The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler

Today's date is: 5/12/2025
HOME | Cover Page | Contents | Introduction 1| Strangers in the Midst 9 | Legend and History 24| Judaism, Christianity and Islam 58 | The Middle Ages 74 | Resistance and Defeat 94 | Missions and Missionaries 106 | Jacques Faitlovitch 130 | The Struggle for Recognition 147| Postscript 170 | Select Bibliography | Images | Index |


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3 Judaism, Christianity and Islam

MOST countries have their own history or legend to explain how their religion reached them. The Ethiopians base their tradition on the story of Frumentius and Aedesius, two Christian boys from Tyre whose ship had either been wrecked or had fallen into the hands of ruffians at a port on the Red Sea coast. All the crew were lost and the two boys were taken as prisoners to the court of the Axumite King Ella Amida. They were well treated and Aedesius, the younger boy, was made cup bearer to the King while the elder and brighter of the two became his treasurer and secretary. When the king died, in the second quarter of the fourth century, his queen entrusted one of the two Syrians with the regency of the country until her infant son, Ezana, should come of age. Frumentius was diligent in spreading a knowledge of Christianity and establishing churches wherever he could. When the young prince was old enough to take over the government of the country, Aedesius returned to his native Tyre while Frumentius went to Egypt to report on his missionary activities to the great Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria. He urged the Patriarch to send a representative to Axum to consolidate the work and in reply Athanasius consecrated him bishop and ordered him to return to Axum to continue his mission.

Meanwhile Ezana consolidated his position and established his sovereignty on both sides of the Red Sea but showed no great haste to embrace Christianity. His early coins bear the pagan symbol of the crescent and the disc which is also found on Sabaean monuments and was almost universal in the ancient Near East, including Egypt, while his early inscriptions extol the war god Mahrem. It was only towards the end of his reign, just before the middle of the fourth century, that his coins carried the Christian emblem of the cross. Possibly his decision to adopt Christianity as


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