Rock-Hewn Churches Mark Old ‘new Jerusalem’ In Ethiopia | Toronto Star
I’m in Lalibela, a small town cradled in the mountains of northern Ethiopia and home to 11 rock-hewn churches. Commissioned by King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela back in the 13th century, these places of worship had been created as a new Jerusalem for Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims. Now recognized and protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they continue to pull in people by the thousands from around the world, drawn to the biggest attraction in a country where tourism is on the rise.
I start the day at the largest of them all, Biete Medhane Alem, or House of the Saviour of the World, descending from ground level and circumnavigating the structure before we enter. Melkamu explains the basics as we go. We pass portraits of devotion — an impossibly elderly woman with a red-crossed hat reciting prayers, a man folded in behind the pillars of the church, doing the same — and Melkamu notes that Ethiopia had been one of the first countries to adopt Christianity. Actually mentioned in the biblical Book of Acts, Ethiopia adopted Christianity as its official state religion in the fourth century.
The churches here had been constructed at the direction of King Lalibela after the sultan Saladin captured Jerusalem in 1187. Carved from grey basalt and volcanic red scoria, “these were built by Ethiopians — with the help of the angels, of course,” Melkamu says.
It seems wherever we go, we see the faces of angels — Ethiopian ones —with beautiful round faces flanked by wings, staring at us from the ceiling, or from frescoes on the walls.
At Biete Maryam (House of Miriam), Melkamu pauses to kiss the doors before entering, then shows us the icons inside, which include ancient frescoes depicting the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt.
We also see priests everywhere, their heads wrapped in turbans and a wooden staff always at the ready. They gather together and walk past, reading and talking and, like everyone else, praying.
We see deacons, too, clustered and crouched against the round wall of a traditional tukul, with mud walls and a thatched roof, a mantra falling from their mouths like a sort of song, a stream of foreign words being lifted from the little scripture books held before them to the heavens above. “They’re speaking in Ge’ez, the ancient language of Ethiopian liturgy,” Melkamu explains. “These boys are considered deacons. If they pass the exams and get married, they will one day be priests in the church.”
In single day, we tour all 11 churches, clamouring up and down stone steps and crouching through tunnels and even once climbing up on a roof for a panoramic view of Biete Golgotha Mikael, which is said to contain the tomb of King Lalibela himself. We cross the Jordan River, now at the end of the dry season, just a sliver of green, filmy water. We make our way through dark tunnels and even visit Biete Lehem — literally, Bethlehem — the House of Bread, where loaves were baked for Holy Communion.
Exhausted, we make one final descent into the carved rock, the sun casting long, warm rays on top of Biete Giyorgis, the Church of St. George, the jewel in Lalibela’s crown, named for the patron saint of Ethiopia. We make our way down a small path into the crevices that surround the cross-shaped and intricately hewn church, slipping our shoes off, one last time, as we ascend the steps. We enter a church devoid of tourists, the priest’s chants cutting eerily through the silent space.
As I sit down next to him, Melkamu calls out to the man, asking him to give me a blessing. And just like that — before I expect it — his cross is on my face. I react poorly, giving a quick start, before getting hold of myself and settling down. I thank the priest and, at his encouragement, slip him a small bill for his efforts. No, it wasn’t a good blessing, but is there such thing as a bad one? Slipping my shoes back on, I decide that, either way, I’m relieved — after all, now, there’s no way I will have to go (back) to hell.
When you go
Do this trip: A boutique firm based in Addis Ababa, FKLM Tours (fklm-tours.com), provides tailor-made itineraries all over Ethiopia. Using local guides who know the lay of the land, as well as top-notch equipment that includes luxury Land Cruisers, many of its itineraries include at least two days in Lalibela.
Get there:Ethiopian Airlines (ethiopianairlines.ca) provides the only direct air service between Canada and Africa. About 13 hours (flying east, from Toronto to Addis Ababa), the trip is undertaken in Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, whose Cloud Nine business-class cabin includes spacious seats that fold into fully flat beds.
Stay: With both traditional rooms and large, rather luxurious tukul with patios that overlook a valley, Sora Lodge (soralodgelalibela.com) in Lalibela provides comfortable nights and good meals at its on-property German-themed restaurant.
