. 14644. Ed. W. Cureton, Ancient Syriac Documents (London 1864; Piscataway: Gorgias, 2004 repr.), 5-23; another ms. of the sixth cent. was edited by G. Phillips, The Doctrine of Addai, the Apostle (London, 1876); G. Howard (tr.), The Teaching of Addai, SBL Texts and Translations, 16, Early Christian Literature Series, 4 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1981), with Phillips' edition and a new English version; R. Peppermueller, "Griechische Papyrusfragmente der Doctrina Addai" (VChr 25 [1971]), 289-301; A. Desreumaux, "La Doctrine d'Addaï" (Aug. 23 [1983]), 181-86; Id., Histoire du roi Abgar et de Jésus (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993). On the Abgar legend see H.J.W. Drijvers, "The Abgar Legend," in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson (Louisville: John Knox, 1991), 492-99. A datation about AD 400 is often found in encyclopaedia articles, such as P. Bruns, "Addai (Doctrina Addai)," in Lexikon der antiken Christlichen Literatur, Hrsg. S. Döpp - W. Geerlings (Freiburg-Basel-Wien, 2002), 7, and C.&F. Jullien, Apôtres des confins, Res Orientales 15 (Louvain: Peeters, 2002), 67ff. The Addai story is also known in Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Georgian, and Slavonic.

2 L.-J. Tixeront, Les origines de l'église d'Édesse et la légende d'Abgar (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1888), fixed the definitive redaction of the Doctrina to AD 390-430; Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, edd. R.A. Lipsius - M. Bonnet, I (Lipsiae 1891, repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1990), CIXff.; 279-83, give 360-90; see also L. Moraldi, Gli apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, II (Torino: UTET, 1971), 1647. On the evangelization of Mesopotamia: Jullien, Apôtres; W. Baum - D.W. Winkler, The Church of the East. A Concise History (London: Routledge, 2003).

3 J.B. Segal, Edessa, "The Blessed City," Gorgias Reprints 1 (Oxford 1970; Piscataway: Gorgias, 2001 repr.); Desreumaux, Histoire, passim (rev. by J. La Fontaine, Byzantion 65 [1995], 266); H.J.W. Drijvers, "Edessa und das jüdische Christentum" (VChr 24 [1970]) 3-33: 31 = in Id. East of Antioch, II (London: Variorum Repr., 1984), 4-33; Id., "Addai und Mani," in II Symposium Syriacum 1980, OCA 221, ed. R. Lavenant (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Studi Orientali, 1983), 171-85; M. Sommer, Roms orientalische Steppengrenze, Oriens et Occidens 9 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), on Palmira, Osrhoene, Middle Euphrat, cultural contacts between Greeks and Eastern peoples, Rome and Iran, pagans, Jews and Christians, the "Romanization" of the Near East. I due the indication of this study and other helpful remarks to Andreas Luther, to whom I am very grateful. Eusebius mentions the mission of Thaddeus to Edessa also in his Mart. Pal. 2. 1. 7. See S.C. Mimouni, "Le judéo-christianisme syriaque," in VI Symposium Syriacum 1992, OCA 247, ed. R. Lavenant (Roma: Pont. Ist. Studi Orientali, 1994), 269-80; J. González Núñez, La leyenda del rey Abgar y Jesús. Orígenes del cristianismo en Edesa (Madrid: Ciudad Nueva, 1995), 31. The sources of the Abgar story in Eusebius are collected by M. Amerise, "La scrittura e l'immagine nella cultura tardoantica" (OCP 67 [2001]), 437-45. On the origins of Syriac Christianity see also M. Walsh, Christen und Cäsaren. Die Geschichte des frühen Christentums (Freiburg-Würzburg: Ploetz, 1988), 124-26.

4 G. Traina, "Materiali per un commento a Movsês Xorenac^ci, Patmut^ciwn Hayoc^c," I (Muséon 108 [1995]), 179-333: 293. The Edessan leaders are named before Addai's address to the people of the city: see my "Edessa e i Romani tra Augusto e i Severi" (Aevum 73 [1999]), 107-43: 125 n. 40. E.g. we find Paqor, a Parthian name (and that of an Edessan king who ruled about 30 BC), Abd Shamash ('the Sun's servant', a name that appears in an Edessan mosaic: Segal, Edessa, 39-41), Shamashgram, also mentioned in the Doctrina as Abgar's envoy; Abdû (see below); Bar Kalbâ (see González, Leyenda, 102 n. 119); Agustina and Shalmat, Meherdat's daughter. The last appears two more times in the Doctrina and might be the Meherdates mentioned by Tac. Ann. 12. 12-14 as the Parthian king chosen by the Romans and betrayed by Abgar. In chap. 35, together with Labûbna's one, we find the names of Awida (Sennak in the Doctrina is son of Awida), Labbu, Hafsai, a name attested in Edessa and Doura Europos: see H.J.W. Drijvers, The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and Osrhoene, in Handbuch der Orientalistik 1.24 (Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 1999), 237-48: nr. 6, 9, 55; Garmai, a name that occurs in Semitic inscriptions (ibid, 33-34); Bar Shamash, 'the Sun's son', attested in Edessan inscriptions (ibid. 23; 40); Hesron, a Semitic name also occurring in Edessan inscriptions (González, Leyenda, 104 n. 127); Piroz, the name of a Sassanid king (according to Moses of Chorene, Abgar was kindred with Ardashir's family); in "Piroz of Patriq" Patriq is the transliteration of Patríkios or Patricius.

