The Heresy of the Monophysitic (Tewahedo) Abyssinian Church

By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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[ Posted On: 2008-05-12 ]

Following the publication of an article about the Unorthodox, Heretic, Abyssinian Church (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/61471), which was mainly based on an entry of the Catholic Encyclopedia, I received a great number of mails either from the part of followers of other Oriental Christian denominations or from members of various African nations, who practice different African monotheistic religions.

I must repeat what I markedly stated already, namely that the main purpose of the article was to illuminate the issue for preponderantly African non Christian readerships, particularly those exposed for decades to the incredible historical falsifications fabricated by the Abyssinian tyrannical regimes and the anti-Christian and uneducated monks (debteraw) of Abyssinia who are responsible for the deliberate murder of numerous missionaries and millions of non Christian Africans.

I did not wish to place my approach within a wider Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean context, and even I did not comment on the entry. I believe it is essential for the tyrannized nations of Abyssinia to know that the Abyssinian church represents a fallacious Christianity, rejected in many points by Vatican and Catholic Christianity.

It is essential for the Ogadeni, Afar and Oromo Muslims, and for the followers of traditional African faiths and religions, namely the Oromos, the Sidamas, the Anuak, the Kaffa, the Shekachos, the Kambatas, and many others, to know how low and at times how fallacious the level of Abyssinian historiography, theology and liturgical tradition are and are viewed by the Roman Catholic scholars.

As I intend to dedicate several articles to related subjects, I re-publish here integrally another entry from the Catholic Encyclopedia that complements the previous. I will personally expand on the issue in several forthcoming articles. The encyclopedia entry is entitled ‘Abyssinian Ethiopia’ in order to portray the Axumite Abyssinian claim to the historically Kushitic Ethiopia of the Antiquity (that was located in the area of today’s Sudan).

I believe it is necessary for humanist scholars, who happen to be aware of the terribly inhuman Abyssinian racism, their practices and policies of religious and cultural discrimination, and the Abyssinian socio-economic tyranny carried out against the Oromos, the Ogadenis, the Afars, the Sidamas, the Agaws, the Kaffas, the Shekachos, the Kambatas, the Hadiyas, the Wolayitas, the Anuak and others, to inform these oppressed and terrorized nations that they are not inferior in anything compared to the Abyssinian invaders, and that contrarily to the forged and fallacious Abyssinian claims, most of these nations have a greater past and a higher culture than the Abyssinians.

The most resolute demolition and rejection of every Abyssinian vindication of orthodoxy, authenticity, cultural radiation, and anteriority plays a key role in the final destruction of the Neo Nazi Abyssinian state (that has been fallaciously re-baptized ‘Ethiopia’) and the subsequent liberation of the subjugated and terrorized Eastern African nations. It demonstrates how different from all the rest and how alien to Africa the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians have always been.

Abyssinian Ethiopia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05566a.htm

Ethnology

The modern Tigre. formerly the kingdom of Axum, would seem to have been the kernel of this State. It was founded by refugees who came to the African continent when the Arsacidæ were extending their sway in the Arabian peninsula, and the power of the Ptolemies was declining in Egypt.

These refugees belonged to the Sabean tribes engaged in the gold and spice trade between Arabia and the Roman Empire; their dealings with civilized races had developed them, and, thanks to their more advanced stage of mental culture, they acquired a preponderating influence over the people among whom they had come to dwell.

Still, the descendants of these immigrants form a minority of the Ethiopian people, which mainly composed of Cushite tribes, together with an aboriginal race called by the Ethiopians themselves Shangala.

History

From native sources we know nothing accurately of the political beginnings of the State. Its annals open with the rule of monsters in that land, and for many centuries Aruë, the serpent, is the only ruler mentioned. Many writers see in this but a personification of idolatry or barbarism, and the explanation seems probable.

According to certain tales written in Gheez, the Ethiopians embraced the Jewish religion at the time of Solomon, and received a prince of that monarch's family to rule over it. The Queen of Shaba (Sheba), spoken of in the First Book of Kings, was an Ethiopian queen, according to the legend of Kebranagasht (the glory of the kings) and it was through her that Ethiopia received this double honour.

But this tradition is of comparatively recent origin, and finds no confirmation in the most ancient native documents, nor in any foreign writings. History still waits for some foundation on which to base this appropriation of the scared text, as well as for proof to justify the variants with which Ethiopian chroniclers have embellished it.

