ABGAR. — Name of several kings of Osrhoene. The best known are:
1° ABGAR V UKHAMA (“the black,” according to Tacitus), who reigned from 4 B.C. to A.D. 7 and then again from A.D. 13 to 15. A legend refers to him, the earliest version of which is contained in two letters that Eusebius found in the archives of Edessa and translated from Syriac into Greek: it concerns the correspondence of A. with Jesus (Hist. eccl. I, 13).
In the first letter, which was supposedly delivered by the courier Ananias, A. begs Jesus to come and visit him in order to heal him. In the second, Jesus replies, apologizing for being unable to go to him personally and promising to send him, after his Ascension, the disciple Thaddeus (Addai). Traces of Tatian’s Diatessaron found in A.’s letter are one of the best arguments for proving the spurious character of the letters and dating them to around the beginning of the 3rd century. A more developed form of the legend is found in the Syriac Doctrine of Addai (ed. Phillips, London 1876), from the 4th century, in which Jesus no longer replies in writing, but orally. A., healed by Addai, becomes a Christian. Here A.’s courier is a skilled painter who makes a portrait of Jesus’ face.
2° ABGAR IX, king from A.D. 179 to 216, who became tributary to the Romans in 195. His court, visited by Julius Africanus (cf. Kestoi, I, VII, ed. J. R. Vieillefond, Paris 1932, p. 49), was frequented by the Gnostic leader Bardesanes. Recent investigations show that A.’s conversion to Christianity, together with that of his people, is highly problematic, contrary to the view, almost universally maintained by scholars until now.