So to begin considering this all, let us lay out some critical facts from Eusebius' account:

1.  King Abgarus (Agbar) of Edessa is the other correspondent.
2.  Jesus said he would not come himself, but would send another.
3.  Eusebius asserts that he gained his information from the archives of Edessa itself.
4.  Eusebius offers a translation of what he says was originally in the Syriac.
5.  He indicates the name of the courier.
6.  He indicates that there is a later addendum to the manuscript, indicating that Jesus word had been kept by the coming of Thaddeus.

There are several parts of this which deserve attention because they greatly add to the credibility of the documents themselves.  Namely, that he found the material in the actual archives of Edessa itself, ie, not word of mouth.   He saw it with his own eyes and did the translation for us.  And secondly, giving us the correct language in use in Edessa:  Syriac.

While points #1, #5, and #6 are objectively verifiable and falsifiable, these two (#3 and #4) are very powerful examples of information that could help someone falsify the account.  But its worth mentioning the other ones first.

#1.  There is no one who doubts that King Agbar was in fact the king of Edessa in the time period.  A fabricator trying to invent this correspondence would have had to make efforts to make sure that they at least got the right king.  Of course, someone telling the truth would also recount the right king, too.  At anyrate, the point is nailed.

#5.  We might be able to gain external evidence of the existence of this man.  If it ever turns up, we can further consider the account corroborated.

#6.  That someone- anyone- went to Edessa is corroborated by numerous Christian legends that it was Thaddeus who did so.  There are no rival stories suggesting Thaddeus actually went elsewhere.  Whatever merit we give to the documents extant, we have no reason to think that Thaddeus did NOT go to Edessa, and given the uniformity of the 'legends' good reason to think it was to Edessa he went.

These are good ways to test the credibility of the documents, but not as good, in my opinion, as #3-4.

#3.  Such statements as "You have written evidence of these things taken from the archives of Edessa,[1] which was at that time a royal city. For in the public registers there, which contain accounts of ancient times and the acts of Abgarus, these things have been found preserved down to the present time."  Are often marginalized by modern scholars and skeptics.  We have a similar example in 1 Cor 15 when Paul states that Jesus appeared resurrected to 500 people at the same time, many of whom are still alive.  Such comments do not come for no reason.  They are invitations to challenge, corroborate, or refute the claims being made.

Eusebius points his readers to go and see the documents for themselves in Edessa if they don't believe him.  At the time, that is a pretty bold challenge.  It also makes it of continuing value today because if we discover these archives and find this correspondence in them, that will be a great credibility boost.  But if they are not there- that's bad.  Why expose oneself to such refutation?  Edessa remained strong and steady for a hundred years or more after Eusebius recorded this account.  There are NO accounts disputing what Eusebius said based on an examination of the records in Edessa themselves.

#4.  Its one thing to get the King at the time right- its another to get the finer cultural details right.  Greek was the language of the empire.  A stinker trying to deceive people could have easily created an account in the Greek.  However, Edessa was one of the limited regions of the Roman Empire that clung to Syriac.  Eusebius does not merely get this cultural point correct, but he states that the documents themselves are in Syriac and that he is only offering a translation.

That opens up another line for verification and falsification.  If any documents turn up in Syriac, that will support the credibility of the documents themselves and Eusebius in general.  If they never do, but some Greek document appears that is similar to Eusebius', we might think he either lied or was lied to.

So what we have here is a pretty bold set of factual assertions which can open Eusebius up for possible rebuttal.  Such assertions are epistemologically more robust than assertions that cannot be tested at all, even in principle.

The first argument against it is purely bizarre, especially coming from a normally conservative place.  I suppose it could only have come from a conservative source, but it is completely ignorant.  From "New Advent"

"The crucial passage in Our Lord's letter, however, is that which promises the city of Edessa victory over all enemies. It gave the little town a popularity which vanished on the day that it fell into the hands of conquerors. It was a rude shock to those who believed the legend; they were more ready to attribute the fall of the city to God's anger against the inhabitants than to admit the failure of a safeguard which was no less trusted to at that time than in the past."

If anything, this argument only shows that Jesus' ability at prophecy is lacking.  All we are trying to do is show it as evidence of Jesus' existence.  I suppose it was easier for the New Advent Catholic in charge of putting this together to eliminate the blow to Jesus' prophetic abilities by dismissing the account altogether.  That strikes me as being extremely disengenous.  The statement by Jesus, allegedly is:

"And your city will be blessed, and no enemy in the future will ever take it over."