The first thing we know with certainty of the history of Ethiopia is its conversion to Christianity. This work was accomplished in the early half of the fourth century by St. Frumentius, known in that country as Abba Salama.

Rufinus of Aquileia has preserved the story for us in his history. According to him, a Christian of Tyre, named Merope, had gone on a journey to India with two children, Edesius and Frumentius, his nephews. On their return journey the ship that carried them was captured by pirates off the Ethiopian coast, and everyone on board was put to death except the two children. They were sent as captives to the king and were afterwards appointed tutors to his son, whom they converted to Christianity.

Later they returned to their own country. But Frumentius had but one ambition: to be consecrated bishop by the Patriarch of Alexandria. This wish having been fulfilled, he returned to Axum, organized Christian worship, and, under the title of Abba Salama, became the first metropolitan of the Ethiopian church.

Missionary monks coming later from neighbouring countries (in the sixth century) completed the work of his apostolate by establishing the monastic life. National traditions speak of these missionaries as the nine saints; they are the abbas Ale, Shema, Aragawi, Garima, Pantalewon, Liqanos, Afsi, Gougo, and Yemata. Henceforth Ethiopia takes its place among the Christian States of the East.

One of its kings, Caleb, contemporary with the nine saints, and canonized as St. Elesban, is famous in oriental literature for an expedition he led against the Jewish kingdom of Yemen. The authority of the Ethiopian kings then extended over Tigre, Shoa, and Amhara, and the seat of government was the Kingdom of Axum.

But from this time forward the history of this country is enveloped in darkness, and remains almost unknown to us until the thirteenth century. We have nothing to guide us but long, and for the most part, mutually conflicting lists of kings with the indication of a dynastic revolution, which perhaps explains the brevity of the chronicles.

Perhaps, in the midst of these troubles, the historical documents of preceding ages were purposely destroyed; and this seems likely since the dynasty of the Zagues, which at that time usurped the throne of the pretended descendants of the son of Solomon, would feel constrained to destroy the prestige of the supplanted dynasty in order to establish itself.

According to the abridged chronicle published by Bruce, the Falashas, a tribe professing Judaism, were the cause of this insurrection; but we have no other evidence in support of this assertion. The chronicles we have are silent about the matter; they merely tell us that at the close of the thirteenth century, in the reign of Yekuno Amlak, after a period of exile, the length of which we do not know, the Solomonian dynasty regained power through the aid of the monk Takla Hâymânot.

After the restoration of the ancient national dynasty, the country, once more at peace within itself, had to concentrate its whole energy upon resisting the southward progress of Islamic conquest. For nearly three centuries Ethiopia had to wage wars without respite for liberty and faith, and it alone, of all the African kingdoms, was able to maintain both. The most famous of these wars was against the Emir of Harar, Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim, surnamed the Left-handed. It took place during the reigns of Kings Lebna Dengel (1508-40) and Galawdewos (1540-59), and the exhausted country was only saved by the timely help of Portuguese armies.

Delivered from its foes, it might have become a great power in the East, but it lacked a capable leader, and its people, deriving but little moral support from a corrupt religion, fell rapidly away until, after a long series of civil wars, Ethiopia became a land of anarchy.

Under Minas (1159-63), Sarsa Dengel (1563-97), and Ya'eqob Za Dengel (1597-1607), civil war was incessant. There was a brief respite under Susneos (1607-32), but war broke out afresh under Fasiladas (1632-67), and the clergy, moreover, increased the trouble by their theological disputes as to the two natures of Christ.

These disputes, often, indeed, but a cloak for ambitious intrigues, were always occasions of revolution. Under the successors of Fasiladas the general disorder passed beyond all bounds. Of the seven kings that followed him but two died a natural death. There was a short period of peace under Bakafa (1721-30), and Yasu II (1730-55), Yoas (1755) and Yohannes were again victims of an ever-spreading revolution.

The end of the eighteenth century left Ethiopia a feudal kingdom. The land and its government belonged to its Ras, or feudal chieftains. The unity of the nation had disappeared, and its kings reigned, but did not govern. The Ras became veritable Mayors of the Palace, and the monarchs were content to be rois faineants.

Side by side with these kings who have left in history only their names, the real masters of events, as the popular whim happened to favour them, were Ras Mikael, Ras Abeto of the Godjam, Ras Gabriel of the Samen, Ras Ali of Begameder, Ras Gabra of Masqal of Tigre, Ras Walda-Sellase of the Shoa, Ras Ali of Amhara, Ras Oubie of Tigre, and the like.

