Nevertheless, the legend is important both on account of its popularity and because it contains hints of actual facts, for evidently it comes from earlier times than the age of the written records in which it is preserved. According to this legend, King Abgar, who is suffering from a terrible disease, having heard of the cures our Lord is working, sends for Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus, while not coming in person, writes him a letter in which He promises to send one of His disciples who will cure the king's disease. Although we have no ground for admitting this letter to be genuine, it has become a historic composition because of its wide acceptance and the immense veneration with which it has been regarded. It was found in the year 1900, preceded by the king's letter to Jesus, inscribed in Greek characters of about the age of Eusebius on a lintel at Ephesus. At the time of the Heptarchy our Anglo-Saxon ancestors copied the letter out and wore it as a charm "against lightning and hail and perils by sea and land, by day and night and in dark places."[1] Thus its subsequent history has given it a factitious value that makes it worth being quoted in full. The letter is addressed to the notary Hanan, who has found Jesus at the house of Gamaliel, the chief of the Jews. It runs as follows: "Go and say to thy Lord that sent thee unto me, Happy art thou, that though thou hast not seen me, thou hast believed in me; for it is written of me that they which see me will not believe in me, and they which see me not,—they will believe in me. Now as to what thou
- ↑ Dom Kuyper's Book of Cerne, p. 205, cited by Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, p. 15.
attached to the place by Septimius Severus in a.d. 200. Moreover, the legend can be accounted for in some measure by the discovery of the actual fact that was the germ out of which it grew through the very natural confusion of two persons of the same name; and to account for a legend in this way is always the clinching argument that demolishes its claim. Abgar ix., a later king of Edessa, paid a visit to Rome during the bishopric of Zephyrinus (a.d. 202–218), and the name of Zephyrinus is also connected with Edessa through Serapion of Antioch. This Abgar may well have sent an embassy to Eleutheropolis. His earlier namesake could not possibly have done so nearly two centuries before the name of the place existed.
