Correspondence Between Abgarus and Jesus
- Letter 1 -
Abgarus' first letter to the Lord
Abgarus, toparch in Edessa, to Jesus, the good Saviour, Who has appeared in the land around Jerusalem, all hail.
2
I have heard of You and Your healing power, how You perform it without medicines and herbs. For the saying goes that You make the blind see and that the lame walk; that You clean the lepers, and cast out the impure spirits, and heal those, that fight with lingering diseases, and finally even raise the dead.
3
After I heard all these things about You, I concluded for myself, one of two things had to be true, either You are God, descent from heaven; or You, who doest these things, are at least a Son of the great God!
4
I therefore request You through this letter, to take the trouble to come to me, and heal the illness that I have!
5
I also heard that the Jews murmur against You and plot evil against You. I however have a small, but well ordered city, which will be sufficient for both of us; therefore come to me, You my most esteemed friend Jesus, and stay with me in my city and in my country; there You will be carried by everybody on hands and in the heart.
6
I expect You with greatest longing in my heart! - Sent through my most faithful servant Brachus.
The Lords answer on this letter of the King Abgarus
7
Abgarus, you are blessed because you have not seen Me, and yet believed in Me! For you see, it is written of Me: that those, who have seen Me, will not believe in Me, and that those, who have not seen Me, believe and may live in eternity!
8
But in regards to your concerns, for which reason you wrote to Me, that I shall come to you, because I am pursued here in the land of the Jews, I say unto you: that this is necessary, because for that reason I came into the world that all this becomes fulfilled in Me, at this location; and that I, in a short while after all this is fulfilled on Me, will ascend to Him, from Whom I came from eternity!
9
Nevertheless be patient in your undemanding illness. However, after My ascension into heaven, I will send a disciple to you that he may heal your illness, and give to you and all who are with you, the true health!
10
Written through Jacob, a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, and send through Brachus, the king's courier out of the region of Gennesaret.
11
Soon after Abgarus received the exceedingly heavenly answer from the Lord Jesus, it so happened, that the kings oldest son and heir to the throne was overcome by a deadly illness to his body, to which all physicians in Edessa said, that it is incurable. - That brought the poor Abgarus nearly to despair. In such overwhelming distress, he wrote the following second letter to the good Saviour Jesus, which read therefore: