💭 If you were traveling through the verdant Ethiopian highlands, you might make a stop at the Abba Gärima monastery about three miles east of Adwa in the northernmost part of the country. If you were a man—and you’d have to be to gain entry into the Orthodox monastery—then you might be permitted to look at the Abba Gärima Gospel books. These exquisitely illuminated manuscripts are the earliest evidence of the art of the Christian Aksumite kingdom. Legend holds that God stopped the sun in the sky so the copyist could finish them. Leafing through a Gospel book you would come upon portraits of the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—the authors of the book’s contents. You might be surprised to find, however, that there is a fifth evangelist included there.
“A fifth evangelist?!” you say, and rightly so. This fifth portrait is that of Eusebius of Caesarea, the man who taught us how to read the Gospels. A new book, Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity, by Dr. Jeremiah Coogan, an assistant professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, sheds light on history’s lost “fifth evangelist” and explains the pervasive influence of the bishop who has, arguably, done more than anyone else to shape how we read the gospels.
Eusebius of Caesarea is not a very well-known name outside of scholarly circles. He was born in the last half of the third century in Caesarea Maritima, in what is today Israel. He became first a priest and then a bishop. He would later become a biographer of the emperor Constantine possibly even a wheeler-dealer in the ecclesiastical politics of the imperial court. Under the influence of the third-century theologian Origen, who spent a long period of his life in Caesarea, Eusebius became an accomplished textual scholar.
If you’ve heard Eusebius’s name before it’s probably because of his Church History, an account of Christianity’s origins from the Apostles to his own day. As influential as the Church History is—and it became the template for how people have written the history of Christianity ever since—it doesn’t compare to the impact of his less visible and least-known literary production, the canon tables (also known as the Eusebian Apparatus).
In Eusebius’ time the contents of the New Testament were not universally established. Though many agreed that there should be four Gospels, and even grounded this assumption in the natural order of the universe, they did not read the Gospels in parallel. At least part of the reason for this was that, practically speaking, this was hard to do. Even if you had a Gospel book that contained copies of the four canonical Gospels, identifying how the various stories related to one another involved familiarity with the text, deductive skills, and a real facility navigating the physical object itself. Gospel books were big and heavy; the text was usually written in a series of unbroken Greek letters; and there were no chapter, verse, or page numbers to help you find your way.
Enter Eusebius, the man whose invention made reading the Gospels in parallel possible. It is basically a carefully organized reference tool that allows you to navigate books. In a period before chapter and verse divisions, Eusebius and his team of literary assistants divided the canonical Gospels into numbered sections and produced a set of coordinating reference tables that allow readers to cross-reference versions of the same story in other Gospels. This was an important innovation in book technology in general. As Coogan put it “the Eusebian apparatus is the first system of cross-references ever invented—not just for the Gospels, but for any text.” Reference tables might not seem sexy, but by producing them Eusebius inaugurated a trend that would dominate how Christians ever since have read the Bible.
“While Eusebius was never formally denounced as a heretic, some of his opinions were pretty unorthodox.”
The enormity of his innovation is hard to see precisely because it has become ubiquitous. We thread the different sayings of Jesus from the Cross together into one story. We merge the infancy stories of Matthew and Luke together to produce a single shepherd and wise men-filled Nativity story. These decisions are relatively uncomplicated, but we should consider the amount of decision-making that went into the production of this reading scheme. First, the team had to decide on unit divisions: what is a unit, where does it begin, and where does it end? While today church services have designated readings, early Christians often read for as “long as time permitted.” In segmenting the Gospel, the Eusebian team was cementing preexisting yet informal distinctions about what constituted a particular story, episode, or section of the life of Jesus.
