84 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



A very close limit to the age of the Ethiopia scriptures may be deduced from 

 evidence which history supplies connected with the subject. The Christian 

 religion was first established in Abyssinia by Frumentius, who was for this pur- 

 pose consecrated Bishop of Axum in the year 335 by the celebrated Athanasius, 

 Patriarch of Alexandria. The circumstances which led to the conversion of the 

 Abyssinians are told by Rufinus in the ninth chapter of the first book of his 

 Ecclesiastical History, who closes his account by stating that he had it imme- 

 diately from a companion of Frumentius ; — " Quae nos ita gesta, non opinione 

 vulgi, sed ex ipso Edesio, Tyri presbytero postmodum facto, qui Frumentii comes 

 prius fuerat, referente cognoviraus." The Abyssinians themselves claim a mucli 

 earlier date for their conversion to Christianity, and assert that they were pre- 

 viously followers of the Jewish creed. But their account of the matter is so 

 obviously fabulous as not to be entitled to any notice ; aud the part of it last 

 mentioned is refuted even by their own version of the Bible ; for surely if they 

 had been Jews by religion, they would have had the Old Testament in the 

 original Hebrew, — in a tongue cognate to their own, and from which conse- 

 quently they could have much more easily translated the Scriptures than from 

 Greek. It is further recorded in history, that the Abyssinians were again con- 

 verted to Christianity in the reign of the Emperor Justinian, that is, about two 

 hundred years after the first time ; from which it would appear that they had in 

 the interval relapsed into paganism. But it is not necessary to consider the 

 authorities on which the narrative of this second conversion rests ; as the first is 

 the only one to which it is material here to attend.* 



But to return to the passage upon which I have been commenting ; — I shall 

 conclude my remarks on it by pointing out, in the fourth place, M. Abel- 

 Remusat's error in supposing that the Abyssinians formed the syllabic powers of 



* Scaliger, in his learned work De Emendalione Temporum, notices the second conversion of the 

 Abyssinians; but very unaccountably overlooks the first, which is fully as well authenticated. His 

 words upon the subject are as follows ; — " Jactant vetustatem Christianismi a Candace Ilegina et 

 Philippo Apostolo. Sed id manifesto falsum convincit Ecclesiastica Historia. Anno enim XV. Jus- 

 tiniani Imperatoris, Adad Rex Axuraitarum vovit, si vinccret Omeritarum vicinorum Regem, se 

 Christianum factum iri. Victo rege Omeritarum, missis ad Justinianura legalis, impctravit ab eo 

 episcopos, qui primi omnium tunc Christianismum in ^Ethiopia publicarunt." — De Emend. Temp, 

 lib. vii, p'. 682. 