But war among these chiefs was incessant; ever dissatisfied, jealous of each other's power, each one sought to be supreme, and it was only after a century of strife that peace was at length established. A son of the governor of Kowara, named Kasa, succeeded in bringing it about, to his own profit; and he made it permanent by causing himself to be named king under the name of Theodore (1855).

With him the ancient Ethiopia took its place as one of the nations to be reckoned with in the international affairs of the West, and Abyssinia may be said to date its origin from his reign.

Religion

Previous to the conversion of the country to Christianity, the worship of the serpent was perhaps the religion of a portion of Ethiopia, i.e., of the aboriginal Cushite tribes.

From inscriptions at Axum and Adulis it would seem that the Semites, on the other hand, had a religion similar to that of Chaldea and Syria. Among the gods mentioned we find Astar, Beher, and Medr -- perhaps representing the triad of sky, sea, and land.

As to the Jewish religion, and its introduction in the time of Solomon, we have only the assertion found in some recent documents, which, as we have already said, cannot be received as history. The origin of the Judaistic tribe called the Falashas, who nowadays occupy the country, is quite hidden from us, and there is no reason to regard them as representatives of a national religion which has disappeared.

After the evangelization by St. Frumentius, and in spite of the resulting general conversion of the people, Paganism always retained some adherents in Ethiopia, and has its representatives there even to this day. Moreover at the time of the Muslim wars Islam succeeded in securing a foothold here and there. Nevertheless Christianity has always been the really national religion, always practiced and defended by the rulers of the nation.

Although converted to Christianity by missionaries of the Catholic Church, Ethiopia today professes Monophysitism. But subject to the influence of Egypt, it has adopted in the course of time the theory of the Egyptian Church regarding the human nature of Christ.

Our lack of information about the country prior to the thirteenth century hinders us from following the history of its separation from Rome, or even fixing the date of that event. Like the Egyptians, the Ethiopian Church anathematizes Eutyches as a heretic, yet remains monophysite, and rejects the Catholic teaching as to the two natures.

United in their statement of belief, the Ethiopian theologians have divided into two great schools in its explanation. On the one hand, the Walda-Qeb ("Sons of Unction", as they are nowadays called), hold that the most radical unification (tawahedo) exists between the two natures, such being the absorption of the human by the Divine nature that the former may be said to be merely a fantasm.

The unification is the work of the Unction of the Son Himself according to the general teaching of Walda-Qeb. Some among them, however, known as the Qeb'at (Unction), teach that it is the work of the Father. Others again, the Sega-ledj or Walda-sega (Sons of Grace), hold that the unification takes place in such a way that the nature of Christ becomes a special nature (bahrey), and this is attributed to the Father, as in the teachings of the Qe'bat.

But, as the mere fact of the unction does not effect a radical unification (for this schools rejects absorption), the unification is made perfect, according to them, by what they call the adoptive birth of Christ -- the ultimate result of the unction of the Father.

In effect, they recognize in the incarnation three kinds of birth: the first, the Word begotten of the Father; the second, Christ, begotten of Mary; the third, the Son of Mary, begotten the Son of God the Father by adoption, or by his elevation to the Divine dignity -- the work of the Father anointing his Son with the Holy Spirit, whence the name Sons of Grace.

However, while rejecting absorption, this latter school refuses to admit the distinction of the two natures. Both schools, moreover, assert that the unification takes place without any blending, with change, without confusion. It is contradiction itself set up as a dogma.

The difficulties following from this teaching in regard to the reality of the Redemption, the Monophysite Church calls mysteries; her theologians confess themselves unable to explain them, and simply dismiss them with the word Ba faqadu; it is so, they say, "by the will of God".

In sympathy with the Church of Constantinople, as soon as it was separated from Rome, the Ethiopian Church in the course of time adopted the Byzantine teaching as to the procession of the Holy Ghost; but this question never was as popular as the Incarnation, and in reference to it the contradictions to be found in the texts of native theologians are even more numerous than those touching on the question of the two natures.

Adrift from the Catholic Church on the dogma of the humanity of Christ and the procession of the Holy Spirit, the Ethiopian Church professes all the other articles of faith professed by the Roman Church. We find there seven sacraments, the cultus of the Blessed Virgin and of the saints; prayers for the dead are held in high honour and fasts without number occur during the liturgical year.