5 A. Mirkovic, "Political Rhetoric of Labûbna," presented at the Annual Meeting of the SBL, Atlanta, Nov. 22-25 2003, section Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism. See then his Prelude to Constantine: The Abgar Tradition in Early Christianity (Frankfurt: Lang, 2004).

6 These two processes in Mesopotamia seem to be strictly associated in several sources: cf. M. Sordi, Il Cristianesimo e Roma (Bologna: Cappelli, 1965), 478-79; my Il Chronicon di Arbela, Anejos de 'Ilu VIII, (Madrid, Univ. Complutense, 2002), introduction. For this process at the beginning of the imperial age: R. MacMullen, Romanization in the Time of Augustus (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000).

7 I show this in the case of Abgar the Black's foreign politics in "Edessa," 107-43; "Abgar Ukkamâ e Abgar il Grande alla luce di recenti apporti storiografici" (Aevum 78 [2004]), 103-8. For the Oriental gentes and their relationship with the Roman Empire after the Constitutio Antoniniana: G. Traina, "Le gentes d'Oriente fra identità e integrazione" (AntTard 9 [2001]), 71-80.

8 See H.J.W. Drijvers, "The Protonike legend, the Doctrina Addai, and bishop Rabbula of Edessa" (VChr 51 [1997]), 298-315. In Jerusalem, with Bishop Jacob's help, Protonike found three crosses, and her daughter, dead, revived when the third one touched her. Protonike gave this cross to Jacob and ordered to build a great church over Golgotha and Jesus' tomb. Then she returned to Rome: when Claudius heard of what had happened, "he commanded all the Jews to leave the country of Italy." This is an echo of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in AD 49: "Claudius Iudaeos impulsore Chresto adsidue tumultuantes Roma expulit" (Suet. Claud. 25. 4; Horos. 7. 6. 15-16). See M. Sordi, I Cristiani e l'Impero romano (Milano: Jaca, 1983), 31-32; G. Jossa, Giudei o Cristiani? I seguaci di Gesù in cerca di una propria identità (Brescia: Paideia, 2004), 178-79.

9 Griffith, "The Doctrina Addai as a Paradigm of Christian Thought in Edessa in the Fifth Century" (Hugoye 6:2 [2003]), §§ 1-46; I quote from § 1.

10 Griffith, "The Doctrina," § 3.

11 Griffith, "The Doctrina," § 46.

12 Griffith, "The Doctrina," § 31. In Cureton's ms., Documents, 15, the name is ditonron, which the editor, ibid. 158, identifies with the Diatessaron, on which see e.g. W. Henss, Das Verhältnis zwischen Diatessaron, christliche Gnosis und 'western Text', Beihefte zur ZNW 33 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967); W.L. Petersen, Diatessaron and Ephraem Syrus as Sources of Romanos the Melodist, CSCO, Subs. 4 (Louvain: Secretariat CSCO, 1985); K. Luke, "Tatian's Diatessaron" (Indian Journ. Theology 27 [1990]), 175-91; W. Petersen, "Diatessaron," in Anchor Dict. of the Bible, 2 (1992), 189-90; Id., Tatian's Diatessaron (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Id., "The Diatessaron of Tatian," in The Text of the NT in Contemporary Research, Studies and Documents 46, edd. B.D. Ehrman - M.W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Wipf&Stock, 1995), 77-96; T. Baarda, Essays on the Diatessaron (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1994); J.P. Lyon, Syriac Gospel Translations, CSCO 548, Subsidia 88 (Louvain: Secr. CSCO, 1994); M.E. Boismard, Le Diatessaron, Études Bibliques 15 (Paris: Gabalda, 1995); R.F. Shedinger, Tatian and the Jewish Scriptures, CSCO 591, Subs. 108 (Louvain: Secr. CSCO, 2001). On the Diatessaron in Edessan milieu cf. N. Perrin, Thomas and Tatian (Atlanta: SBL, 2003).

13 See M. Blac, "Rabbula of Edessa and the Peshitta" (BJRL 33 [1951]), 203-10. Survey in B.D. De Lacy O'Leary, The Syriac Church and Fathers (London: Society for Promoting Christian Studies 1909; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2002), 94-98.

