I have been absolutely losing my mind the past few days about the symbolism of Ethiopia after watching this video from Jonathan Pageau's podcast, and I would totally commend it to anyone interested (though not really his other two with the same guy, they're both meh but this one was amazing), but the biggest reason why is that it really helped me to nail down the story of Lutheranism from a symbolic perspective. As I talked about in one of my first posts, the Lutheran church often seems to have a narrative problem. In being attached to a man's name as well as narratively bound to the rest of Protestantism, it makes it all too easy to write us off as schismatics following our chief heretic, Martin Luther, after whom we are titled. Even having acknowledged this is little more than a narrative problem, however, it still often feels like we are the ugly stepsister, left out from the other tradition-oriented denominations of the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, since they do still retain the power structures and in some cases the buildings which often date back very early in Christian history. However, in the land of Cush, I have found a place for us to rest, in this wilderness of chaos and monsters, the place where the Church dwells and is nourished by the Lord for a time, times, and half a time, though the demons rage against her children (Rev. 12:14, 17).
To begin, I would first like to explain the symbolic meaning of the land of Ethiopia in the holy scriptures, as the scriptures contain all of the symbolism needed to begin such an excursion. Because of the nature of this symbolic discussion, I am not really able to section the various texts off from one another, as each one is full of a wealth of symbolism in its own right, so I will take a moment to explain the features of this symbol, which then I will be able to show you in the various texts concerning it. The first feature is that of what Pageau calls the margin, that is, they are at the very edge of the world. Numerous places in the holy scriptures refer to Ethiopia as this kind of place at the end of the world (Esth 1:1, 8:9, Is. 18:1, Ez. 29:10, etc.), and in a sense, it very much is. The place is at the edge of anywhere feasible for the western or near-eastern person to go, and even then, few people ever do, it is full of mystery and the unknown. It is said to be the land where the Sphinx comes from, a very dangerous hybrid creature that could just as easily kill you as give you secret knowledge. This phenomenon is also similar to the early depictions of North America as a land of monsters, since it was so mysterious and yet so full of promise. Functioning as this margin, it is the chaotic edge which is chock-full of possiblities. At the same time, the edge is also a place that is hidden and which, like the Sphinx, contains the knowledge that those in the center may not be privy to. To be perfectly clear, this status is not a racial one in the modern sense. Their skintone did play into their foreign-ness, but at this point, people were somewhat used to experiencing various people groups, as is seen in the never-ending list of nations in Acts 2. Really, it's a matter of the aforementioned geographic distinction as well as their ability to nonetheless communicate. The land is not wild but marginal, that is, it is at the edge of what people can know, the place where the monsters and men both dwell.
Another genre of passages in the same vein is that of the Ethiopians as extreme foreigners who nonetheless worship the Lord. In Zephaniah 3:10 and Psalm 68:31, it is said that those in Cush and beyond will be drawn to the worship of God, both "bring[ing] offering" and "hasten[ing] to stretch out her hands to God." Such confessions are extreme forms of those passages in which our Lord prophesies the conversion of the Gentiles, using Ethiopia as the farthest known reaches to which our Lord's great Word will dwell. In my favorite example, Ps. 87:4-6, there is an image of a divine census where the Lord counts many nations as those which are "born in Zion," and He will say of each "This one was born there." The last of the nations mentioned, as if at the literary margin just as much as the geographical and symbolic, is Ethiopia.
Now I would like to go through the passages concerning an Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 and then follow that up with another lesser known one in Jeremiah 38-39. To begin, the figure of an Ethiopian eunuch is, itself, something of a strange image. As mentioned, an Ethiopian is, themself, one of the most foreign persons one can see, not only by appearance but by nationality. In addition, his nature as a eunuch makes him something of an in-between, foreign to both men and women. And what's more, this eunuch was the treasurer for the Ethiopian queen. In other words, he is the prototype of Ethiopia, a strange foreigner who guards great wealth and holds with him great knowledge, symbolized by the scroll of Isaiah which he bears. After the Jews, the expected sons of promise, have rejected our Lord's Word, it is picked up and taken by this Ethiopian eunuch to the margin, the land of monsters at the end of the world, as a judgement against them and as a blessing to his people. In another story in Jeremiah 38, the prophet Jeremiah is thrown into a cistern to starve for daring to preach the Lord's word of judgement against the city, but Ebed-Melech, an Ethiopian eunuch, following the aforementioned symbolism, sees this as an affront to the man whom God has sent. As a result, he sends men from the king's house and they all bring dirty old rags by which they lift the prophet out of the well. This mention of the old rags should not go unnoticed, as I think this symbolizes the unlikely and the remainder coming to bear the Word, similar to St. Paul's image of the treasure dwelling in jars of clay. In a similar pattern to the one mentioned above, Jeremiah immediarely goes to the king to prophesy against him and after being rejected, he goes and promises goodness to Ebed-Melech for his faith, contrasting the faithfulness of the extreme foreigner and the unfaithfulness of the Israelites.
A historical image related to this is the Ethiopian textual tradition, in which we have found numerous texts preserved nowhere else. For example, concerning the books of Enoch and Jubilees, two texts widely read in second temple Judaism and which the scriptures reference in a few places, their reconstruction would be impossible without the Ethiopian manuscripts, and the same is true for other very early texts like St. Hippolytus' On the Apostolic Tradition, whose translations are heavily built on the Ethiopian manuscripts. In the same vein, some scholars have argued, after studying the primary sources as well as the modern traditions, the practices of Ethiopian Jews are most aligned with those of second temple Judaism. This further points to the land as a place of hidden truths taken from the people of promise and given to the gentile of gentiles.
The final passage, which is one of the most significant, is that of the Queen of Sheba (Ethiopia) and her meeting with King Solomon in 2 Chronicles 9 and 1 Kings 10. In this section, she functions a great deal like the aforementioned sphinx, bearing beautiful gifts of spices and riches but holding them back behind great and mysterious riddles. And yet, this mysterious and foreign woman was blown away by Solomon's great riches and his own wisdom, solving all of her riddles and earning her great riches. In addition, the note at the end of both accounts that spices like the ones she gave were seen nowhere else than Solomon's courts is significant, since she, being the ultimate margin, brings unique gifts from the very edge of the world. In addition, this reference from her kingdom as teh "edge of the world" actually comes from Christ Himself, who says,
'The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. ' Matt. 12:41-42 (Luke 11:31-32)
This passage is the culmination of these symbols in the words of our Lord, a confession of Ethiopia as this archetype of the edge of the world which will nonetheless come to judge because of their faithfulness. In this way, we can see this as an eschatological vision of all men, both those near and far, both those in time and eternity, "For the promise is for...all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” (Acts 2:38) This is Christ telling us that in the eschaton, the Great Commission will be fulfilled, because the great multitude of the 144,000 with come of all tribes and nations and will dwell in the New Jerusalem forever.
Now, with all that, in my next post we will look at the Ethiopian historical epic, called the Kebra Nagast, and how it is in line with these same themes, as well as looking at how this eschatological vision shows up in the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, an early church document from the 7th Century, and all of this will be followed up with the connections between these themes and how they show themselves in the narratival history of the Lutheran Church.
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