A huddle grows around the high priests, with one young priest bearing an ikon, or holy picture, while others hold ornate gold and silver crosses.
The St. George church in Lalibella, carved from the rock in the form of a cruciform.
A sermon is given on the mount by Abuna Andreas at Lalibella during Christmas rituals.
A monk, Abba Haile Mikael, stands outside his hut with a crucifix and a holy book on Tana Kirkos.
Abba Haile Mikael surrounds the bronze dish the monks at Tana Kirkos claim was stolen by Menelek from the Temple at Jerusalem, along with the ark of the covenant.
Abba Haile Mikael stands beside pre-Christian-era stone pillars, believed to be connected with ancient Jewish-style blood sacrifices, inside protective tin shed.
This is a typical mural seen all over Ethiopia (left, at Axum) of King Solomon meeting Queen Sheba in Jerusalem.
whatever one may think on the religious side, reading a description of the ark’s powers, actions, and behaviors from the old testament is quite eerie, like reading bronze age people describing advanced technology, or, in reverse, a Hal Clement novel or 2 (Close to Critical, Mission of Gravity?)
Before leaving Addis Ababa for Aksum, I went to the offices of His Holiness Abuna Paulos, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has some 40 million adherents worldwide, to ask about Ethiopia's claim to have the ark of the covenant. Paulos holds a PhD in theology from Princeton UniversityOkay . . . you know this guy believes in evolution, the documentary hypothesis, and every current higher critical theory known to man, but he still chooses to maintain belief in his own national mythology???
All the people who are demanding that we rednecks consider Adam a mere allegory should discard their own myths first.
96 posted on
06/26/2009 8:42:48 AM PDT by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)