Once this was accomplished, each unit had to be correlated to the corresponding units in the other Gospels. Some decisions seem easy: Jesus feeds 5,000 people in all four Gospels, for example. But there is an additional story—relayed by Mark and Luke—in which he feeds 4,000 people. What should we do with them? What about chronological discrepancies? The incident in the Jerusalem Temple where Jesus gets into a physical dispute with moneychangers appears in the final week of his life in the Synoptics but kicks off his ministry in the Gospel of John. Are they the same story? Did Jesus cleanse the Temple twice? These were and indeed are live questions for Christian readers, but by drawing up his tables, Eusebius and his team provided answers by means of a simple chart. A great deal of interpretation and theological work happens in the construction of the chart, but the tables seem to be factual accounting. Instead of argumentation that makes itself open to disagreement, we see only beguilingly agent-less lines and numbering.
This kind of schematization might seem to be the ancient equivalent of administrative or clerical work. Indeed, it drew upon technologies and practices from ancient administration, mathematics, astrology, medicine, magic, and culinary arts. The portraits from the Ethiopian Gärima Gospel, however, capture an often-hidden truth: Schematization is theological work. Segmenting the Bible and mapping its contents created theologically motivated juxtapositions and connections. For example, by connecting the story of divine creation from the prologue of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the word…”) to the genealogies of Matthew and Luke (the so-and-so begat so-and-so parts), the Eusebian team could underscore the divine and human origins of Jesus. Equally important, they instructed the reader to read the Gospels in a new way: a way that reoriented the original organization. If this shift seems unimportant or intuitive to us, it is only because we have so thoroughly absorbed it.
Take, say, the interweaving of Jesus’s finals words at the crucifixion. Mark’s version ends with Jesus in psychic and physical distress crying that God has abandoned him. It’s an uncomfortable scene and it is meant to be. Luke and John have more self-controlled conclusions: Jesus commends his spirit into the hands of his father (Luke) and authoritatively proclaims his life “finished” (John). Though Eusebius doesn’t reconcile these portraits himself, his apparatus allowed future generations to combine them in a way that neutralizes the discomfort we have when we read Mark.
While others had thought about reading the Gospels alongside one another, it was Eusebius and his team who came up with the tool to do it in a systematic way. From Eusebius onwards, Coogan told The Daily Beast, “most manuscripts of the Gospels included the Eusebian apparatus. When a reader encountered the Gospels on the page, they generally did so in a form shaped by Eusebius’ innovative project. While Eusebius prepared his Gospel edition in Greek, the apparatus had an impact in almost every language the Gospels were translated into. We find it in manuscripts in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Gothic, Georgian, Arabic, Caucasian Albanian, Nubian, Slavonic, Old English, Middle German, and Dutch. Thousands of Gospel manuscripts, from the fourth century to the twentieth, reflect Eusebius’ approach to reading the Gospels.” Even today when academics think about the relationships between the Gospels and print Gospels in parallel with one another, we are asking the same questions as Eusebius did. It might be said that Eusebius is still controlling how we think.
The truth is however that any kind of supplementary material (scholars call them paratexts) like an index or a table of contents creates new ways to read a text. Matthew or Mark may have wanted you to read their stories linearly from start to finish, but Eusebius and his team gave you a new way to read. You could hunt and peck between the bindings. Reading out of order can be powerful work, as Wil Gafney’s A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church is, because it creates new pathways through the text that disrupt the ways that the authors meant the texts to be read. Most authors don’t write narratives with the expectation that people will just use Google to search inside it.
While Eusebius was never formally denounced as a heretic, some of his opinions—including some of the judgments that inform his apparatus—were pretty unorthodox. Like Origen he was sympathetic to views about the nature of Christ that would later be condemned as heresy. It’s probably because of the ambiguities surrounding his theological views that Eusebius, one of the most influential figures in Christian history, never became a saint. But his story proves that it is sometimes invisible actors who are the most powerful of all.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 4, 2022
👹 U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, who is retiring at the end of the year, was in Ethiopia this past weekend. For the 2nd time since the fascist Oromo-Islamo-Protestant regime began the genocidal war two years ago against Orthodox Christians of Tigray, Ethiopia. Of course, the Senator gave 👹 evil Abiy Ahmed Ali another green light to massacre children and women of Tigray. Today, the fascist Oromo’s air force conducted a horrific drone attack in Adi Daero town of Tigray. The air strike on Tigray camp for displaced people killed dozens of children and elderly. This is the second time in a month.