The Bible, translated into Gheez, with a collection of decisions of the Councils, called the Synodos, make up the ground-work of all moral and dogmatic teaching. The work of translating the Bible began in Ethiopia about the end of the fifth century, according to some authorities (Guidi, G. Rossini), or, in the opinion of others, (Mechineau), in the fourth century at the very beginning of the evangelization.

Notwithstanding the native claims, their Old Testament is not a translation from the Hebrew, neither is its Arabic origin any more capable of demonstration; Old and New Testaments alike are derived from the Greek. The work was done by many translators, no doubt, and the unity of the version seems to have been brought about only by deliberate effort.

At the same time as the Solomonian restoration in the thirteenth century, the whole Bible was revised under the care of the Metropolitan Abba Salama (who is often confounded with St. Frumentius), and the text followed for the Old Testament was the Arabic of Rabbi Saadias Gaon of Fayûm.

There was perhaps a second revision in the seventeenth century at the time of the Portuguese missions to the country; it has recently been noticed (Littman, Geschichte der Aethiopischen Literatur). But, just as the great number of translators employed caused the Bible text to be unusual, so also the revision of it was not uniform and official, and consequently the number of variant readings became multiplied.

Its canon, too, is practically unsettled and fluctuating. A host of apocryphal or falsely ascribed writings are placed on the same level as the inspired books, among the most esteemed of which we may mention
the Book of Henoch,
the Kufale, or Little Genesis,
the Book of the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth,
the Combat of Adam and Eve,
the Ascension of Isaias.

The Hâymanotâ Abaw (Faith of the Fathers), the "Mashafa Mestir" (Book of the Mystery), the "Mashafa Hawi" (Book of the Compilations), "Qerlos" (Cyrillius), "Zênâ hâymânot" (Tradition of the Faith) are among the principal works dealing with matters moral and dogmatic.

But, besides the fact that many of the quotations from the Fathers in these works have been modified, many of the canons of the "Synodos" are, to say the least, not historical.

Liturgy

In the general effect of its liturgical rules the Ethiopian Church is allied to the Coptic Rite. Numerous modifications, and especially additions, have, in the course of time, been introduced into its ritual; but the basic text remains that of Egypt, from which, in many places, it differs only in the language.

Its calendar and the distribution of festivals are regulated as in the Coptic Church, though the Ethiopians do not follow the era of the martyrs. The year has 365 days, with a leap year every four years, as in the Julian calendar. Its ordinary year begins on 29 August of the Julian calendar, which corresponds to 11 September of the Gregorian calendar. After a leap year the new year begins on the 30th of August (or 12 September).

The year has twelve months of thirty days each, and an added month of six days or of five days -- according as the year is a leap year or not. The era followed is seven years behind ours, during the last four months of our year, and eight years during the remaining months.

The calendar for each year is arranged in an ecclesiastical synod held in the springtime. It is at this gathering that the dates of the principal movable feasts are settled, as well as the period for the fasts to be observed during the course of the year.

The greater feasts of the Ethiopian church are Christmas, the Baptism of Christ, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Ascension Day, Pentecost, the Transfiguration. A great number of feasts are scattered throughout the year, either on fixed or movable dates, and their number together with the two days every week (Saturday and Sunday) on which work is forbidden reduces by almost one-third the working days of the year.

Fasts are observed every Wednesday and Friday, and five times annually during certain periods preceding the great festivals; the fast of Advent, is kept during forty days; of Ninevah, three days; of Lent, fifty-five days; of the Apostles, fifteen days; the fast of the Assumption, fifteen days.

Most of the saints honoured in Ethiopia are to be found in the Roman Martyrology. Among the native saints (about forty in all) only a few are recognized by the Catholic Church -- St. Frumentius, St. Elesban, the Nine Saints, and St. Taklu Hâymânot.

But, deprived of religious instruction, the Ethiopian people mingle with their Christianity many practices which are often opposed to the teaching of the Gospel; some of these seem to have a Jewish origin, such, for instance, as the keeping of the Sabbath, the distinction of animals as clean and unclean, and the custom of marrying a widow to the nearest relative of her deceased husband.

Ecclesiastical Hierarchy

The Ethiopian Hierarchy is subject to the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria. This dependence on the Coptic Church is regulated by one of the Arabic canons found in the Coptic edition of the Council of Nicea.

