THE CHURCH OF ABYSSINIA.
By Geo. H. Schodde
BY PROF. GEO. H. SCHODDE, D.D. The events that have been transpiring in the last year or two on the eastern coast of Africa, notably the colonization projects and military expedition of the Italians, have brought into public prominence a people and a church of peculiar historic interest to all Christendom, namely, the people and the church of Abyssinia. In fact, the Abyssinian is the oldest national church in existence. While it does not date back quite as far as the Syrian, the Armenian, and one or two representatives of primitive Christianity in the east, it is the only one in this group that has preserved its composite and united national character to the present day. It can not claim to have been a prominent factor and force in the development of Christian thought or activity; but that it was not this is owing not to an absence of ability but to historic agencies as remarkable as they are unique. If any church on the globe is entitled to the name of “hermit” church, it is that of Abyssinia. Christianized in the fourth century, Abyssinia remained in touch and tone with the church at large only for a few decades. In the first centuries, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the Abyssinian too, like all her sister churches, became involved in the great theological and Christological controversies of the age. Taking sides with the Monophysites of the Coptic, Armenian, and other churches, it with these severed its connection with the Greek Church, when the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. condemned the Monophysitic doctrines. Only about two centuries later, Mohammedanism conquered Egypt, and separated the Abyssinian people and church entirely from all other Christianized peoples. It remained substantially a “hermit” church, until, beginning with its rediscovery in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, it has repeatedly come into contact with other Christianities; with the Roman Catholics, through the Jesuits, who once even succeeded in converting an Abyssinian king, Basilides; then with the Protestants, through the Basel and London mission societies, and through the Lutheran Swedes, and recently again with the Greek Church, through the embassies from Russia to Abyssinia, and from Abyssinia to St. Petersburg. Practically the Abyssinian is still a hermit church, as all these efforts to rejuvenate her in doctrine and life have in reality been without material effect. As a result of all this we have in the Abyssinian, to all intents and purposes, tho in the shape of a petrification of forms and doctrine, the Greek Church of the fourth and fifth Christian centuries. What Abyssinia was in the days when her voluntary separation from the church at large took place, this it is substantially still. They are Semitic people, and altho the modern representatives of the Ethiopians of history, they are really not Ethiopians at all—i.e., they are not black. They are Caucasian, and are kindred people to the Jews, Arabs, Babylonians, and other history-making nations of the east. Originally they came from southern Arabia, now discovered by the German traveler, Edward Glaser, to have been the seat of the kingdom of the queen of Sheba. Of this the Abyssinians have still a distinct tradition. Their royal house claims to be descended from the house of Judah and of David, through a son, Menelek, born to Solomon after the visit paid him by the queen of Sheba. The present King Menelek is still able to trace his pedigree with more or less—undoubtedly less—reliability through all his ancestors to King Solomon, and even the patriarch Judah. On account of this claim the official seat of Abyssinia still contains the figure of a lion, with the inscription, “The Lion of Judah.” Belonging to the Semitic peoples, the Abyssinian, like all her sisters in this family of races, is characterized by a decided conservative trait, standing in bold contrast to the restlessness of the Aryan or Indo-European peoples. As an outcome of this the highest idea and ideal of Abyssinian church life was the preservation of the status of doctrine and life which marked the stage of development at the time when the separation took place, and through which, at least to a great degree, this isolation was caused. Accordingly, during all these centuries the church remained in statu quo, shared in nothing the development of church life elsewhere, and is now substantially what it was twelve hundred years ago. It represents in its dogmas, its doctrines, its extensive liturgies, its literature, and the like, the Greek Church, under the influence of which the Abyssinians were originally converted to the Gospel. Only in one matter has there been a change, and this took place of a necessity, tho unperceived by those whom it affected. This change was the petrification of teaching and life in the church. The hull and shell of Christianity is still there; its life and spirit are gone. “He who does not advance recedes,” has proved to be the case here, as in so many cases in history. But it is an ill wind that blows no good, and the forced and voluntary isolation and the semper-idem principle of conservatism so characteristic of the Abyssinian Church, has not been without its good consequences. Shut up in its mountain fastnesses, “the Switzerland of Africa,” the Abyssinian Church has preserved a large number of specimens of early Christian literature lost to the