Eat: In Lalibela, try excellent local or international cuisine at Ben Abeda (benabeba.com). Crowning a small mountain with a structure that looks straight out of The Jetsons, lunch or dinner here comes with 360-degree views of the surrounding landscape.
The Eritrean Orthodox Patriarch, detained at home since 2007, has been allowed to attend a church service for the first time since his arrest – but supporters say in spite of this there has been no reconciliation with the regime.
Patriarch Abune Antonios was arrested and deposed by the repressive Eritrean regime after he criticised its human rights record and refused to allow it to interfere in Church affairs. The government installed another patriarch who was not recognised by the wider Orthodox Church, but he died in 2015.
Antonios, now aged 90, was allowed to take part in the mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in the capital, Asmara, but local sources told Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) that he was surrounded by guards and that plain-clothes policeman dissuaded the congregation from taking pictures.
According to CSW, the patriarch’s appearanced followed the publication on the website of the Eritrean Orthodox Church of a letter from its Holy Synod saying the rift caused by his removal from office was over. It published a picture of a ‘reconciliation committee’ comprising the ‘Union of the Monasteries and Church Scholars’, who had participated in a process that had allegedly ended in ‘full reconciliation’.
At the service on Sunday a statement from the reconciliation committee was read. However, Antonios himself has yet to speak out and has previously categorically denied the charges against him.
“How a Christian country as Italy could undertake such a hideous terror action of occupation on another peaceful Christian country that is Ethiopia.“
The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame. By Ian Campbell. Hurst; 478 pages; £30. To be published in America by Oxford University Press in August.
NEAR the village of Affile, on a picturesque hillside east of Rome, stands a monument, unveiled in 2012 and built with public funds, to Rodolfo Graziani, one of Mussolini’s most brilliant generals. He was a key figure in Italy’s brutal campaigns in Africa in the decade before the second world war.
Inside a roundabout in Addis Ababa lies another monument. This giant obelisk, perhaps the Ethiopian capital’s finest piece of public art, was donated by Josip Tito, then president of Yugoslavia, in 1955. Six bronze reliefs depict a massacre, the worst in Ethiopian history, carried out by Italian forces during the occupation of 1936-41 while Graziani was viceroy of Italy’s new colony. According to the Ethiopian government, some 30,000 Ethiopians died during the campaign of terror in February 1937.
Official Italian estimates usually number between 600 and 2,000, but they are certainly much too low. The most plausible figure, argues Ian Campbell in the first comprehensive account of the massacre, may be 20,000. In Italy Graziani’s great crime is seen as little more than a typical European colonial atrocity—no worse than the British at Amritsar, for instance, where 1,000 people (according to India’s count) were slaughtered in 1919.
But, as Mr Campbell’s meticulous work makes plain, this was no typical colonial atrocity. After a failed attempt on Graziani’s life, the Italians’ bloody revenge lasted three days. Led by the local “Blackshirts”—Mussolini’s paramilitaries, officially granted carta bianca—regular soldiers, carabinieri and perhaps more than half of Addis Ababa’s Italian civilians took part. In this ghoulish massacre, witnesses reported crushed babies, disembowelled pregnant women and the burning of entire families.
Mr Campbell argues that this was a methodical effort to wipe out Ethiopian resistance to Italian rule, more like later Nazi war crimes than earlier colonial massacres. He charges both Graziani and the local Fascist Party leader, Guido Cortese, with personal responsibility. Though unconscious when the killing began, Graziani took control of the subsequent reprisal executions, aimed in particular at eliminating the Ethiopian nobility and intelligentsia.
Graziani was never prosecuted for crimes in Africa, though he was convicted for collaboration with the Nazis and briefly imprisoned. Britain, wary of setting awkward precedents, played an outsized role in sheltering Italians with blood on their hands. Mr Campbell cites a telegram written by Winston Churchill to his ambassador in Rome in 1944, instructing him to protect Marshal Badoglio, Italian commander of the Ethiopian northern front, who used poison gas, and is considered the top war criminal by Ethiopia.
Italy was never forced to reckon with Fascism as Germany was with Nazism. Few post-war Italian historians ever tackled the massacre. Those that did were often denounced as unpatriotic. Angelo Del Boca, writing in the 1960s, was accused by the Italian army of being a “liar” for his research on Graziani’s crimes. When “Lion of the Desert”—a film depicting his actions in Libya—was released in 1981, it was soon banned, for damaging the honour of the Italian army. To this day Italian schoolchildren are not taught about the Addis Ababa massacre. Graziani is little known; his sins even less so. Mr Campbell’s book will be welcomed by the Ethiopian government, which has long argued that its citizens deserve an apology.
