ABGAR. - Name of several kings of Osroene. The best known are:

1. ABGAR V UKHAMA ("the black," according to Tacitus), who reigned from 4 B.C. to 7 A.D. and then again from 13 to 15 A.D. A legend refers to him, whose first redaction is contained in two letters that Eusebius found in the archive of Edessa and translated from Syriac into Greek: it concerns the correspondence of A. with Jesus (Hist. ecl. I, 13).

In the first letter, which was supposedly brought by the courier Ananias, A. begs Jesus to come to him to heal him. In the second, Jesus replies, excusing himself from being able to go personally to him and promising to send him, after his Ascension, the disciple Thaddeus (Addai). Traces of Tatian's Diatessaron, found in the letter of A., are one of the best arguments for proving the spurious character of the letters and for fixing their chronology 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), of the 4th century, in which Jesus no longer replies in writing, but orally. A., healed by Addai, becomes a Christian. The courier of A. here is a skilled painter, who makes a portrait of the face of Jesus.

2. ABGAR IX, king from 179 to 216 A.D., who made himself a tributary of 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 the conversion of A. to Christianity together with his people is very problematic, contrary to the almost universal opinion maintained until now by scholars.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: R. A. Lipsius, Die edessenische Abgarsage, Brunswick 1880; L. J. Tixeront, Les origines de l'Église d'Édesse et la légende d'Abgar, Paris 1888; I. Ortiz de Urbina, Le origini del cristianesimo in Edessa, in Gregorianum, 14 (1934), pp. 82-91.

Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina

@incollection{ec1_abgar, author = {Ortiz, de Urbina Ignazio}, title = {Abgar}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {75}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/abgar} }

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