Now, Eusebius does not record this last sentence.  It strikes me as interesting that liberal scholars can see an interpolation in just about anything and everything, but here seems actually worthy of investigation and they miss it.  Eusebius provides us with the earliest recitation of the passage, again, out of what he claims is the original in the archives itself.  If we are allowed to invent explanations willy nilly like the Jesus Seminar does, why can't we suppose that some later Armenian in Edessa decided to add that one little blurb.... ?

or, even if it were there, why not remember who the Enemy was to Jesus?  Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven being 'within you'- does it not strike anyone as a little odd anyway that he would issue forth on the perpetuity of a worldly kingdom and worldly enemies?  Shouldn't we expect something a little more... spiritual?  Edessa remains (as far as I know) a very Christian city.  As yet, no enemy has yet overcome THAT.

These considerations appear to be completely absent.  This 'crucial passage' has little to do with the authenticity of the correspondence as a whole, and even in regards to saving Jesus' honor in regards to his prophetic abilities, there are a number of courses one could choose to go on before giving up hope.

But New Advent goes on:

"The fact related in the correspondence has long since ceased to be of any historical value. The text is borrowed in two places from that of the Gospel, which of itself is sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter. Moreover, the quotations are made not from the Gospels proper, but from the famous concordance of Tatian, compiled in the second century, and known as the "Diatessaron", thus fixing the date of the legend as approximately the middle of the third century."

What a joke.  The text is borrowed from that of the Gospel?  If the more conservative accounting of the NT era documents is accurate, the correspondence would be older than even that of the gospels!  Why not say that the Gospel borrowed from it?  (I'm not sure which 'Gospel' the NA site has in mind, but I could figure it out).  Or, in regards to the 'concordance of Tatian,' why not consider the idea that Tatian himself had some other source?  

Or shall we argue that the Gospel itself was inventing things whole cloth, and Tatian was inventing things whole cloth, and neither 'borrowed' from anyone else?  (absurd in both cases)  That what Jesus said to Abgar is consistent with what he said elsewhere ought to be powerful corroboration of the authenticity of the text!  Not against it!  If Jesus had said, "I will bless you with a worldly kingdom and three dogs in china ate on the Apollo Moon Lander" we should know that something is amiss in the document.

That Jesus used language that is similar elsewhere powerfully suggests a consistency of message and corroboration of ALL the documents in question.  He blessed Abgar for believing without seeing him- which if it had been otherwise we would have known something was foul.  He said that he had to complete something, which fits pretty well.  He said he would send someone else after he had finished his work- we have lots of reasons to think Thaddeus fulfilled that part.  Christianity stretches back in Edessa to the first and second centuries- surely it requires an explanation!

The message is short and sweet.  It is concise, is consistent with the attitude of Jesus as described elsewhere in LATER DOCUMENTS (if we want to be fair even for a moment and consider that its possible the correspondence is authentic, they would be later).  It is not long winded like the Epistle of the Laodiceans which gives us a lot of statistical fodder for seeing in what ways it was cut and pasted.

It is not 'borrowing' to take a concept and apply it in a different situation using similar words.  For example, if my wife asks me to go to the store and I tell her I can't because I'm going to a game, but then later on someone asks me to help move a shed, and I again point out that I can't, because I'm going to a game, it does not mean that I am 'borrowing' the explanation I used from my wife.  The reality is the same, it just gets applied to a different concern, and obviously is offered using similar language.

Let's move on:

Oh wait.  That's it.

The objections against the correspondence basically revolve around the view that the city of Edessa was later sacked by an enemy and that the language used by Jesus (the language given by Abgar for some reason is not focused on at all) is similar to language we have in other places and in other sources.  That's it.

Now, Hegisippus had stuff similar in language to other materials, too.  That didn't invalidate Hegesippus in the eyes of New Advent.  We ONLY know of Hegesippus from Eusebius- but we know of Abgar's correspondence from Eusebius and a number of other external sources.

It seems to me that the only way at this point to really legitmately discredit these letters is to find the actual archive that Eusebius mentioned and then notice that the documents are not there.  However, its really interested to find this objection listed in the Wikiw site rejecting the correspondence:

"Biblical scholars now generally believe that the letters were fabricated, probably in the 3rd century AD, and "planted" where Eusebius eventually found them."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgarus_of_Edessa

These 'Biblical scholars' of course are almost completely liberal scholars, like those in the "Jesus Seminar," who have taken it as a starting point (not an ending point) that Jesus was only a roaming prophet dude who has endured oodles of accumulated dogma.  But notice what's interesting here...  They think they were fabricated... but PLANTED where Eusebius found them.  So, what actually ought to be a powerful way to corroborate what Eusebius said is plugged into a little conspiracy mongering that tries to diminish the significance of taking the documents, and the data, on their face.