This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline “Hearing their cries”
The above video from 1935 was filmed by the BBC (who allowed them to film? How was that possible?) In the first part, we see Italian troops and cannons lined up as a Catholic priest performs a blessing for all the troops before they head out to massacre Ethiopians. “Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus,” said the priest (holy, holy, holy). But there was nothing holy about the evil actions of the Italians.
In the second part we see Italian airstrikes upon Ethiopian villagers and even a Red Cross camp that was protecting children who’s parents were either dead or fighting the Italians. The children are trained to run into dug bunkers in the ground as soon as they hear the sound of a plane. They were hiding to avoid getting hit by bombs. People, homes and farming land were all hit.
The Vatican should issue an apology for endorsing these and many other acts of unspeakable horror against the people of Ethiopia.
A middle aged woman had to be hospitalised in Vienna following a brutal beating in broad daylight by a veiled Somali asylum seeker offended by her pet dogs.
The victim, named only as Ingrid T., described how she was talking with neighbours at the gate of her garden, accompanied by dogs — her deaf, almost-blind, three-legged Collie mix “sitting peacefully” alongside while 10-month-old ‘Poco’ meandered along an alleyway towards her parents’ house — when she “saw a pretty, veiled woman approaching slowly.”
“I knew some people from these countries do not like dogs, so I went to Poco and wanted to pull him back,” the 54-year-old told Krone from her hospital bed in the Austrian capital.
The 18-year-old Somali asserted, “The animals are unclean,” Ingrid recalled, stating that her attacker then “grabbed me, spun me around and scratched me” until both women fell to the floor.
As NGOs and taxpayer-funded rescue missions ferry thousands of Africans from the Libyan coast to Italy each week, Austria has repeatedly called for Europe to close the Mediterranean route, warning that the nation will impose border checks and deploy soldiers on its frontier with Italy if the influx does not slow.
Local media reported this week that moves by the nation to secure its border look to be justified after the director of the Italian Refugee Council, Christopher Hein, threatened to send tens of thousands of migrants to Austria.
Satellites at the beginning of this year identified new fissures near one of the world’s most active volcanoes, Erta Ale, in Ethiopia, also known as the “steaming mountain” and the “gate of hell.”
My Note: In the state of Arizona at least 9 died in a very unusual flash flooding. At the same time, surgeons in Arizona removed a 5 centimeter blood clot from above Senator John McCain’s left eye. The sinister Arizona Senator’s Surgery may be more serious than thought. Even his sissy comrade, Lindsey is claiming McCAIN had been getting forgetful. Watch the color of the water on that flood, read the following information and connect the dots.
Genesis, Creation, and Ancient Interpreters: Cain Caused the Flood
Cain’s murder of Abel came to be seen by early interpreters not simply as an isolated act of sin, but as representative of something bigger. Cain did not simply do something wicked, but his wicked act showed a much deeper problem, that he is wicked. This way of reading the story of Cain was taken in various directions by early interpreters. One of those ways was to make Cain the cause of the flood.
Genesis 6:1-4 gives the reason—more accurately, we seem to be given two reasons—for why God inflicted such a cataclysmic punishment on all flesh. Cain is not mentioned.
One reason is the “giants” (Hebrew nephilim) mentioned in v. 4, though we are not told here explicitly what about these figures warranted God’s punishment—although the references to the “sons of God” cohabiting with the “daughters of man” seems to be relevant. It seems that divine beings were cohabiting with human women, and possibly the “giants” were their offspring.
In antiquity, a good number of interpreters seized on this episode to explain why God brought the flood (e.g., 3 Maccabees 2:4; Ecclesiasticus 16:7; Jubilees 5:1-11). Such “cross-breeding” wholly violated the order God had established at creation (Genesis 1), and so played a major role in God’s decision to flood the earth.
Genesis 6:5, however, seems to come at it from a different angle. The blame rests not just with the sons of God or the giants, but with humanity at large. Humans had become thoroughly wicked, with a disposition only toward doing wicked acts.
But this explanation passed by rather quickly for early interpreters—one verse—so they sought to anchor God’s punishment in something more concrete. One of those anchors was Cain’s murder of Abel.
