NUBIAN & ETHIOPIAN CHURCH

The church in sub-Saharan Africa is ancient, noted as early as the first century with Simon Bacchus, eunuch of Queen Candace of Nubia receiving baptism in Jerusalem at the hand of Philip the Apostle. The distinctive type of Christianity that developed in Nubia and Ethiopia stands apart from other apostolic churches, as their are various traditions which only survive here and are commonly fused with native Jewish traditions. Many writings that were otherwise lost to the West have been found to be preserved in the libraries of Ethiopian churches, and grant us a valuable understanding of the dealings of the early church outside of the Roman Empire. While the earliest accounts of the church in the southern Nile Valley remains shrouded in mystery, Christian writings do begin to appear in the region starting with St. Frumentius, the 4th century Syriac scholar, commonly regarded as the apostle of the Ethiopians, who in his lifetime, would baptize the King of Axum and establish the Ethiopian church.