Among the faithful of the
Assyrian Church of the East (ACOE) it is well-known fact that their traditional
liturgical language—Syriac—is “the language Jesus spoke.” (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, after
all, unlike Greek and Latin.) Among the
faithful of the ACOE it is also a well-known fact that Jesus founded the church
in Osrohene (Edessa) in Syria around the year 30 CE in his correspondence with
King Abgar V Ukama. Well, actually the
church was more formally established when the apostle Addai was sent to Edessa
(either by the apostle Thomas or by Jesus himself) to cure Abgar of his disease
after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected.
At any rate, the ACOE was established by Jesus, through the apostles’
authority, immediately after Jesus’ earthly life. Among the points of pride the faithful of the
ACOE tally to their church’s credit, this is among the most important. Jesus did not correspond with Tiberius
Caesar, nor deliberately send an apostle to Rome; Peter took on the task of
founding the church in Rome. But Jesus
founded the church in Edessa.
Upon the first incision of
the historian’s scalpel, complications and counterindications naturally seep
from this story. Jesus almost certainly
did not correspond with King Abgar V, and the story no doubt post-dates Jesus
by at least a century, and probably much more.
But instead of simply denying the plausibility of this particular myth,
we will do better to try to reach an understanding of the possible meanings and
functions of the myth for those who have believed, preserved and transmitted
it.
Two more or less authorized
versions of the story have survived. The
shorter and earlier version is preserved by the fourth-century (CE)
ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius of Caesarea.
Eusebius relates the story in this way:
The manner of the narrative
concerning Thaddeus is as follows. The
divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became famous among all men
because of his wonder-working power, and led to him myriads even of those who
in foreign lands were far remote from Judaea, in the hope of healing from
diseases and from all kinds of sufferings.
In this way King Abgar, the celebrated monarch of the nations beyond the
Euphrates, perishing from terrible suffering in his body, beyond human power to
heal, when he heard much of the name of Jesus and of the miracles attested
unanimously by all men, became his suppliant and sent to him by the bearer of a
letter, asking to find relief from his disease.
Jesus did not give heed to his request at the time, yet vouchsafed him a
letter of his own, promising to send one of his disciples for the cure of his
disease, and for the salvation alike of himself and of all his relations. Nor were the terms of his promise long in
being fulfilled. After his resurrection
from the dead and return into heaven, Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, was
divinely moved to send to Edessa Thaddeus, who was himself reckoned among the
number of the Seventy disciples, as herald and evangelist of the teaching about
Christ, and through him all the terms of our Saviour’s promise received
fulfilment. There is also documentary
evidence of these things taken from the archives at Edessa which was at that
time a capital city. At least, in the
public documents there, which contain the things done in antiquity and at the
time of Abgar, these things too are found preserved from that time to this; but
there is nothing equal to hearing the letters themselves, which we have extracted
from the archives… (Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiasticae I.13.1-5). [Here follow the text of the letters, the
content of which Eusebius has already summarized, and the ostensible
translation of a Syriac archival document describing Thaddeus’ activity in
Edessa.]
The fifth-century (?) Teaching
of Addai relates substantially the same story, with only a few
differences. In fact, much of the
language is very close if not identical.
The most important addition to this story is that the scribe who
delivers Abgar’s letter to Jesus and returns with Jesus’ reply is also an
accomplished painter, and he paints a portrait of Jesus which he carries with
the letter to King Abgar, who places the icon in an appropriate place in his
palace.
What treasure is there to be
found in this myth? The first thing that
we should acknowledge about this myth is that it is a foundation myth; it is,
in a sense, a creation story. It is not
a cosmogonic myth, but rather the story of a foundation of a community. From Jesus’ communication with Abgar and the
later fulfillment of that communiqué in the arrival and activity of
Thaddeus/Addai, the Christian community of Eastern Syria takes its origin. It is not the creation of a world, but rather
the creation of a Syrian Christian identity.
Even so, the contours of the story shares in the framework of what
Mircea Eliade termed archaic ontology. More
specifically, the Abgar Legend is set in a foundational past. As has been mentioned, historians are wont to
date the Abgar Legend to at least the third or fourth century CE. In fact, the legend is thought to actually
refer to the reign of Abgar IX at the end of the second century CE under whose
reign Christianity may have officially become the accepted religion of the
Edessene kings. This acceptance of
Christianity has then been retrojected back into the time of Jesus. The account in Eusebius ends with the
statement, “These things happened in the year 340.” Likewise, the account in the Teaching of
Addai places the events in the year 343 “of the Greeks.” Both of these dates point to dates based on
the Seleucid ascension to power in ca. 312 BCE, and they therefore indicate a
date of 29-33 CE. This exceedingly
important detail bestows verisimilitude on the entire story by placing it in illud
tempus. The formative age of the
beginning in this story is not a primeval time of the ancestors, exactly, but
it carries that function nevertheless. The
story is deliberately placed in the lifetime of Jesus, but not only so; it is
placed in the year of Jesus’ death and resurrection (when Jesus has come to
Jerusalem just before being crucified), which could be seen as the most
formative time possible for early Christianity.
