Apostles

THE APOSTLES : M.M.NINAN
A
(4) The Abgar legend, dealing with a supposed correspondence between Abgar, king of Syria, and
Christ, states in its Syriac form, as translated by Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica, I, xiii, 6-22) , that
"after the ascension of Christ, Judas, who was also called Thomas, sent to Abgar the apostle
Thaddaeus, one of the Seventy" (compare Hennecke, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, 76 ff).
Jerome, however, identifies this same Thaddaeus with Lebbaeus and "Judas .... of James" of Luke
(Lk 6:16). Hennecks (op. cit., 473, 474) surmises that in the original form of the Abgar legend
Thomas was the central figure, but that through the influence of the later "Acts of Thomas", which
required room to be made for Thomas' activity in India, a later Syriac recension was made, in
which Thomas became merely the sender of Thaddaeus to Edessa, and that this was the form
which Eusebius made use of in his translation According to Phillips (compare Phillips, The Doctrine
of Addai the Apostle), who quotes Zahn in support, the confusion may be due to the substitution of
the Greek name Thaddaeus for the name Addai of the Syriac manuscripts.
He is reported as suffering martyrdom together with Simon the Zealot in Persia. postles Jude and
Bartholomew are traditionally believed to have been the first to bring Christianity to Armenia, and
are therefore venerated as the patron saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Linked to this
tradition is the Saint Thaddeus Monastery (now in Northern Iran) and Saint Bartholomew
Monastery (now in southeastern Turkey) which were both constructed in what was then Armenia.