14 See H.J.W. Drijvers, "Facts and problems in early Syriac-speaking Christianity" (SCent 2 [1982]), 157-75, who reconsiders the Doctrina and related texts to investigate the historical basis of Syriac-speaking Christianity; S.H. Griffith, "The 'Thorn among the Tares': Mani and Manichaeism in the Works of S. Ephraem the Syrian," in StPatr XXXV, eds. M.F. Wiles - E.J. Yarnold (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 403-35; Id., "The Doctrina," § 35.

15 Griffith, "The Doctrina," § 35. Drijvers, "Facts," 157-75, also notes the similarity between the Addai-Abgar relationship and the Mani-Shapur I one. Bardaisan's community flourished in Edessa till the early fifth cent. (U. Possekel, "Formative Christianity in Edessa," delivered at the Annual Meeting of the SBL, Atlanta, Nov. 22-25 2003, section Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism), so the author of the Doctrina may have been interested in mentioning him.

16 Griffith, "The Marks of the 'True Church' according to Ephraem's Hymns against Heresies," in After Bardaisan: Studies H.J.W. Drijvers, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 89, eds G.J. Reinink - A.C. Klugkist (Leuven: Department Orientalistiek, 1999), 125-40.

17 Griffith, "The Doctrina," § 40. For the Miaphysites in Syriac area now: L. Van Rompay, "Syrian Christianity in the Age of Justinian: Continuity and Redefinition," presented at the SBL Annual Meeting, Atlanta, November 25 2003.

18 On Rabbula see G.G. Blum, Rabbula von Edessa, CSCO 600, Subs. 34 (Louvain: Secr. CSCO, 1969); H.J.W. Drijvers, "Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa," in Portraits of Spiritual Authority, eds. J.W. Drijvers - J.W. Watt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 130-54; G.W. Bowersock, "The Syriac Life of Rabbula and Syrian Hellenism," in Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, eds. Th. Hägg - Ph. Rousseau (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000), 255-71.

19 Griffith, "The Doctrina," §§ 41-42; 45; Id., "Asceticism in the Church of Syria," in V.L. Wimbush - R. Valantasis (eds.), Asceticism (New York: OUP, 1995), 220-45; R.A. Kitchen, "The Pearl of Virginity" (Hugoye 7:2 [2004]), §§ 1-35; H.J.W. Drijvers, "The Man of God of Edessa, Bishop Rabbula, and the Urban Poor" (JECS 4 [1996]), 235-48.

20 H.J.W. Drijvers, "The Image of Edessa in the Syriac Tradition," in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation eds H.L. Kessler - G. Wolf (Bologna, Nuova Alfa, 1998), 13-31: 15-16. On uses of the Abgar legend in Syriac historiography see L. van Rompay, "Jacob of Edessa and the Early History of Edessa," in Reinink-Klugkist, After Bardaisan, 279-81.

21 Of Abgar's historical figure I try to offer a thorough reconstruction in "Edessa" and "Abgar." The possible historicity of his exchange of letters with Tiberius was already suggested, very briefly, by Cureton, Documents, 159; M. Sordi, "I primi rapporti fra lo Stato romano e il Cristianesimo" (RAL 12 [1957]). 58-93: 81f.; myself, "Alcune osservazioni sulle origini del Cristianesimo nelle regioni ad est dell'Eufrate," in La diffusione dell'eredità classica nell'età tardoantica e medioevale, eds. R.B. Finazzi - A. Valvo (Alessandria: Orso, 1998), 209-25.

22 So Desreumaux, La doctrine, 185.

23 Mary's Getting out from the World and Jesus' Birth and Childhood: Cureton, Documents, 110-12. On the Transitus Mariae tradition, fifth to eighth cent. AD, see S.C. Mimouni, La tradition grecque de la Dormition et de l'Assomption de Marie (Paris: Cerf, 2003); S.J. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption (Oxford: OUP, 2002); according to E. Testa, "L'origine e lo sviluppo della Dormitio Mariae" (Aug. 23 [1983]) 249-62, the Transitus Mariae, typical of the literary genre of funeral praise, on the anniversary of a dies natalis (on which see my "Osservazioni sul concetto di 'giorno natalizio' nel mondo greco e romano" ('Ilu 6 [2001]), 169-81) is composed by three groups of texts produced in different times by the Church of Jerusalem: Ebionite period (II-IV cent.), period of a faint miaphysisme (IV-V cent.), period of the Henotikon (V-VII cent.). This genre is closely related to the Apocalypses of the Virgin: S.C. Mimouni, "Les Apocalypses de la Vierge" (Apocrypha 4 [1993]), 101-12. According to M. Clayton, "The transitus Mariae: the tradition and its origins" (ibid. 10 [1999]), 74-98: the Syriac tradition is very important and has specific features. According to Bagatti and Manns, all these apocrypha might derive from a Jewish-Christian milieu and depend on a unique document not later than the second cent. AD. Among the Syriac versions we can distinguish the Transitus a (V cent.); B (V cent.); C (V-VI cent.); D (VI-VII cent.). See B. Bagatti - M. Piccirillo - A. Prodromo, New Discoveries at the Tomb of Virgin Mary in Gethsemane, Collectio Minor 17 (Jerusalem: SBF, 1975), 57-58; B. Bagatti, Le due redazioni del Transitus Mariae" (Marianum 32 [1970]), 279-87; Id., "Ricerche sulle tradizioni della morte della Vergine" (Sacra Doctrina 69-70 [1973]), 185-214; S. Mimouni, "Histoire de la recherche relative aux traditions littéraires et topologiques sur le sort final de Marie" (Marianum 149 [1996]), 168-71. Id., "De l’Ascension du Christ à l’Assomption de la Vierge," in Marie, edd. D. Iogna-Prat, E. Palazzo, D. Russo (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996).