Cain was a “logical” candidate of sorts because his act was the only truly wicked act recorded in the chapters preceding the flood story. Cain’s murder of Abel, therefore, was understood not just an isolated wicked act, but a crucial factor in God’s decision to destroy the world in a deluge. One clear example is from the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon 10:3-4:
When an unrighteous man [Cain] departed from her [from following Wisdom] in his anger, he perished because in rage he slew his brother. When the earth was floodedbecause of him, Wisdom again saved it, steering the righteous man [Noah] by a paltry piece of wood.
Two things are worth noting here. First, this author sees a causal link between Cain’s act of murder (first sentence) and the flood. Second, note that putting the blame on Cain is not defended or explained, but tucked away in that small phrase “because of him.” This casual allusion to Cain as the cause of the flood indicates that the explanation needed no elaboration because it was already well know at the time in which this author wrote (early in the first century A.D.). By the time this author gave his account of the flood, Cain’s role in instigating God’s wrath was already a commonly accepted explanation.
It is said that Satan is handsome. I mean if the devil was to reveal himself in the flesh, he would probably do it on a catwalk while modeling in Milan. Let me add one more log of truth to this axiom—I am certain that the devil is filthy rich and is a philanthropist to boot. In fact, the way Lucifer tricked Eve to bite of the apple was most likely by offering the fruit as charity. Ever since that fateful taste and the ensuing banishment, pseudo charity has been offered to humanity as a means of enslaving the masses with counterfeit kindness while these very same antichrists unleash their armies to steal the wealth of nations.
Of course, I wrote the previous paragraph about Satan’s philanthropy with a dash of intended sarcasm and satire. People who are victimized by the powerful and thus rendered powerless learned a long time ago to counter the wickedness of their oppressors with a healthy dose of wit. However, what I write is not comedy; the world over, one billionaire prick after another loots from nations in order to make fortunes only to turn around and give pittance as depraved donations. At times, I stew in indignation; wealth enables criminal plutocrats to not only escape judgment in court, their blood soaked money buys up the adoration of the very people they subjugate.
Let me break some news here for those who might not know. Colonialism is not a relic of the past; the aristocracy and imperialists just concocted a more efficient way to do business. The more the world got interconnected by technology and information made global affairs borderless, the less colonialists could turn to the way of the gun and savagery as a means of bleeding people into submission. Boots on the ground became an obsolete way of enslaving the masses, thus illuminated and Luciferian thinkers came up with a more brilliant and utterly malicious way of putting people into perpetual bondage and concurrently stealing their natural resources.
This blueprint of neo-colonialism was deployed and perfected in the continent we now call Africa. But before you turn away thinking what goes on in the continent of Ethiopia is no business of yours, please be aware that what I am presenting in the subsequent paragraphs is the very same practice that is repressing the masses in America and the world over. Read what comes next intently and the realization will slowly creep into your conscience. At some point most of you will think “holly shit that is what they are doing to us!” irrespective of geographic location you call home.
Colonialism thrives and is utterly dependent on the playbook of divide and conquer. A people united are not easily defeated; thus tensions have to be created between the masses in order to have them fighting each other. This is the reason artificial constructs like “black”, “white”, liberal, conservative and a never ending stream of identities were created. Consequently, this is also the reason that nations in “Africa” were carved out and invented out of pure cloth by Eurocentric bureaucrats in the 1800’s. The first step of colonization requires that one group of people, or tribe as you have it, are elevated while the rest are cast as victims of the chosen tribe.
Take for example my native land Ethiopia; the current class that has been elevated by colonialists are the Tigray tribe. Before that, it was the Amhara tribe that was raised as the “privileged class”. It is from the privileged class that the autocrat is chosen; in Ethiopia the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) were given a never ending supply of weaponry and cash by their western backers so they could depose the previous regime and replicate the horrors of the Derg communist regime by other means. The principle requirement imposed on these African tyrants is that they transfer the natural resources of their nation to their western masters. As long as they do this, as long as they subserviently bow before their colonial pimps, they are allowed to stay in power and amass ungodly wealth while the huddled mass of humanity—including the majority of the people from the privileged tribe—suffer in hopelessness and indigence.