But this objection admits that the correspondence was there in the archives of Edessa.  Even the Jesus Seminar uses material as reliable that is cited only in Eusebius, or another author.  Why not consider it all 'planted'?  Engaging in such argumentation ought to lead us to the conclusion that nothing at all in history can be reliably known.

It is no wonder, I suppose, that so many have come to take that point of view.  However, I submit to the reader of this thread that if you've admitted already that what Eusebius said was there was really there, and you are faced with source documents in three important languages... Syriac, Armenian, and Greek (and translated not long after into Latin), and inscriptions to boot, and a handful of legends describing the outcome of the alleged correspondence, and a long history of Christianity in the city in question- which needs some other explanation if we are to reject this one- it is a sound historical conclusion that these letters are authentic, and perhaps....  And perhaps we ought to give liberal scholarship the boot, not because we don't agree with their conclusions, but rather to accept their conclusions and more importantly, their methodology, is to undermine the historical method altogether.

Very nice, SJ   !

Unfortunately, it's bull   . When I read the correspondence it just didn't ring true - it sounds a bit too convincing on both sides. In addition, it would be surprising if only one such piece of evidence existed. A very quick google search reveals the following:

As concerns the "letters from Jesus's own hand," no scholar of any worth, Christian or otherwise, has ever considered these "letters" to be "genuine." Like most Christian writings and artifacts, these "letters" are forgeries. The Catholic Encyclopedia truthfully asserts that the legendary event purported in the most infamous of these "letters," i.e., that to "King Abgar," is an "imaginary occurrence," and states concerning the spurious letter from Christ:
The text is borrowed in two places from that of the Gospel, which of itself is sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter. Moreover, the quotations are made not from the Gospels proper, but from the famous concordance of Tatian, compiled in the second century, and known as the "Diatessaron," thus fixing the date of the legend as approximately the middle of the third century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia also says of this "letter":

Its legendary environment and the fact that the Church at large did not hand down the pretended epistle from Our Lord as a sacred document is conclusive against it.

As Wells says in The Historical Evidence for Jesus:

About 1200, Constantinople was so crammed with relics that one may speak of a veritable industry with its own factories. Blinzler (a Catholic New Testament scholar) lists, as examples, letters in Jesus' own hand, the gold brought to the baby Jesus by the wise men, the twelve baskets of bread collected after the miraculous feeding of the 5000, the throne of David, the trumpets of Jericho, the axe with which Noah made the Ark, and so on . . .

And Wheless says in Forgery in Christianity:

[T]hat "very dishonest writer," Bishop Eusebius, in the fourth century...forged the Letters between Abgar and Jesus, falsely declaring that he had found the original documents in the official archives, whence he had copied and translated them into his Ecclesiastical History... If the Gospel tales were true, why should God need pious lies to give them credit? Lies and forgeries are only needed to bolster up falsehood: "Nothing stands in need of lying but a lie." But Jesus Christ must needs be propagated by lies upon lies; and what better proof of his actuality than to exhibit letters written by him in his own handwriting? The "Little Liars of the Lord" were equal to the forgery of the signature of their God - false letters in his name, as above cited from that exhaustive mine of clerical falsities, the Catholic Encyclopedia.

If that is the best you can do, SJ, it's not good enough. This is patently as fake as the Shroud of Turin, and trying to make a case for it is ridiculous. It's yet another lie to cover The Big Lie.

If you think that the entire historical record is a complete fabrication by malicious Christians, you are no longer in touch with reality. You have become the poster child to Cogito's Insanity Man. Its time to get out the aluminum foil helmets. The aliens are coming for you, man. They're gonna getcha. They're gonna getcha....

Woah, slow down there, SJ, you're starting to make things up again. Just because I do not believe this fabricated letter is evidence of the existence of Jesus does not mean I am insane.

You do not know what I believe or don't believe in. You rarely ask.

I have asked in the past, but you will not answer straight questions. By the time we have defined terms and burnt up google to please your risible semanticism the point of the original question is lost. I can assume that you believe in a few basic tenets of the Christian faith, or do I have to ask you about each one individually, subjecting myself to ridicule and inane diatribes until I get a half answer seventeen posts later   ?