24 Regarded as spurious by Fathers and Councils: see my "Le origini," 209-10; Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti, ed. N. Geerard (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 65-89; I. Karaulashvili, "The Date of the Epistula Abgari" (Apocrypha 13 [2002]), 85-110; V. Ruggieri, "La flessione della scrittura," in Comunicazione e ricezione del documento cristiano (Roma: Augustinianum, 2004), 75-87: 79-82; E. Giannarelli, "Quando a scrivere è Cristo," ibid. 279-90: 279-87.

25 Ukamâ means "black," or perhaps "blindness," the illness that, according to the legend, affected Abgar: González, Leyenda, 74 n. 8. The Semitic name Abgar is an elative form of the 'a12a3 kind from BGR: cf. class. Arab 'abjar = "pot-belly, with inguinal hernia:" J.K. Stark, Personal Names in Palmyrene Inscriptions (Oxford: OUP, 1971), 63a. The Armenian etymology in Moses, PH 2. 26, from awag-ayr, "great man" (to his mind misunderstood by Greeks and Syrians), is imaginary.

26 A. von Gutschmid, "Untersuchungen über die Geschichte des Königreichs Osrhoene," Mémoires de l'Académie de St.-Pétersbourg, 35 (1887); H. Leclercq, "Édesse," in DACL IV (1921), 2058-110: 2064-65; E. Kirsten, "Edessa," in RAC IV (1959), 555-97: 555 and 590; H.J.W. Drijvers, "Hatra, Palmyra und Edessa," in ANRW II 8 (1977), 799-906: 872; Égérie, Journal de voyage ed. P. Maraval, SCh 296 (Paris: Cerf, 1982), 296 n. 1; M.L. Chaumont, La christianisation de l'Empire iranien, CSCO, Subs. 80 (Louvain: Secr. CSCO, 1988), 14-16; González, Leyenda, 26; C. Moreschini - E. Norelli, Storia della letteratura cristiana antica, II 1 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1996), 319; Griffith too ("The Doctrina," § 1) and Giannarelli ("Quando a scrivere," 280) and Jullien (Apôtres, 124) accept this chronology. In my "Edessa," 109, I supposed two homonymic historical figures identified in ancient sources: one who ruled in the Augustan age and the other in the Tiberian and Claudian age.

27 W. Witakowski, The Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahrê (Uppsala: Universitas Upsaliensis, 1987). On Syriac chronography see E.I. Yousif, Les chroniqueurs syriaques (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002).

28 The six-year interruption is attested in Ps. Dionysius; 4 BC was fixed on the basis of the Armenian version of Abgar's legend, according to which the supposed correspondence between Abgar and Jesus took place in the 32^nd year of Abgar's reign = 14^th year of Tiberius' reign = AD 27/8.

29 A. Luther, "Elias von Nisibis und die Chronologie der edessenischen Könige" (Klio 81 [1999]), 180-98; cf. Drijvers, Inscriptions, 237-48, and my "Abgar."

30 Eliae Metropolitae Nisibeni Opus Chronologicum, pars prior, ed. E.W. Brooks, CSCO 62, Syri 21; tr. 63, Syri 23 (Louvain: Secr. CSCO, 1954).

31 For a possible allusion in Juvenal's I satire, see my "Nota per le fonti della persecuzione anticristiana di Nerone" (ETF 14 [2001]), 59-67.

32 Theophoric names of Aramaic origin, respectively meaning: "the Lord gave" and "Shamash decided." For other names with "Shamash" (Syr. shemshâ = "sun"), see Drijvers, Inscriptions, 22; 47. Addai in the Doctrina blames the Edessan people because they adore the sun; according to Josephus, AI 18. 6; 19. 8, a Sampsigeramos was king of Emesa and Aristobulus' father-in-law.