If, for any reason, the colonially backed African junta does not do exactly as their imperial masters demand, that is when the truly insidious aspect of the colonialism playbook is deployed. As imperialists and incorporated wolves armed the tyrants to the teeth, they concurrently made sure that they armed the opposition with just enough weaponry to keep the country on the precipice of war and in a perpetual simmering boil. Let a despot gain a conscience and decide to actually do for his people instead of serving his western masters or threatens the hustle of multi-national corporations, that is when jackals (paramilitary forces from countries like France, Britain, China Russia or America) are flown in with orders to assist the “rebels”.
Guerrilla groups who were once persona non grata are all the sudden lauded as freedom fighters and once western backed governments are all the sudden painted as terrorists. Sound familiar? This is what happened to Sadam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Laden and now Bashar al-Assad, each of these men were best friends of devils like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Kerry and the cash cows of America’s military-financial complex before they became threats that had to be eliminated. Of course, the Corporate State Media starts to beat war drums upon command and unblinkingly supports these immoral and illegal wars because what goes BOOM! begets more eyeballs and clicks which in turn enhances their bottom line.
This is how “Africa”, a continent that has enough resources to feed the world five times over, is reduced to the status of global beggars and perpetual charity cases. The West, and to lesser extent China and Russia, fleece the entire continent and rob all nations of their resources, keep countries mired in cyclical violence and then give aid to hide their wickedness while making it seem like they are the second coming of Jesus. This aid comes by way of the World Bank and IMF “benevolence” as loans are given to put shackles of debt on the feet of nations already in distress. Why use bullets and chains to enslave countries and people when depraved plutocrats can unleash their wealth to terrorize billions of people around the globe and make nation after nation submit to their financial clout. Debt is the 21st century slave ship.
The terms of these loans are onerous; countries are expected to pay interest payments above and beyond every other social program and infrastructure project. If countries don’t remit interest payments on time, one of two things happen. Ratings agencies like Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch cripple a nation’s economy by lowering their credit rating which in return increases borrowing cost. A country that is broke is shattered by this move as the race to pay interests on loans becomes more important than taking care of the people. This is when social order starts to break down and nations start to unravel at the seams. If tyrants don’t come to their senses, they are either pushed out by internal disorder or externally fomented civil wars that eventually leads to a coup d’état only to give rise to the next tyrant. Awash in blood, rinse and repeat as needed. At “chance” would have it, the very nations who once had domain in specific regions of “Africa” deploy their forces to restore peace after they incited bloodshed to begin with. Belgium to Congo, France to Ivory Coast, Britain to Algeria, America to Liberia—these are the same zones of influence in “Africa” the aforementioned western powers once carved up for themselves. Colonialism is still in place after all.
Nations can avoid this fate of destabilization and brutal bloodshed as long as they keep up on interest payments, funnel natural resources to their western keepers, and let their lands be used as outposts for the military-industrial complex. Every country, from Ethiopia to Ivory Coast, from Algeria to South Africa, is forced to transfer their resources like diamonds, rubber, banana, coffee and oil as unfinished goods so that Wall Street corporations can import materials pennies on the dollar and then turn around and make billions. This is a pyramid scheme so diabolical and nefarious that only the devil could have conceived of this.
There is one last pernicious trait of colonialism that is actually the most Machiavellian aspect of this malignant scheme. After kneecapping and bleeding nations into hopeless cycles of warfare and destitution, these moneyed hyenas then jaunt to the same nations they buried to tap dance on victims’ graves. A procession of duplicitous billionaires partake in subterfuge and astounding hypocrisy by presenting themselves as compassionate philanthropists. You hear of them daily as they travel to Nigeria, Congo, Angola, Ethiopia and beyond pretending like they are giving back while simultaneously taking a thousand times more than they give. Photo ops show one impish billionaire after another smiling while feigning care for an impoverished child; once the photo op is over, these same monsters sign off on initiatives to steal back in spades what they gave in scarps. Alternative humans like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros and politicians like Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and our ogre-in-chief Donald Trump advertise their kindness while sticking machetes in the backs of billions throughout the planet.
If a man breaks into your house, murders your father, enslaves your mother and keeps you and your siblings in a perpetual state of malnutrition, would it make any sense to call that criminal a philanthropist because he gives you one bowl of rice a day while he has you locked up in the basement as he eats filet mignon in your living room? Of course not, the larcenist and murderer would justifiably be condemned by society as a monster and be locked up or be sent to the gallows. Yet this precise scenario is exactly what these billionaire and millionaire philanthropists do all the time; they take billions in profits, give pennies on the dollar in charity and then get celebrated as altruistic angels.