If we are to take the Abgar
Legend as a genuine myth, however, we will see that although it does function
in this community-creating, foundational mode, it pulls against the reins of
Eliade’s theories. “An object or an act
becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats and archetype” in Eliade’s
“primitive ontology.” “Thus,” writes
Eliade, “reality is acquired solely through repetition or participation” (Mircea Eliade, The Myth
of the Eternal Return [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005 (1954)] 34). When
Eliade adduces the example of the mythicization of an historical person into a
hero, he points to the assimilation of the historic person to the archetypal,
mythical antecedent. This could be said
to be the case with King Abgar, if indeed the historical referent is Abgar IX
who is being assimilated to Abgar V in order to participate in the time of the
beginning. But this is no mere
“regression into a mythical time before Creation” (57), nor is it the
“abolition of history” (53). If indeed
the historical acceptance of Christianity under Abgar IX is injected into reign
of Abgar V, we have a dense notion of time and history. First, we have a repetition of Abgars; Abgar
the IX could be seen as a repetition of Abgar V. But that is not the focus of this story. The point is not that Abgar IX is assimilated
to the mythic Abgar V and therefore becomes a mythicized hero. Abgar IX is not even mentioned. Neither is this story a repetition in the
sense that the time of Abgar V is repeated in the fourth-century community of
Edessa. Second, the story of Abgar could
be understood as participation in the primordial time; by virtue of its very
existence the Edessene Christian community partakes of the creational activity
of Jesus, Abgar and Thaddeus/Addai. To
interpret the story in this way, however, would be to ignore the mode of
participation. This notion of
participation is not ahistorical, but rather indicates participation as a
historical cause of prior events. The
Abgar Legend does not mythicize history; it historicizes myth. This is a myth in historical form.
We have to ask why, then, the
Abgar Legend has set the coming of Christianity to Edessa in the formative time
of Jesus’ last days and the birth of Christianity in the aftermath of Jesus’
resurrection. The motivation seems
fairly straightforward. In his letter to
Jesus, Abgar attempts to persuade Jesus to come live in Edessa with him. The Gospels (particularly the Gospel of John)
frequently mention the “murmuring” of “the Jews” against Jesus. Jesus’ contemporary Abgar has heard similar
reports: “I heard that the Jews are
mocking you, and wish to ill-treat you.”
His solution is a change of location: “Now I have a city very small and
venerable which is enough for both [of us]” (Eusebius, HE I.13.8-9). Until its fall to the Sassanid Persians in
609 and Muslim expansion in 638, Edessa was the premiere center of Christianity
east of Antioch, with a vibrant literary and liturgical tradition. The Christian culture of Edessa is given a
long pedigree in the Abgar Legend. But
the Syriac tradition sat uncomfortably with the rest of Christianity. On the border with Parthia and later Persia,
Edessa was far less Roman than the rest of early Christianity. The liturgical language was neither Greek nor
Latin, but rather Syriac. Whereas most
of Christianity fell within the Roman Empire, a great deal of its early
literature partook of the utopian vision of Hellenistic culture to which the
Romans were heir. Early Christian Greek
literature, for instance, extends from France in the North and West, to Egypt
in the South, to Antioch in the East.
Syriac literature was far more localized, and Syriac-speaking
Christianity was on the locative side of Jonathan Z. Smith’s utopian-locative
pole.
In Smith’s critique of
Eliade, he advocates more attention to the periphery and not simply to the
center. To that end, Smith suggests a “dichotomy
between a locative vision of the world (which emphasizes place) and a utopian
vision of the world (using the term in its strict sense: the value of being
in no place)” (Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Wobbling Pivot,” Journal of Religion 52.2 [1972] 101).
It is not difficult to see how the Abgar Legend legitimizes a locative
practice of Christianity. Although Jesus
declines to take up Abgar’s offer and come to stay in Edessa, the description
by Abgar of a “small and venerable” city reveals its importance as a center for
Christian devotion. The addition of the
mandylion (image of Christ) in the version from the Teaching of Addai is
indicative here. We know from later
sources that this particular relic was in fact in existence and venerated in
Edessa at least by the fourth century CE.
