“The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is an ancient church which upholds the Apostolic Teachings”
1. Definition of Terms
1.1 Ethiopia
The term “Ethiopia”, which means “burnt face” in Greek, was first used by Homer and Herodotus to refer to the place between south of Egypt and Indian Ocean because the area was inhabited by people having that colour.
Ancient Egyptians used to call the place south of their country as “Land of the Cush”. Prophet Moses used the term to refer to that place because he grew up in Egypt learning their language and culture.
The Seventy Scholars, who lived in the second century B.C. and translated the Holy Bible from Hebrew into Greek, used the term “Ethiopia” to refer to the place that Moses called “Cush”. This term has been mentioned more than 40 times in the Holy Bible. Currently the term Ethiopia is used to refer to the East African country which has an area of about 1,119,683 Km2.
1.2 Orthodox
Orthodox means, in Greek, straight or right. This term was used as part of the name of the church by the bishops and scholars of the church who attended the Council of Nicea (a city near the current Istanbul). The council was summoned because of Arius’ false teachings on the nature of Christ. The scholars and bishops called their faith “Orthodox” after defeating Arius in the argument in the council,.
Currently, six oriental churches, namely the Ethiopian, Egyptian, Syrian, Indian (Malankara), Armenian and Eritrean churches and other Eastern Churches like the Russian and Greek churches use the name “Orthodox”.
1.3 Tewahedo
Tewahedo stands for the term incarnation or union, which in other words means oneness, and shows the Son being perfect God- perfect man, but as one entity, which is the basic dogma of the church. Our church believes that the Son, who existed before the creation of this world, came to this world and assumed the human flesh and soul, and in doing so, he has become a perfect God - a perfect man, having just one entity.