What has been done in “Africa” is now being done globally, including right here in America. The elevated tribe in America are “white people” while innumerable tribes are created by way of idiotic identities that do not have a lick to do with who we are as humans. Just as colonialism oppresses all in Africa, the mass majority of “white folk” here America are being trampled along with the rest of us, yet we are so stuck on labels and artificial identities we end up fighting each other instead of uniting to take on our oppressors. What NGOs do to “Africa” and third world nations by way of false charity, our government here in America does to us in kind. They take from us billions by way of taxation and fees, transfer to Wall Street plutocrats and 1% tycoons trillions by way of Quantitative Easing and bailouts, and then give us pennies back on the dollar they took from us by way of sham government programs like Obamacare which only enhance the profits of corporations and the oligarchs.
Next time you feel like worshiping billionaires and paying homage to their “kindness”, just realize you are bowing before devils in $60,000 Kiton suits who are at the root of the economic anxieties you endure. It is said that a camel has a better chance of fitting through the eye of a needle than a rich man has of getting to heaven. That is because the rich are willing to commit mind-bending atrocities and wreak havoc on a global scale in order to maintain and enhance their fortunes. Money is the greatest of makeup for it serves to cover up the devious nature of these wealthy scoundrels and empowers them to keep taking more and more as they pretend they are giving to humanity. The cruelty committed against the continent of Ethiopia is being done to us here in America and throughout the world. We better wake up soon or else we will all be guests in Hotel Rwandan—do I have to remind you how that went down? #DevilsWearKiton
ALIENS were present at the Crucifixion of Christ, according to ET enthusiasts who have been studying ancient art.
Because painted on the walls of the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Georgia is an image of Christ that has sent conspiracy theorists into a frenzy.
The fresco painting shows Christ being crucified with a large crowd gathering around him, but in the top left and right corners are what appear top be flying crafts or some form of advanced technology which humans clearly would have not have had 2000 years ago.
The ships are dome like, with three trails coming out of each which look like a propellant of some kind.
Art historians who have studied the 11th century painting claim that the strange crafts actually represent guardian angels, but during the Byzantine period, which was present in south east Europe and south west Asia up until the 1450s, angels were depicted as human-like with wings.
Conspiracy theorist website Ancient Aliens said: “The unknown artist seems to be telling us that these flying saucers were present during the death of Jesus.
“The faces likely mean these crafts were piloted by people, or beings, that seem to play a central role in the event.
“They must have been part of the crucifixion story, at least as it was taught by the Georgian Orthodox church.
“Were early artists and the Orthodox Church aware of certain facts about ancient aliens that have been veiled from us today?”
Throughout history, Jesus Christ and Christianity have been linked to alien activity.
Two separate texts from Egypt, now being held in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City and the other at the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, which have recently been deciphered in the past few years and suggest that Jesus was an alien shape-shifter.
The text describes Judas’ betrayal of Christ: “Then the Jews said to Judas: ‘How shall we arrest him (Jesus)? For he does not have a single shape but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy, sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red, sometimes he is wheat coloured, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics, sometimes he is a youth, sometimes an old man’.”
Another reading, written in the Coptic language – a form of Egyptian – describes how Pontius Pilate had dinner with Jesus the night before his crucifixion.
The Roman, who is considered a Saint in Coptic churches which would explain the favourable view of him, then tells Jesus: “Well then, behold, the night has come, rise and withdraw, and when the morning comes and they accuse me because of you, I shall give them the only son I have so that they can kill him in your place.”
To which Jesus responds: “Oh Pilate, you have been deemed worthy of a great grace because you have shown a good disposition to me.”
Jesus then supposedly showed Pilate that he can escape if he chose to by shape-shifting.
The text reads: “Pilate, then, looked at Jesus and, behold, he became incorporeal: He did not see him for a long time.”
I’m in Lalibela, a small town cradled in the mountains of northern Ethiopia and home to 11 rock-hewn churches. Commissioned by King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela back in the 13th century, these places of worship had been created as a new Jerusalem for Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims. Now recognized and protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they continue to pull in people by the thousands from around the world, drawn to the biggest attraction in a country where tourism is on the rise.