33 He is called tabûlārâ sharîrâ: the first term corresponds to tabularius, "secretary," while Eusebius calls Ananias (= Hannān) takhudromos, as Moses, PH 2. 32: surhandak, "courier." See Traina, "Movsês," 293 n. 65, who proposes a different vocalization in Syriac, so to obtain the transliteration of tabellarius, "courier." In the narration Hannān seems to be both courier and secretary. According to Segal, Edessa, 20, sharîrâ means the king's confidant: this is the interpretation given by Moses too, who describes Hannān as "confidant." On bilingualism in ancient Syriac speaking area see D.G.K. Taylor, "Bilingualism and Diglossia in Late Antique Syria and Mesopotamia," in  Bilingualism in Ancient Society, eds. J.N. Adams - M. Janse - S. Swain (Oxford: OUP, 2002), 298-331; for Aramaic-Greek bilingualism in the I-II cent. AD see H.M. Cotton, "Survival, Adaptation and Extinction: Nabatean and Jewish Aramaic versus Greek in the legal documents from the Cave of Letters in Nahal Hever," in Sprache und Kultur in der kaiserzeitlichen Provinz Arabia, ed. L. Schumacher and O. Stoll. Mainzer althistorische Studien 4. (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 2003). chap. 1. On the name Ananias see González, Leyenda, 75 n. 13. Ananias is also the Christian Jew who baptized Paul in Acts 9:10-19 and who is said to have preached in Eleutheropolis, where Peter 'Abshlama's martyrdom took place (the last name occurs in the Doctrina).

34 González, Leyenda, 76 n. 19. In Acts 2:5 we read that in AD 30 in Jerusalem there were many Jews coming from everywhere, also from Mesopotamia and Cappadocia (ibid. 2:9-12): it is very probable that Jews from Osrhoene too (in Mesopotamia, near Cappadocia) visited Jerusalem in AD 30 and then, back home, related what they saw and heard. For the importance of these Jews who listened to Peter's first preaching in Jerusalem in relation to the early spread of Christianity see C.P. Thiede, Ein Fisch für den römischen Kaiser (München: Luchterhand, 1998), 120 and passim.

35 See Griffith, "The Doctrina," § 6; another is in Abgar's letter to Jesus: "When I heard of the great wonders that you do, I decided either that you are God [...] or that you are the Son of God." And then these statemens multiply in the words of Abgar and above all in Addai's teaching, addressed both to Abgar and to the people (see ibid., § 14). The king himself instructed the apostle to address all the people, "that they might know that the Son of God is God." Cf. T. Anikuzhakattil, Jesus Christ the Saviour. Soteriology according to East Syriac Tradition (Satna: Ephrem, 2002); A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche, II.3, ed. T. Hainthaler (Freiburg: Herder, 2002); Dieu Miséricorde, Dieu Amour. Actes du Colloque VIII, Patrimoine syriaque 1-2 (Antélias, CERO 2003); G. Thumpanirappel, Christ in the East Syriac Tradition (Satna: Ephrem, 2003). Relation to the Holy Spirit: E. Kaniyamparampil, The Spirit of Life. A Study of the Holy Spirit in the Early Syriac Tradition (Kottayam: Oriental Institute Religious Studies, 2003); D.W. Winkler, Ostsyrisches Christentum, Studien zur Orient. Kirchengeschichte 26 (Münster: LIT, 2003).

36 See e.g. M. Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del NT, I, 2 (Casale: Marietti, 1983²), 344-66. A little further in the Doctrina, Jesus replied to Abgar while he was in the High Priest's house (a similar version is in the Acts of Mari, 2, which at the beginning present a parallel account of the letters exchanged between Abgar and Jesus and Addai's coming to Edessa and his preaching there: see below). It would be Gamaliel, again: he was not hostile to Jesus and the Christians, but he was no High Priest; maybe the Syriac text means, more generically, an important priest.

