Posted on 08/11/2021 2:51:12 AM PDT by Cronos
This depends on where - for example Ethiopia has 1700 year old art with Jesus as dark skinned
The Assyrians, the Yemenis had brown skinned Jesus
The Naimans, etc. had Jesus depicted with Mongolic features etc.
Visiting those churches is truly an astounding experience. Hewn from solid rock!!!
Ethiopia not only has some of the oldest churches but also an independent line of Judaism that existed since ancient times.
Enoch!
Cool. If we ever add any books to the western canon, I nominate I and II Dominos!
Fascinating. A bit surprised to read “The Ethiopic version of the Old and New Testament was made from the Septuagint,” because, by my reading and study thus far the LXX reaches only up to the NT and thus does not include it.
Fascinating. I like looking into the practices of the early church. This branch was founded very early and has some interesting practices. It also had monasticism early on.
The books of Dominos also called Alexandrine Sinodos (or Clementine Heptateuch) is a Christian collection of Church Orders.
This collection of earlier texts dates from the 4th or 5th century CE. The provenience is Egypt and it was particularly used in the ancient Coptic and Ethiopian Christianity.
As usual in genre of the Church Orders, this texts purports to be the work of the Twelve Apostles, whose instructions, whether given by them as individuals or as a body. In antiquity this text was sometime mistakenly supposed to be gathered and handed down by the Clement of Rome.
The names of the Apostles are so listed: John, Matthew, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Simon, James, Nathanael, Thomas, Cephas, Bartholomew and Judas. The presence of both Peter and Cephas, and the first place given to John, is found also in the more ancient Epistula Apostolorum.
The content can be so summarized:
chapters 1-3 include a short introduction inspired by the Epistle of Barnabas
chapters 4-14 are an evident adaptation of the first six chapters of the Didache, the moral precepts of which are attributed severally to the Apostles, each of whom, introduced by the formula “John says”, “Peter says”, etc., is represented as framing one or more of the ordinances
chapters 15-30 treat in similar manner of the qualifications for appointment and ordination of bishops, presbyters, reader, deacons and widowers, and this section treats also of the duties of lay male and female and of deacons.
That’s probably an error, the Septuagint consists of the books before the Gospels, ie the old testament including the Deuterocanonical books.
True. I believe monasticism arose a long the Egyptians and Ethiopians before the 3rd century and then spread west.
What is illuminating is that the beliefs of the Ethiopians and The Marthomite church in India both have the same Orthodox beliefs as the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. That proves that the oft repeated lie of Constantine created the church, is really a big lie.
Thanks Cronos. My smartaleck comments was just that I found the idea of two Bible books called Fisrt and Second Dominos to be humorous. Your serious explanation is very interesting and helpful.
Only those who want to believe in untruths would be attracted to the idea that Constantine created the church. They’re much like the people who want to believe that Christian art is about blonds.
I see a possibility that Christian monasticism is an extension of monasticism like that of the Essenes and therefore was founded in Israel and predates Christianity. The earliest archeology of Christian churches is often (maybe always) associated with monastics.
Monasticism started with Buddhists, who sent missionaries west by the 2nd century BC. Stories of a great Indian Christian saint circulated such that St. Bodhi was canonized until I believe the 1400s. This saint turned out to be Siddhartha who became known as Buddha.
Thanks so much for posting this. Very interesting.
Do the Ethiopians know that a bunch of those books were only added to the Bible by the Council of Trent? /s
it wasn’t smart alecky :) - the names ARE funny and seemed funny to me. I just wanted to share what I found when I asked myself the same question you did :)
I don’t think it was an extension of the Essenes for the following reasons
1. The essenes died out with the destruction of the temple. Monasticism in Christianity came about 200 years later
2. Essenes were communes of men and women and were more apocalyptic cult like - think more Branch Davidian
3. The area where Christian monasticism grew was not close to the Essenes area.
You could be right, but for the above reasons I don’t think it is related
I forgot about Buddhism, silly me. But the Buddhists followed the Jains with their Tirthankaras.
And both are part of the Sanatana Dharma rishi/ascetic phenomenon.
The Pope and Vatican have hundreds of original documents that have been left out of The Bible so as to not conflict or confuse the “masses”.
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