Scholarship, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the absence of a comprehensive history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo Church, it can truly be said that such a volume is overdue. While books about the Church usually include a least one historical chapter, and volumes on Ethiopia inevitably deal with the national Church, a comprehensive history of the Church has been lacking. Similarly, there are several volumes which offer overviews of the Church's role in society in specific periods. John Binns, a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and Vicar of Great St Mary's, the University Church, Cambridge, whose involvement with Ethiopia stretches over a quarter century, now fills this gap.
A major challenge of writing such a volume is, of course, that one wishes to do justice both to the ‘flow’ of history and at the same time, provide insight into a range of thematic issues such as Church and State relations, organisational hierarchies, rituals and liturgy, art and architecture, relations with other religious groups, etc. Binns has sought to resolve this by dividing his work into ten chapters bookended by an introduction and a conclusion. Each chapter surveys a particular period while also focusing on a particular theme. Thus chapter ii on pre-Aksumite civilisation (pp.17–37) examines the interaction between Semitic and Cushitic (African) elements in the formation of Ethiopian culture. Chapter iii (pp.39–60), which covers the period from the rise of the ancient kingdom of Askum to its decline, also discusses Church–State relations.
As Binns readily admits (p.5), to do justice to each theme it is impossible to strictly hold to a chronological framework, and examples from other periods must be provided to trace historical developments. Inevitably, this produces a certain dissonance. For the earliest periods our main sources are archaeological finds and internal sources which were often written centuries after the events that they describe. As Binns correctly notes, in recent years there has been a growing tendency among scholars to be critical of the latter and to challenge the accounts accepted by believers (pp.5–6). Often there is no alternative but to supplement the rather thin contemporary information with observations from much later periods. Thus, in discussing traditional church education, a theme treated in in a chapter (pp.245–7) which largely deals with the period from 1632 to 1855, Binns inserts his observations from visits to such schools in the early twenty-first century.
On the other hand, the further one progresses in time, the more frequently the opposite tension is seen, in which events from a certain period are seen to be foreshadowed in the past. In both cases what begin as technical challenges can often morph into problems of interpretation.
At several points (pp.58, 60) Binns writes of the ‘identity of Church and State’. Yet, as he himself acknowledges, considerable tensions often existed between rulers, both national and local, and the clergy. Monastic movements and Christological controversies were often closely tied to regional loyalties and disrupted centralised state policies. Dissident Christians were persecuted by the emperors, who sought to impose unity, but rarely succeeded. Moreover, while the ideal Ethiopian ruler may have been depicted as a monastic saint, in several cases they ignored the Church's rules regarding marriage. Moreover, they were often ambivalent about converting their subjects to Christianity since this would have given conquered peoples the protection of the Church. It would appear that in this matter Binns has perhaps been over-influenced by the successes of modern rulers (most notably Haile Selassie i) in imposing their will on the Church, and some of their achievements are projected backwards into earlier periods.
Although Binns is usually reliable on issues of fact, there are some significant errors.
On p.94 he writes of ‘Ethiopian New Year, which is celebrated like Jewish New Year on 10 September’; in fact, Rosh Hashanah is in the autumn, but does not have a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar. On p.101 he speaks of ‘Amda Seyon … whose prowess is recorded in the earliest work of Amharic historical writing’. The reference is presumably to the chronicles which depict Amda Seyon's battles against Muslims in the Horn of Africa. This work is primarily in Ethiopic (Ge'ez) not Amharic (with the exception of a few passages). Moreover the actual date of composition of the work is a matter of scholarly dispute. Binns accepts that it is a largely contemporary witness to these wars, but some would argue that it was composed almost two hundred years later.
One of the expectations of a survey volume is that it will provide direction forfuture work and reading Binns's bibliography is impressive and extensive. It is also, however, idiosyncratic and reveals some glaring lacunae. Thus the only work cited which is authored by Getatchew Haile, who is undoubtedly the foremost living scholar of Ethiopian church literature, is his co-edited book on missions in Ethiopia. His more than one hundred books and articles in which he edits, translates and annotates previously unstudied Ethiopic texts are not mentioned. Certainly, many of these treat themes of direct interest to Binns. To cite only one example, Getatchew's 1990 publication of two volumes (text and English translation) on ‘The faith of the Unctionists’ in the prestigious Corpus ScriptorumChristianorum Orientalium series is of direct relevance to Binns's discussion of Christology in chapter vii (pp.135–58). Similarly, while Kay Kaufman Shelemay's article on the dabtara, a group of lesser clerics and songsters, is duly noted, the three volumes that she co-edited with Peter Jeffries on Ethiopian liturgical chant do not appear. This is particularly unfortunate since their work vividly illustrates the interplay between oral transmission and written sources, which Binns explores in chapter viii (pp.159–93). None of Basil Lourie's many publications on calendric works are cited; Denis Nosnitsin, who is probably the most prolific of the young cohort of scholars to emerge from the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies at Hamburg University, appears nowhere in the book.
These caveats notwithstanding, Binn has written an extremely useful book. While focused on the Orthodox Church he makes a serious effort to do justice to the relations between the national Church and the country's Catholic, Muslim and (most recently) Protestant populations. While specialists may find numerous points on which they differ from him, the general reader will be richly rewarded.