Græco-Latin Church world in the wars and tumults that shook Europe in the first ten centuries of the Christian era, and which left Abyssinia virtually untouched. Not only have we an exceptionally good and ancient version of the entire Scriptures, both Old and New Testament, in Ethiopic, but also such works as the Book of Enoch, the Fourth Book of Ezra, the Book of Jubilees, Ascension of Isaiah, Third Maccabees, as well as whole collections of apostolic canons and constitutions, called by them “Synodos,” a great body of extensive liturgies, prayers, hymns, etc., otherwise lost to the Christian church. For it should be remembered that the literature of Abyssinia is characterized by two distinctive features, namely, that it is entirely a Christian literature, even works on history, medicine, and other sciences being under the spell of Christian thought, and, secondly, that it is a literature of translations and imitations, first from the Greek and later from the Arabic and Coptic. Practically there is no original literature in Abyssinia. Hence, too, in cases like the “Pastor Hermæ” and other works, where imperfect or defective texts exist in Latin literature, the complete and older texts in the Ethiopic version are most welcome and valuable additions to the working material of the student of church history. Just in our day, when the historical principle of interpretation is bringing the teachings of Christ and his apostles into closer connection with contemporary thought, these older Jewish apocalypses, preserved for the student by the hermit church of Africa, are proving a great boon and help. A glance at recent exegetical and biblico-historical investigations shows that such writings as the Book of Enoch are no longer regarded as mere curiosities of literature, but as valuable sources for the study of the world of thought in which the New Testament writers lived and moved and had their being. One very characteristic feature of Abyssinian church life and doctrine must not be overlooked, namely, its semi-Jewish character. It comes nearer to the ideal of a Jewish Christian church, which it is the endeavor of the learned leader of the Jewish Christian movement in Kishineff, Joseph Rabinowitz, to realize than any other on the globe. It has preserved distinct features of Jewish worship and service, such as circumcision, the observance of the seventh as well as of the first day, the practice of fasting, and the like. The Abyssinians themselves deny that these are practiced in the sense of a Jewish service, but historical evidence would seem to speak in favor of such a source. Glaser has discovered in Southern Arabia, the original homes of the Abyssinians, the existence of a Menaean or Sabaean kingdom, a powerful Semitic or even Judaistic government; and the theory is often proposed that there the Abyssinians were first converted to the religion of their kindred people and brethren, the Jews, and after that to the Christian faith. One other important fact speaks for this view, namely, the existence in Abyssinia of a class of Black Jews, called “Falashas,” in a state of semi-serfdom, ethnologically connected with the Abyssinians themselves. It is not at all improbable that these constitute the portion of that population which refused to give up their Jewish faith and adopt that of the Christian missionaries. Quite naturally the church of Abyssinia stands in the closest relation to the Orthodox Church of the east, and a reunion with this body of Christians, after a separation of more than twelve hundred years, is not an impossibility. This really was the purpose of the Russian mission under Askeneff, several years ago, to Abyssinia, and of the Abyssinian embassy to the czar some months past. To both Roman Catholic and Protestant Gospel workers Abyssinia has never given a warm welcome. The latter have succeeded best among the Falashas, many of whom still adhere to evangelical Christianity, altho deprived of Protestant teachers for many years. This attitude of the Abyssinian Church12toward Protestantism is much to be regretted, especially when viewed in the light of a possible rejuvenation and conquest of the Dark Continent for Christian civilization, with the existing church in Abyssinia as a basis for further operation. In these days the old classical question, “What new out of Africa?” has attained a new significance. Why could not the Christian nation of Abyssinia, altho representing such a low stage of spiritual development, be recalled to life, and this be made the beginning for further work in all directions? The Orthodox Church of the east can never gain Africa for a living Christianity or a true civilization. This would be the work and mission of the great churches of the west, especially, and above all others, the Protestant. Whether Protestantism can ever gain a firm foothold here, whence it has been driven out repeatedly by the typical oriental oppression of “orthodox” Abyssinian kings, remains yet to be seen. No Christian government has ever made an attempt to gain such a foothold. England, even after its conquest of Theodorus the Great and Abyssinia in 1854, an expedition undertaken solely for the purpose of releasing Protestant missionaries held in bondage, left this country to its fate. Yet the Abyssinians are the most gifted people on the continent, and by historic right deserve the closest consideration on the part of the leaders of the Christian civilization of the west.—The Independent.