💭 Kosovo all over again. That’s why America is babysitting and allowing the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia (which is the enemy of historical Ethiopia, Orthodox Christianity and the Ge’ez Language) to survive – and attack civilian targets:
The aim of this genocidal war is to destroy Ethiopia + Orthodox Christianity + The Ge’ez language.
👹 Senator James Inhofe visits the black Hitler, Abiy Ahmed Ali.
Ethiopian leaders have expressed their genocidal intent in closed-door talks & openly on social media platforms. A while ago, their supporters called, openly, to ‘drain the sea.’ Look at what’s happening in # Tigray; # TigrayGenocide is not a plan anymore, nor is it a hidden desire
💭 TigrayGenocide | The Nobel Peace Laureate PM A. Ahmed The Black Adolf Hitler?
☆ The majority, according to Christian Ethiopians and ministry workers in Ethiopia that I interviewed, support the military operation. Their support has held strong even as reports of civilian deaths, ethnic cleansing, horrific human rights abuses, and widespread hunger inflicted on the Tigrayan population rise in scale and urgency.
☆ That evangelical support seems to be rooted in a particular interpretation of what God is doing in the current conflict. Many evangelical Christians, such as theologian and preacher Paulos Fekadu, have publicly declared that ☆ “what is happening in north Ethiopia, in Tigrayis the judgment of God.” Several of the Ethiopian Christians I interviewed said their friends and family readily declare that the Tigrayans “deserve what they get.”
☆ Her friend Desalajn Assefa Alamayhu, an evangelist who is Tigrayan himself, agrees. And he accuses Orthodox Christians in Tigrayof being active contributors to the conflict.
“ TigrayOrthodox Christians participate in evil things with TPLF. They participate completely with TPLF. They said, ‘In the Bible, we can oppose federal government because we need freedom.’” In contrast, he contends, “most Protestant Christians in Ethiopia agree with the federal government because Dr. Abiy teaches and preaches from the Word of God.”
☆ The The Elephant that many evangelical Ethiopians seem to be wrestling with is this: With whom would Jesus side—the charismatic evangelical leader determined to defeat his enemies, or the primarily nonevangelical Orthodox Tigrayans who are suffering immensely?
💭 EndNote: 98.5 % of Protestants side with the evil monster Abiy Ahmed Ali, who is guilty of war crimes and genocide in Christian Tigray.
As the humanitarian issues escalate in the largely Orthodox north, the conflict tests evangelicals’ loyalty and theology.
The transition to an ethnically Oromo leader marked a break from 27 years of rule by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). And in a country historically dominated by Orthodox and Muslim believers, Abiy became the first openly evangelical head of government Ethiopia ever had.
But since a bitter and violent conflict broke out between Abiy’s government and the formerly ruling TPLF in the northern Tigrayregion in November 2020, evangelicals—who make up just over 18 percent of the population—have been divided over how to respond.
The majority, according to Christian Ethiopians and ministry workers in Ethiopia that I interviewed, support the military operation. Their support has held strong even as reports of civilian deaths, ethnic cleansing, horrific human rights abuses, and widespread hunger inflicted on the Tigrayan population rise in scale and urgency.
💭 Green Light from USA to The Fascist Oromo Regime of Ethiopia to Go Ahead with Genocide of Christians?
I spent the last week of February teaching Old Testament at the newly-formed Trinity Fellowship Pastors College in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is by far the oldest nation I’ve visited, one of the few Old Testament nations still on the map. Its existence is a theological fact, testimony to the reliability of God’s promises.
