Tekle, you said,
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So then, if Sunday is exclusively a Vatican thing, why do Tewahedo Kristyans go to the Tabernacle on Sunday?
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Here is some history to show you why.
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statements by Ethiopian Emperor Galawdewos (A.D. 1540-1559):
We do celebrate the Sabbath (Saturday), because God, after He had finished the Creation of the World, rested thereon...and that especially, since Christ came not to dissolve the law but to fulfill it. It is therefore not in the imitation of the Jews, but in obedience to Christ, and His holy apostles, that we observe that day
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W. W. Oliphant, an African church leader in the early years of the twentieth century says that the "Sabbath in Ethiopia [has] been kept from the days of Nimrod, about 2140 B.C. (read Gen. 10:8, 10), that is 700 years before the birth of Moses. . . . Africans or Ethiopians had been Sabbath observers from the days of Nimrod, the son of Cush"
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And here comes the change, courtesy of the vatican,
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King Suseynos (1607-32) became Catholic in the hope of an advantgeous military alliance with the west. Alphonsus Mendes, who was sent out as patriarch of Ethiopia, demanded that all Ethiopian Christians be re-baptized, and the priests re-ordained, though he permitted the married priests to remain married. He prohibited the Ethiopian custom of circumcision, and insisted that Saturday be turned from the Sabbath as observed by the Ethiopians to a fast day.
And here is the response from the Ethiopians,
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Ethiopia: Sabbath Crisis - Jesuit missionaries succeeded in converting the Emperor to Roman Catholicism, but attempts to quash Sabbath-keeping resulted in civil war.
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King Suseynos successor drove the Catholic missionaires out of Ethiopia again when they tried to assert full-blown Catholicism.
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The Ethiopian Church has maintained many more Jewish practices than most other Christian Churches, every Ethiopian Christian male is circumcised, devout Ethiopian Christians keep Sabbath (as well as Sunday), an ark is an essential part of every church, and is carried out of the church for festivals , and priests will sacrifice a goat or a lamb for the sick.
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The names of the days of the week have also undergone significant changes. In olden times Sunday was often referred to in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia, as Sanbata Krestiyan, or the 'Christian Sabbath,' and Saturday, which the Ethiopians formerly also celebrated as a Sabbath, was known as Qadamit Sanbat, or 'First Sabbath,' while Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were called Salus, Rabu'e, Hamus and Sadus - names which signified that they were respectively the third, fourth, fifth and sixth days of the week. Some of these old terms have over the years been abandoned, while others have been retained or modified.
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Ark I
RasTafarI
Haile Selassie I
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