37 According to Eusebius, Jesus himself wrote the letter; according to Moses, Thomas wrote it for him. Moreover, in the Doctrina, the Acta Maris, 2, and the Peregrinatio Aegeriae, 19, 9, Jesus promises the invincibility of Edessa, a clause absent in Eusebius and Moses. On the Peregrinatio (381-4 or 385-8), see R. Gelsomino, "Egeria, 381-384 d.C." (Helikon 22-27 [1982-87]), 437-53; H. Sivan, "Holy Land Pilgrimage and Western Audiences" (CQ 38 [1988]), 528-35; Id., "Who was Egeria?" (HThR 81 [1988]), 59-72; C. Weber, "Egeria's Norman homeland" (HSPh 92 [1989]), 437-56; F. Cardini, "Egeria, la pellegrina," in Medioevo al femminile, ed. F. Bertini (Bari: Laterza, 1989), 3-30; Atti del Convegno sulla Peregrinatio Aegeriae, Arezzo 23-25.X.87 (Arezzo: Accad. Petrarca, 1990); P. Smiraglia, "Un indizio per la cronologia relativa delle due parti dell'Itinerarium di Egeria," in Studi G. Monaco, IV (Palermo: Fac. di Lettere e Filos., 1991), 1491-96; Egeria, Diario di viaggio, trans. E. Giannarelli (Torino: Paoline, 1992); A. Palmer, "Egeria the voyager," in Travel fact and travel fiction, ed. Z. v. Martels (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 39-53; H.J. Westra, "The pilgrim Egeria's concept of place" (MLatJb 30 [1995]), 93-100; M. Mulzer, "Mit der Bibel in der Hand?" (ZPalV 112 [1996]), 156-64; Moreschini-Norelli, Storia, II, I (1996), 496-99; A. Doval, "The Date of Cyril of Jerusalem's Catecheses" (JThS 48 [1997]), 129-32; D. Gagliardi, "Sul latino di Egeria" (Koinonia 21 [1997]), 105-16; A. López, "Mujeres en busca de la palabra" (FlorIlib 10 [1999]), 163-86; Egeria, Pellegrinaggio in Terra Santa, ed. N. Natalucci (Bologna: Dehoniane, 1999); M. Giebel, "Friedensbrief und Pilgerflasche" (Anregung 46 [2000]), 400-8; my "Edessa," 127-28. Egeria visited Edessa (Per. 19. 2-19) and saw the church and the royal palace ("palatium Aggari regis," probably that of Abgar the Great, also attested by the Chronicon Edessenum, 1 and 9) with the ancient marble portraits (archiotepae) of Abgar ("rex Aggarus, qui antequam videret Dominum, credidit ei, quia esset vere filius Dei") and his son Ma^cnû (Magnus). She is informed by the bishop of the Abgar-Jesus correspondence per Ananiam cursorem. In evidence of the invincibility of Edessa an episode of Abgar's days is narrated, concerning the siege laid to Edessa by the "Persians" and the salvation of the city thanks to Jesus' letter; many other times, then, Edessa was saved by this promise (Per. 13). She also visited Abgar's tomb and was given a copy of Abgar's and Jesus' letters. Such was the veneration for Jesus' letter in Edessa in the fourth cent. that the gate through which Ananias brought it into the city was kept in a perpetual ritual pureness (Per. 18); on ritual pureness in early Christianity: U. Volp, Tod und Ritual in den christlichen Gemeinden der Antike, VCSuppl. 65 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). The same clause of the invincibility also appears in five Greek inscriptions reproducing Abgar's letter more ancient than the Peregrinatio and Eusebius: this leads to suppose that it was Eusebius who curtailed the Edessan material on which he was working, taken from the archives of Edessa (the same of Labûbna and Hannān).

38 The sources on the correspondence are in H. Leclercq, "Abgar," in DACL, I (1924), 2058-110; also R.A. Lipsius, Die edessenische Abgarsage (Braunschweig 1880); E. Von Rohden, "Abgar V Ukkama," in PW, I (1894), 94; G. Eldarov, "Abgar V," in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, I (Roma: Città Nuova Editrice, 1961), 75-76; M. Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del NT, III (Casale: Marietti, 1966), 77-84: 78; Drijvers, "Abgar Legend;" W. Cramer, "Abgar," in LThK, I (1993²), 48-49; my "Edessa," 124; n. 35.

39 Cf. Luke 10:1, where duo is after hebdomêkonta in Marcion, Tatian (Ephrem's commentary, Italian, Dutch tr.), P⁴⁵ (London, IIIrd cent.), B (Vatican, IVth cent.), D (Cambridge, VIth cent.), M (London-Hamburg, IX cent.) 1604 (Athos, XIIth cent.) s (codex of the Vetus Latina, Milan, Bibl. Ambros. VIIth-VIIIth cent.), e (Vet. Lat., Trento, IVth-Vth cent.) a (Vet. Lat., Vercelli, IVth cent.) c (Vet. Lat., Paris, XIIth cent.),  l (Vet. Lat., Breslau, VIIIth cent.) r² (Vet. Lat., Dublin, IXth cent.), the Vulgate, the ancient Syriac version, the Armenian version, Adamantius and Epipanius; duo is missing in the other mss., in Ireneus (Greek text) and Origen (Latin text). So, the Syriac Doctrina has the same text as Tatian and the ancient Syriac version. Cf., ad l., Nuovo Testamento greco e italiano, eds. A. Merk - G. Barbaglio (Bologna: Dehoniane, 1991²).

