Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service)- According to popular tradition the Tables of the Law are preserved in Ethiopia. The Queen of Sheba stole the Tables from Solomon and kept them at Axum her palace, the remains of which were discovered during recent excavations and which proved the truth of the Bible story. The Tables are kept in a little house where they are guarded day and night by an Orthodox monk.
In an interview on Italian television, Archbishop Thimoteus - Rector of Trinity College Addis Ababa said: “The Ethiopian Church has its foundations in the Old as well as the New Testaments. Our people, like the Jewish people, were among the first to know and to keep the law of the Ten Commandments at the time of the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon to learn from his wisdom. As we know and as it is written the King and Queen fell in love and on her return the Queen gave birth to her first son whom she named Menelik. When Menelik was 20 he travelled to Israel to meet his father Solomon who received him with great honour. When Menelik eventually returned to Ethiopia he took with him the 12 wise men of Israel, the Books of the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant with the Tables of the Law which our people hid in Lake Zway when the Muslims came. Now the Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia, guarded day and night by one of our monks and so are the Scrolls of the Old Testament, which are still used. This explains why many of our churches are built like a synagogue and not in the shape of a cross. I would recall that here in Ethiopia we have the only Old Testament Book of Enoch”.
In Ethiopia, more than any other country, the Ten Commandments have been and still are part of the history of the people who have guarded them for four thousand years from the alternating events of history.
Samuel Abraha Weldeyohannes - who studies at Adigrat Major Seminary said: “Before the rest of the world Ethiopia followed the Ten Commandments not as a natural law but as a revelation, a gift to mankind. And although today humanity is making progress, very often it strays from the value of love, that is the Law of God, thirsting for dominion for dominion’s sake to the advantage of injustice and poverty. So egoism is law, passion is law, possession is law, lying is law, fanaticism is law...while terrible diseases such as AIDS exterminate whole peoples on our continent…the further we stray from the Law of God the less we respect our brother, his dignity as a person. Dominion over others seems to be the only law of life and it flings open the door for poverty, the mother of all ills: the horrors of terrorism, war and injustice”. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 23/6/2004, righe 38 parole 532)
