ETHIOPIAN (ABYSSINIAN) CHURCH

ETHIOPIAN (ABYSSINIAN) CHURCH. Although mentioned as early as the Acts of the Apostles (ch. 8), this Semitic people is not recognized as having its own local church until the fourth century. Its beginnings are credited to a Syrian monk, Frumentius, who received episcopal consecration from Athanasius of Alexandria (q.v.) and converted King Alzanas in mid-century. Long under the ecclesiastical domination of the Coptic Church (q.v.), Ethiopia thus shared in Egypt’s break in communion with Rome and Constantinople following Chalcedon (qq.v.). Its isolated position, surrounded on its highland plateau by Muslim nations and tribes in the lowlands, further cut it off for centuries from extensive contacts with the rest of the Christian world. The result was and is a church marked by singular local characteristics, notably a distinctively Old Testamental and Semitic flavor, and a canon of Scripture of particular value for scholars in that it preserves in Ethiopic translations copies of texts from the Old and New Testament apocrypha, e.g., Enoch, the Ascension of Isaiah, Jubilees, and Eusebian works, of centuries before and after Christ. From the 16th c. to the 19th c. the country drew the attention of missionary efforts from various Roman Catholic orders, with marginal success outside of an Eritrean Uniat group. Under its own native bishops since the 1950s, the Ethiopian Church has been an active participant in the Oriental Orthodox-Orthodox Dialogue (q.v.) since the latter’s inception in the 1960s.