I think that what is frightening you about this whole thing is that if authentic, it means you'd have to revisit your entire stance regarding Jesus. As true as I think that is, all I am submitting it is as evidence for Jesus' existence. Just his mere existence. You cannot even discuss evidence for his existence? LoL, there is nothing in this account that is supernatural, is there? Is there? The man's mere existence frightens you?

No. I have already stated that I would love it if there was a God - a Jesus would be even better.

What are you talking about? Which translation are you speaking of?

From the Catholic Encyclopedia: "The text is borrowed in two places from that of the Gospel, which of itself is sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter. Moreover, the quotations are made not from the Gospels proper, but from the famous concordance of Tatian, compiled in the second century, and known as the "Diatessaron," thus fixing the date of the legend as approximately the middle of the third century."

It doesn't matter which translation, SJ, the fact that it is from mid 3rd century is just icing on the cake - all translations of the Gospels were written after Jesus was dead, so how could they be quoted while he was alive? This is a deal breaker. Like the confession of the artist who faked the Shroud of Turin, or the confession of the faker of the first Loch Ness Monster photo, or the fact that Joe Smith "translated" with his head in a hat containing a magic stone - it is a waste of time to investigate further. To do so only lends credence to lies.

Did you bother to google "Tatian concordance" to see if you can find the text yourself?

"I accept the Catholic church's research"

Exactly.

"I accept it because they, of all people, would wish to at least say the letters were possibly real unless they were manifestly false."

Actually, that's not true.  It occurred to me last night that perhaps the average reader might not know that.  Does the year 1054 AD mean anything to you?

"I have no idea why this makes you so proud of yourself."

It's very simple, Stathei.  I have and did put a lot of research into this, and just about everything else I contribute on the site.  My views are based on the best consideration of the evidence that I can muster.  I expect, when I produce evidence, to be engaged on the evidence.  You can stick to your 'gut' feeling all you like, but its supremely arrogant of you to willfully acknowledge that you yourself haven't done any of your own investigation and have decided to side with a view that fits your 'gut,' and then call ME a loser.

I just can't believe that you walk around here feeling like you're being insulted all the time when you flatly insult me left and right- and THEN don't even engage me in the evidence!

"By "none" I meant the entire story of Jesus - the entire basis of your religion and the religion of about one third of the Earth is based on made up stories."

Which is exactly what I thought you meant.  So my comment still stands.

"I would never call you that, SJ. I said you were "on a loser" if you went with these faked letters - gambling expression."

lol, suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.  

"Also, I do not feel that I am being insulted all the time..."

hehheh

"Has it ever occurred to you that the only reason you are Christian is because of your culture? You are perfectly willing to dismiss Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddism, Mormonism, etc., in the same way I dismiss your Chrisianity. Why? Because you weren't born in Saudi, Israel, India or Utah. Very few embrace a religion outside their culture. Doesn't that tell you something?"

Since I rejected Christianity at the age of 18 and then rebuilt from scratch, considering all of the things you listed and more, I do not think your question applies to me.

"So you think the two thirds of the world who do not believe that the New Testament is factual are all "out of touch with reality"?"

You don't merely think its not factual!  You think its ALL MADE UP.  Every single bit of it forged or invented.  That's off the deep end, man.

Its one thing to think- for example- that the story of troy is not completely 'factual' its quite another to think it was made up or forged and to cite Wheless on me.

"I guess my point is you did not rebuild from scratch"

I'm sorry, I did.  I'm sorry if that blows your caricature.  Fortunately, my personal history is not defined by your expectations.

"I believe my question does apply to you, SJ - do you disagree?"

Sorry.  I said  "considering all of the things you listed and more"

You can disbelieve me if you like.  As clearly demonstrated in this thread, when the chips are down you are more than happy to believe whatever fits your paradigm without going further, and then lampooning someone who has a different view who HAS examined the evidence.  So, it seems to me that I could produce evidence of my extensive intellectual effort I put forth to try to come to the truth, and as it wouldn't fit your paradigm, or your caricature, it wouldn't make any difference.

You do understand that I consider the real insult here not to be you calling me a loser, but for me to go through all the effort to do research and form an evidence driven point of view and have you just mock the whole position without doing an ounce of serious investigation at all?  The sheer audacity of it.  AND YOU THINK YOU ARE BEING REASONABLE.  You're not.  You're being INSULTING.  What would have been reasonable would have to simply remained agnostic pending further inquiry.  Too much to ask for, I guess.

In hopes of perhaps reviving THAT discussion, let me again ask if the date of 1054 AD means anything to you.