40 Thomas is the protagonist of a tradition of evangelization in the East (Parthia and India) linked to the Church of Edessa: see my "Note sulle origini del Cristianesimo in India" (SCO 47 [2000]), 363-78; C. Dognini-Ead., Gli Apostoli in India nella Patristica e nella letteratura sanscrita (Milano: Medusa, 2001), esp. my chap. 4 on Thomas and his Acts (connected with Edessa), on which see A.F.J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas, NTSuppl 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2003²); A.D. Deconick, Voices of the Mystics, JSOT Suppl. 157 (Sheffield: Academic Press, 2001). On the Gospel of Thomas see e.g. B. Ehlers, "Kann das Thomasevangelium aus Edessa stammen?" (NT 12 [1970]), 284-317; S. Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (New York: Seabury, 1983); R. Cameron, "The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins," in The Future of Early Christianity. Essays H. Koester, eds. B. Pearson - A. Kraabel et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 381-92.

41 This Jewish connection for early Christianity in Edessa seems to be in contrast with anti-Semitism in the Doctrina (see below). Our document says that after Addai's preaching in Edessa "even the Jews who were learned in the Law and Prophets, who traded in silk, submitted and became followers and confessed that the Messiah is the Son of the Living God." I think that all this might have a historical nucleus, especially if we consider the role of the Jews, and in particular traders, in the first christianization of Eastern regions, as results from the Acts of Thomas and other documents concerning the arrival of Christianity in India (in which Edessa probably had an important part): see my chapters in Dognini-Ramelli, Apostoli; A. Harrak, "Trade Routes and the Christianization of the Near East," in The Origins of Syriac Christianity: First Symposium of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, Nov. 24 2001, according to whom Christianity first spread throughout Syria and Mesopotamia along trade routes thanks to merchants (whose importance in the ancient world is studied in C. Zaccagnini, ed., Mercanti e politica nel mondo antico, Roma: Erma, 2003; cf. K. Ruffing, "Wege in den Osten," in Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur historischen Geographie des Altertums 7 [Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002], 360-78). See also Jullien, Apôtres; J. Yacoub, Babylone chrétienne (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1996); my Il Chronicon, introduction; my "Il Chronicon di Arbela: una messa a punto," forthcoming in Aevum. On Jewish Christianity see S.C. Mimouni, "Judéo-christianisme;" Id., "Pour une définition nouvelle du judéo-christianisme ancien" (NTS 38 [1992]), 161-86: 184: Jewish Christians were Jews who recognized Jesus as the Messiah but still observed the Jewish Law; Id., Le judéo-christianisme ancien (Paris: Cerf, 1998); R.E. Brown, "Not Jewish Christianity and Gentle Christianity but Types of Jewish/Gentile Christianity" (CBQ 45 [1983]) 74-79; J.E. Taylor, "The Phenomenon of Jewish-Christianity" (VChr 44 [1990]), 313-34; C. Colpe, Das Siegel der Propheten Arb. zur neutestamentl. Theol. Zeit-Gesch. 3 (Berlin: Inst. Kirche Judentum 1990); Jews and Christians. The Parting of the Ways AD 70 to 135, ed. J.D.G. Dunn (Tübingen: Eerdman, 1992); Id., The Parting of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism (London: SCM - Philadelphia: Trinity, 1981); L.H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: UP, 1993); S.G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70-170 C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Le déchirement. Juifs et chrétiens au premier siècle, éd. G. Marguerat (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1996); Shoemaker, Traditions, 212-32, who thinks that the concept of a "primitive Jewish Christianity" is a scholarly construction developed by Italian and French scholars, esp. J. Daniélou; it is not to be confused with  the broader category of "Jewish Christianity," which is considered still useful. See also Verus Israel. Nuove prospettive sul Giudeocristianesimo, ed. G. Filoramo - C. Gianotto (Brescia: Paideia, 2001); T. Rajak, "Jews and Christians as Groups in a Pagan World," in Ead., The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2002), part 3; D.K. Buell, "Race and Universalism in Early Christianity" (JECS 10:4 [2002]), 429-68; cf. Ead., "Rethinking the Relevance of Race for Early Christian Self-Definition" (HThR 94:4 [2001]), 449-76; M. Pesce, "Quando nasce il Cristianesimo?" (ASE 20 [2003]), 39-56; Eung Chun, Either Jew or Gentile: Paul's Unfolding Theology of Inclusivity (Westminster: J. Knox, 2003); Jossa, Giudei.

42 See C.&F. Jullien, Les Actes de Mar Mari (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); Id., Les Actes de Mâr Mâri, CSCO 602, Syri 234-5 (Louvain: Secr. CSCO, 2003); Id., Aux origines de l'Eglise de Perse, CSCO 604, Subs. 114 (ibid. 2003); an Italian transl. with essay and notes by me is forthcoming (Brescia: Paideia).

43 Drijvers, Abgarsage, 392. According to the Acts of Thomas (M. Geraard, Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 245. II, 1; Frede, Kirchenschriftsteller, 90-91; 186) the painter was not able to portray Jesus, who thus impressed his own image on a canvas.