Early Christian religion was basically utopian. Like Alexander, wherever Christ was present,
there was the Center. In Edessa, the
mandylion (whether painted by Hannan the scribe or miraculously produced by Jesus
himself) represented Christ’s presence, just like imperial icons and their
religious progeny. The image of Christ
thus provided the gravity for a sacred Center, a locativization of a utopian
religion. And it accomplished this
largely by means of a local myth. The
mandylion is only in Edessa, sent from Jesus to King Abgar. This locative concern highlights the
political concerns of the myth. As
Carrasco argued, “[Smith’s] locative view…in which everything has value and
even sacrality when it is in its place, is an imperial view of the world
designed to ensure social and symbolic control on the part of the king and the
capital” (Carrasco, "Star Gatherers and Wobbling Suns," History of Religions 26.3 [1987] 287-88). No doubt, a strong motivation for the
mythographer of the Abgar Legend is its legitimation not only of the local
Edessene cult, but also of the local monarchy.
Abgar is presented as a friend of Christ, unlike the Jews, and
implicitly unlike the Romans. In a time
when the Roman Church was gathering primacy like a rolling snowball gathers
snow, the Abgar legend emphasizes the local dynasty over the imperial
system. But it is, nevertheless, not an
anarchic story. It is extremely
comfortable with the idea of monarchy, and serves to condone Abgar and his line
through Jesus.
There is, nevertheless, a
tension in this myth between the locative and the utopian. First, although Jesus does send an icon in
his stead (in one version), Jesus does not actually come to Edessa but remains
in Jerusalem, arguably the more central Sacred Center. We are left with a bit of a conundrum. Edessa is portrayed as the Sacred Center that
it is, but it is a center on the periphery.
Jesus remains in Jerusalem, but he sends an apostle (actually, an
apostle sends an apostle). The authority
for the Edessene locative Christian religion is twofold: first, from the interaction between Abgar and
Jesus, and Jesus’ promise that he will send an apostle; second, from the actual
founding of Christianity in Edessa through Thaddeus/Addai. Since Jesus does not come in person, there is
always something missing from the locative schema, and Smith’s categories seem
to falter. The religion may be utopian,
but in Edessa, is it performed “in locative voice”?
In short, then, the Abgar
Legend can be seen as a foundation myth that establishes a locative version of
a generally utopian religion, and legitimates the political structures that are
tied with the performance of the religion in Edessa. But to leave the matter in the past would be
unfortunate. As Wendy Doniger hesitantly
notes, “myths are remembered precisely because they are about the sorts of
events in the past that are not bound to the past, that continue to be given
meaning in the present” (Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Other Peoples’ Myths [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988] 31). The materially locative concerns of the Abgar
Legend are now moot. Edessa is no longer
a great bastion of Christianity in the East.
It is has since been thoroughly Arabicized and Syriac Christianity in
general has dwindled, and is in fact more populous outside of Syria. Of the churches that still prize the Abgar
Legend and the apostle Thaddeus/Addai is the ACOE, which is headquartered (if
anywhere) in Chicago. But that does not
mean that the myth is no longer important.
The faithful of the ACOE still employ the myth in particular in their
“discussions” with Roman Catholics. The
ACOE was founded thirty years before Peter founded the church in
Rome. Sometimes the point in these
discussions is that the church begins with Jesus’ correspondence with Abgar; sometimes
the Church of the East begins with the preaching of Addai. Either way, the myth is employed to privilege
the Church of the East over against the Roman Catholic Church, and the papal
mythology in particular.
This last point leads us to
some concluding remarks. As Doniger
reminds us, “a myth is a part of a larger group of narratives, a
mythology. A myth cannot function as a
myth in isolation; it shares its themes, its cast of characters, even some of
its events with other myths” (Doniger, Other Peoples’ Myths, 31). The Abgar Legend and the mythology of
Edessene Christianity invite comparison with the mythologies of other forms of
Christianity. Papal and Edessene
mythologies share a basic cast of characters because they share the
mythological terrain of the Bible. The
Church of Rome has its foundation myth with Peter, and to a lesser extent Paul,
as the founders; the Church of the East adopted a foundation myth with Jesus,
and to a lesser extent Thaddeus/Addai (via Thomas), as the founders. The vitality of the Abgar myth lies
precisely in that contrast. The myth is
a story upon which the truth of the identity of the Church of the East is based
(cf. Doniger, Other Peoples’ Myths, 35), and only with reference to this
myth can talk of a mutual Christian identity with Roman Catholicism be
negotiated. Syriac Christianity, despite
its locative myths, is largely practiced outside of Syria, but even so the
locative Abgar myth remains a source of identity-formation for members of the
Church of the East.
No comments:
Post a Comment