According to the “primeval history” of Genesis, descendants of Cush settled the area that is now Ethiopia and Sudan soon after the flood. The Da’amat Empire was established in the tenth century B.C. by Menilek I, reputedly the son of Solomon and Makeda, queen of Sheba. According to the Kebre Negast (“The Glory of the Kings”), which was compiled in the fourteenth century A.D., Queen Makeda made a pilgrimage to Israel to learn statecraft from Solomon, who seduced her. Makeda conceived and went home to give birth to her son. As a boy, Menilek visited his father in Jerusalem, where Solomon anointed him as king of Ethiopia. As retribution for the humiliation of his mother, Menilek stole the Ark of the Covenant and levitated it across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, where it purportedly remains to this day. It’s a persistent national myth. Until Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, Ethiopian leaders claimed to be sons of Solomon, lions descended from the Lion of Judah.
There’s nothing of this legend in Scripture. To ancient Israelites, Ethiopia wasn’t an ally but an uncanny and terrifying threat. Cush’s son Nimrod founded Nineveh and Babylon (Gen. 10:8–12), cities that later conquered Israel. Aaron and Miriam objected when Moses took a Cushite wife (Num. 12:1). During the reign of King Asa, Zerah the Cushite came over the southern horizon to invade Judah with hundreds of chariots and a million-man army (2 Chron. 14).
Against this background, the heroism of Ebed-Melech is all the more notable (Jer. 38). Ebed-Melech was a Cushite eunuch who served in the court of King Zedekiah during the last days of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah counsels Zedekiah to surrender to Babylon. Enraged by this message, Jerusalem’s officials force Zedekiah to approve their plan to put the traitorous prophet to death. Like Joseph, Jeremiah is tossed into a muddy cistern without water, left to die of thirst.
Ebed-Melech bursts onto the scene as an unexpected deliverer. As the wonderfully-named Deusdedit Musinguzi points out in a monograph on the passage, Ebed-Melech is a model of compassion, justice, and courage. Though a foreigner, he charges Jerusalem’s leaders with “evil” in open court, and persuades the king to let him pull Jeremiah up from the pit. Ebed-Melech’s name, “Servant of the King,” indicates he’s Zedekiah’s servant, but he proves himself loyal to the King. As a Gentile deliverer, he foreshadows Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. He literally rescues Jeremiah from death, raising him from beneath the earth, a figure of the Spirit who brings a greater Prophet from the grave. In every way, Ebed-Melech is the antithesis of the corrupt Jewish courtiers, a Gentile without Torah who keeps the Torah written on his heart (Rom. 2:14–15).
Ebed-Melech is firstfruits of a great harvest from the land of Cush. According to Orthodox tradition, Christianity came to the country in the late third century through two shipwrecked Syrian boys, the brothers Aedisius and Frumentius, who were brought to the court of the Axum emperor. Through their faithful service, the boys rose to high positions, and their witness convinced the emperor to become a Christian. In 305, the emperor’s successor sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the patriarch—none other than Athanasius—to send a bishop to Axum to promote evangelism and church construction. Athanasius ordained Frumentius, who returned to baptize Emperor Ezana, who made Christianity the official religion of his empire. Ethiopia is among the oldest of Christian nations.
In Acts, Luke tells us that Christianity arrived in Ethiopia already in the early first century. The first known Gentile to be baptized was another Ethiopian eunuch, a latter-day Ebed-Melech, who meets Philip in a Spirit-arranged encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8). Though “cut off” like the Suffering Servant in the text he reads, the Ethiopian eunuch becomes fruitful, with a place in the house of his God (Isa. 56:1–8; Deut. 23:1–5).
Already in the old covenant, when the very name “Cush” could send chills down Israelite spines, the Lord promised he would one day adopt Ethiopia as a “home-born” son and a child of Zion (Ps. 87:4). One day, he promised, Cush would bring tribute to Jerusalem (Isa. 45:14). These promises form the story arc of Ethiopia’s long history. Every time you see Ethiopia is still on the map, you’re seeing real-world proof of the faithfulness of God.
👉 Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
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