A delegate from this patriarch, chosen from among the Egyptian bishops, and called the Abouna, governs the Church. All-powerful in matters spiritual, his influence is nevertheless very limited in other directions, owing to the fact that he is a stranger.

The administrative authority is vested in the Etchague, who also has jurisdiction over the regular clergy. This functionary is always chosen from among the monks and is a native. Legislation concerning the clergy is always regulated by a special code, of which the fundamental principles are contained in the Fetha nagasht.

Only the regular clergy observe celibacy, and the facility with which orders are conferred makes the number of priests very large.

Language and Literature

Although the races inhabiting Ethiopia have very different origins, only the Semitic family of tongues is represented among them. This is one of the results of the conquest made in olden days by immigrants from the African Continent.

Two dialects were spoken by these tribes, the Gheez, which is akin to Sabean, and a speech which is more akin to Minean, the tongue which later developed into Amharic.

In the course of time, Gheez ceased to be a spoken language, but it gave rise to two vernacular dialects, Tigre and Tigraï, which have supplanted it. No longer in popular use, Gheez has always remained the language of the Church and of literature.

Amharic did not become a literary language till much later. As for the other two, even in our own day they have hardly begun to be written. The beginnings of Gheez literature are connected with the evangelization of the country.

The earliest document we possess is the translation of the Bible, which dates from the fifth, or perhaps the fourth century. Christian in its origins, Gheez literature has remained so in its productions, most of which are apocryphal, hagiographical compositions, or theological works.

History and poetry have only a secondary place in it, and these are the only subjects in which we find any original effort; almost everything else is translation from the Greek, Coptic, or Arabic.

Most of its manuscripts have come down to us without date or author's name, and it is no easy task to follow the history of letters in this country. As far as we know at present, the fifteenth seems to have been the great literary century of Ethiopia.

To the reign of Zar'a Ya'qob (1434-68) belong the principle compositions of which the history is known. The wars against Adal and against Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim, in the sixteenth century, arrested this literary movement. The decline began after the civil wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and the coming of Amharic as a literary language completed it.

The earliest writings in Amharic date from the fourteenth century, and about the time of the Portuguese mission it was beginning to supplant Gheez. The Jesuits made use of it to reach the people more surely, and henceforward Gheez tends to become almost exclusively a liturgical language. At the present day it is nothing else, Amharic having altogether taken its place in other departments, and it may be that at no distant date Amharic may supplant Gheez even as the language of the Church.

Job Ludolf, a German, in the seventeenth century, was the first to organize the study of Ethiopian subjects. To him we owe the first grammar and the first dictionary of the Gheez language.

After a period of neglect these studies were taken up once more in the second half of the nineteenth century by Professor Dillman, of Berlin, and besides incomparable works on the grammar and lexicography, we are indebted to him for the publication of many texts. Thanks to the extension of philological, historical, and patristic studies, the study of this language has spread in our own times to a greater and greater degree.

Works of the first importance have been published on the literature by Professors Basset, Bezold, Guidi, Littman, and Prætorius, as also by Charles, Esteves-Pereira, Perruchon, and Touraiso.

The Amharic, too, has inspired a number of studies, whether of its grammar, of its lexicography, or of its texts; the works of Massaja, Isenberg, d'Abbadic, Prætorius, Guidi, Mondon-Kidailhet, and Afework have served to definitively place it within the domain of Oriental studies.

Publication information

Written by M. Chaine. Transcribed by M. Donahue.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Bibliography

MASPERO, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique (Paris, 1895-99); BUDGE, A History of Egypt (London, 1902); AMHERST OF HACKNEY, A Sketch of Egyptian History (London, 1906); BASSET, Etudes sur l'histoire d'Ethiope (Paris, 1882); ROSSINI, Note per la storia litteria abissina in Rend. della R. A. dei Lincei (Rome, 1899), VIII; LITTMAN, Geschichte der ¨thiopischen Litteratur in Geschichte der christlichen Litteraturen des Orients (Leipzig, 1907); BECCARI, Notizia e saggi di opere inediti riguardanti la storia di Ethiopia (Rome, 1903--); BRUCE, A Journey to the Sources of the Nile (London, 1790); GLASER, Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika (Munich, 1895); MASSAIA, I miei trenta cinque anni nell' alta Etiopia (Rome 1895); LUDOLF, Historia Æthiopica (Frankfort, 1681); Id., Ad historiam æthiopicam commentarius (Frankfort, 1691).

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About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 51, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

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