Piovanelli Jewish Christianity in Aksum 2018.pdf

JUDAÏSME ANCIEN ANCIENT JUDAISM Revue internationale d’histoire et de philologie International Journal of History and Philology Volume 6 2018 F JEWISH CHRISTIANITY IN LATE ANTIQUE AKSUM AND ѮIMYAR? A REASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE AND A NEW PROPOSAL* Pierluigi Piovanelli University of Ottawa – EPHE, Sciences religieuses, PSL piovanel@mail.uottawa.ca To the memory of Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957–2015) Résumé La question hautement débattue des « influences juives » sur le christianisme éthiopien est ici réexaminée à la lumière des témoignages archéologiques, épigraphiques, littéraires et linguistiques d’ époque aksoumite. En l’absence de tout indice qui démontrerait l’existence de communautés judéennes organisées sur le territoire aksoumite, des contacts commerciaux et culturels avec le judaïsme syro-palestinien peuvent suffire pour expliquer la présence de quelques * The present contribution is in part the result of two graduate seminars on “Religion in Late Antiquity: Monotheism Comes to Ѯimyar and Aksum”, held at the Department of Classics and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa, in 2014 and 2016. I would like to mention the names of the students who attended them and whose enthusiastic participation and reactions were so refreshing and stimulating: Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin, Caroline Belanger, the late Bernard Booth (1934-2015), Deanna Brooks, Jeremy T. F. Dixon, Bryan Ladds, Lucas Marincak, Robert S. B. Moffat, Susan Sandul, and Avian Tang in 2014; Joel Balkovec, JaShong King, Emily Ann Laflèche, and Domenico Miletti in 2016. I would like to thank Rajiv Bhola for revising, with his usual competence, my English prose. A French presentation was also given at the occasion of CNRS seminar “Monuments et documents de l’Afrique ancienne: recherches en cours en histoire, histoire de l’art et archéologie”, held in Ivry-sur-Seine, on May 16, 2018. My gratitude goes to Claire Bosc-Tiessé, Marie-Laure Derat, and Anaïs Wion, who organized it, to Iwona Gajda, who responded to my paper, and to the colleagues and students who intervened in the discussion. Judaïsme ancien / Ancient Judaism 6 (2018), p. 175-202 © FHG 10.1484/J.JAAJ.5.116611 176 PIER LUIGI PIOVANELLI emprunts lexicaux d’origine judéo-araméenne dans le lexique du Gǝʿǝz aksoumite. La situation est complétement différente de l’autre côté de la mer Rouge, où la présence de communautés judéennes est attestée depuis au moins le iie siècle de notre ère, et la judaïsation progressive des élites ḥimyarites, depuis le dernier quart du ive siècle, est bien documentée dans les sources épigraphiques. Au lendemain de la victoire, en 525, du roi aksoumite Kaleb / Ǝllä Aṣbǝḥa sur son adversaire ḥimyarite Yūsuf ʾAsʾar Yathʾar, les invocations trinitaires contenues dans une inscription du nouveau souverain ḥimyarite Sumūyafaʿ Ašwaʿ, mis sur le trône par Kaleb, témoignent d’une politique nouvelle de christianisation du pays. Toutefois, après avoir assumé directement le pouvoir en Arabie du Sud, le général aksoumite Abraha semble adopter une forme de christianisme plus conciliante vis-à-vis de ses sujets ḥimyarites judaïsés et/ou judaïsants. Une telle initiative, mettant peut-être en valeur les racines israélites du christianisme et des institutions chrétiennes, finit par être appliquée à Aksoum aussi, dans le dernier quart du vie siècle. Avec le concours de beaucoup d’autres facteurs, à la fois historiques et culturels, cela contribuera à la mise en place, à terme, du christianisme judaïsant typiquement éthiopien. Summary The present essay reexamines the highly debated question of “Jewish influences” on Ethiopian Christianity in the light of Aksumite archaeological, epigraphic, literary, and linguistic evidence. In the absence of any clue that would demonstrate the existence of wellorganized Jewish communities on Aksumite territory, commercial and cultural contacts with Syro-Palestinian Judaism are more than sufficient to explain the presence of a few loanwords from Jewish Palestinian Aramaic in the lexicon of Aksumite Gǝʿǝz. The situation is completely different on the other shores of the Red Sea, where the existence of Judean communities is well attested since at least the 2 nd century ce and the progressive adoption of Jewish practices and beliefs by Ḥimyarite elites is confirmed, from the last quarter of the 4 th to the end of the 5th century, by the epigraphic sources. Then, after the Christian king of Aksum Kaleb / Ǝllä Aṣbǝḥa defeated his rival, the Jewish king of Ḥimyar Yūsuf ʾAsʾar Yathʾar in 525, the Trinitarian invocations in the inscription of Kaleb’s protégé Sumūyafaʿ Ašwaʿ seem to point to the implemen- JEWISH CHRISTIANITY IN AKSUM 177 tation of a new politic of Christianizing the country. However, having seized directly the power in South Arabia, General Abraha apparently adopted in his inscriptions a form of Christianity more conciliatory towards his Ḥimyarite Jewish and/or Judaizing subjects. This political move, which was probably emphasizing the Israelite heritage of Christian religion and institutions, was finally made in Aksum too in the last quarter of 6 th century. Together with a variety of other historical and cultural factors this posture will contribute, in the long term, to the establishment of a typically Judaizing kind of Christianity in Ethiopia. Is the Absence of Evidence Evidence of Absence? This kind of methodological question could perfectly encapsulate the terms of the debate surrounding the cultural inf luences that Judaism exerted on the late antique kingdom of Aksum (corresponding to present day Eritrea and Tigray) and the origins of “Mosaic” practices in medieval and modern Ethiopia. On the one hand, the many Judaizing aspects of Ethiopian Christianity – from circumcision to the observance of Sabbath and compliance with a variety of ritual and dietary rules that, despite being inscribed in the Old (from the Christian perspective) Testament, have been progressively abandoned by the large majority of other Christian denominations1 – have always intrigued foreign travelers, scholars, and theologians. In the fourteenth century, Egyptian clerics dispatched to Ethiopia to administrate the local Church were the first, together with their Ethiopian disciples, to experi- 1. The extremely lucid overview provided by P. Marrassini, “Sul problema del giudaismo in Etiopia”, in B. Chiesa (ed.), Movimenti e correnti culturali nel giudaismo. Atti del congresso tenuto a S. Miniato dal 12 al 15 novembre 1984 (Rome, 1987) 175-183, is to be supplemented now with U. Schattner-Rieser, “Empreintes bibliques et emprunts juifs dans la culture éthiopienne”, Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 64 (2012) 5-28, and Ephraim Isaac, The Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahïdo Church (Trenton/New York, 2013) 27-31. In connection with this, it is worth noting that, according to Ephraim Isaac, “An Obscure Component in Ethiopian Church History: An Examination of Various Theories Pertaining to the Problem of the Origin and Nature of Ethiopian Christianity”, Le Muséon 85 (1972) 225-258, Aksumite Christianity would have been a direct outcome of the Jerusalem Jewish Christian community refuged in 70 ce in the trans-Jordanian city of Pella.