44 Analysis of the evidence in my "Dal mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone" ('Ilu 4 [1999]), 173-93. Also: E. von Dobschütz, Christusbilder (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899); Id., "Der Briefwechsel zwischen Abgar und Jesus" (Zeitschr. wissensch. Theol. 43 [1900]), 422-86; Drijvers, "The Image," 13-31.

45 See my "Edessa," 128, to which, for prefects of Egypt in the Julio-Claudian age, I add L. Capponi, Augustan Egypt. The Creation of a Roman Province (London/New York: Routledge, 2005).

46 Jullien, Apôtres, 67; on the Edessan archives ibid. 123ff. Discussion in S. Brock, "Eusebius and Syriac Christianity," in Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, eds. H.W. Attridge - G. Hata (Leiden-New York: Brill, 1992), 212-34, with previous bibl. Already Lipsius, Abgarsage, and Acta Apocrypha, CVI-CXI, said that Eusebius and the Doctrina had, almost partially, the same Edessan sources; so Erbetta, Apocrifi, III, 80: the Doctrina depends on Eusebius but not only on him; Moraldi, Apocrifi, 1647, 1657-58 with bibl.: both Eusebius and the Doctrina depend on the documents of the Edessan archives, which the Doctrina amplifies. A common source is also supposed by Desreumaux, "La Doctrine," 186; Brock, "Eusebius and Syriac Christianity," 212-34 appears critical; further bibl. in González, Leyenda, 36 n. 41. On  Eusebius as Church historian see F. Winkelmann, "Historiography in the Age of Constantine," in Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity ed. G. Marasco (Leiden 2003), 3-41. On the reliability of Eusebius' sources see K. Toyota, "The authenticity of Eusebius' sources" (YClS 39 [1991]), 92-101.

47 The document was in Syriac; Syriac texts with translations accluded have been found in Mesopotamia; on bilingualism in this region in late antiquity see Taylor, "Bilingualism," 298-331.

48 For a critical analysis of Eusebius' account see my "Edessa," 121-22. Eusebius goes on translating the Syriac documents that came after the letters in his papers taken from the Edessan archives (HE 1.13.11); so, he tells the story of Thaddeus' mission.

49 The same words are in the parallel version of the Abgar story contained in the Syriac Acts of Mari, 4, in the context of the conversation between Abgar and Addai. The "Roman Empire" is here, just as in the Greek text, “the kingdom of the Romans."

50 Also see my "Edessa," 125.

51 The year in which Abgar sent two of his nobles and his archivist to the Roman governor, when on their way back they saw Jesus in Jerusalem for the first time, is said to be "the year 343 of the Greeks," or AD 31/2, while Jesus probably died in the spring of AD 30 (see J. Blinzler, Il processo di Gesù [It. tr. Brescia: Paideia, 1966²], 85ff.; J.P. Lemonon, Pilate et le gouvernement de la Judée [Paris: Lecoffre - Gabalda, 1981], 133; C.P. Thiede, Jesus. Der Glaube, die Fakten [Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich, 2003]), "Under the reign of our lord the Roman Caesar Tiberius and of king Abgar [...] the Black," according to the Doctrina. Abgar's appellative was known to Eusebius, too, who gives the year 340 of the Greeks = AD 29.

52 This Palestinian town, South-West of Jerusalem, also mentioned by Ammian. Marc. 14.8, took this name in AD 199/200, under Septimius Severus, in whose honour it was called Lucia Septimia Severiana Eleutheropolis in Severan coinage (Lucia Septimia Severiana was the name of Diospolis, too, founded in the same year): formerly it was Baetogabra. In the fourth-fifth cent. AD Eleutheropolis was the capital of Palaestina Eleutheropolitana, a wide district comprehensive of the toparchiae of Engaddis and Bethleptapha. Epitaphs and Church historians attest an early Christian presence (Vth cent.). See A. Jones, The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford: OUP, 1971²), 220; my "Osservazioni," 212-13; Jullien, Apôtres, 65. Another interesting clue in this sense is, at chap. 68, the sequence Aggai - Palut - 'Abshlama - Barsamya, which seems to reproduce the episcopal succession in Edessa in the third cent. Palut was bishop 192 to 209; see Kirsten, "Edessa," 569-70.

53 Soon after quoting Abgar's and Tiberius' letters, our document says that Aristides, Tiberius' envoy to Abgar, went back to Rome from Edessa with gifts from Abgar to Tiberius as further signs of his faithfulness and devotion to the emperor; he passed through Tiqunta (there was Claudius, "the second after the emperor"), and reached Artiqa: there was Tiberius, while Gaius supervised the regions near Caesar. Claudius' figure might be a reminiscence of Germanicus, who, during Tiberius' reign, but not after AD 19, acted as a plenipotentiary in Syria and in Orient with exceptional powers similar to those of Vitellius (so G. Firpo, Il problema cronologico della nascita di Gesù [Bre