ADDAI

:''For Colts running back, see Joseph Addai''
Among the Eastern Orthodox faithful, 'Saint Addai' is the person who was sent by Saint Thomas the Apostle to Edessa in order to heal King Abgar, who had fallen ill. Addai stayed to evangelize, and converted Abgar—or Agbar, or in one Latin version "Acbar" — and his people including Saint Aggai and Saint Mari. He is known as one of the great apostles to Syria and Persia. He is considered to have been one of the early Catholicoses of the East, following Saint Thomas the Apostle. He and Saint Mari are credited with the Divine Liturgy of Addai and Mari. Addai is also known as 'Addeus'— or 'Thaddeus' which is a doublet for Jude Thaddeus.
The story of Addai, the apostle of Edessa, accounts for the growing Christian communities in northern Mesopotamia and in Syria east of Antioch. The identity of the specific Agbar/Abgar is open to interpretation: see Abgar. The fully developed legend of Addai is embodied in the Syriac document, ''Doctrine of Addai,'' which recounts the role of Addai and makes him one of the 72 Apostles sent out to spread the Christian faith.^[1]
The purely legendary tale of how Abgarus of Edessa and Jesus had corresponded was first recounted in the 4th century by the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea^[2] and it was retold in elaborated form by Ephrem the Syrian. In the origin of the legend, Eusebius had been shown documents purporting to contain the official correspondence that passed between Abgar and Jesus, and he was well enough convinced by their authenticity to quote them extensively in his ecclesiastical history. By the time the legend had returned to Syria, the purported site of the miraculous image, it had been embroidered into a tissue of miraculous happenings:^[3] the ''Doctrine of Addai'' is full of miracles, and anti-semitism in the garbled story of "Protonice" consort of Claudius, searching for the Cross, and Golgotha and the Holy Sepuchre, all of them in possession of the Jews.
Addai appears in unorthodox material as well, in two previously unknown Apocalypses attributed to James the Just found at Nag Hammadi in 1945.^[4]

Contents

References

External links

References

1. Luke 10:1 – 20
2. Eusebius, Church History, 1.13 and 3.1
3. Walter Bauer, ''Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity'', 1934, (in English 1971) (On-line text)
4. Robert Eisenman, ''James the Brother of Jesus : The key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls,'' 1997 (Viking Penguin). Especially the section "Thaddeus, Judas Thomas and the conversion of the Osrhoeans", pp 189ff.

External links

★ Saint Addai in the Catholic Forum

★ Saints Addai & Mari in the Irish Saints Index

★ The Legend of Abgar in the Catholic Encyclopedia

★ The Liturgy of Addeus and Maris in the Catholic Encyclopedia

★ Doctrine of Addai in the Catholic Encyclopedia

★ ''Doctrine of Addai'' - online text in English