The Kebra Nagast and the Solomonic Tradition
As taught in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition
How the Glory of the Kings shapes Ethiopia's covenant identity in Christ
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church carries one of the oldest continuous Christian identities in the world, and that identity is bound up with a story of sacred kingship that reaches back, in the church's telling, to Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The book that gathers this story is the Kebra Nagast — Geʿez for "The Glory of the Kings" — a fourteenth-century compilation, traditionally associated with the scribe Yetshaq (Isaac) of Aksum, that the church reveres as a national and ecclesial epic rather than as part of the biblical canon. To read the Kebra Nagast from within the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition is to encounter a people who understand themselves as heirs of Zion, custodians of the Ark of the Covenant, and a kingdom grafted by grace into the covenant promises of Israel and then into the body of Christ.
By the end of this lesson
- Summarise how the Kebra Nagast expands 1 Kings 10 into the Makeda-Solomon-Menelik narrative that grounds Ethiopia's Solomonic dynastic claim.
- Explain the Ethiopian Orthodox claim that Zion and the Ark of the Covenant were translated to Aksum, and how the tabot in every church expresses it.
- Trace the scriptural arc from the queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10) through Psalm 68:31 and Zephaniah 3:10 to the Ethiopian official's baptism in Acts 8.
- Define the Tewahedo miaphysite christology and connect it to Cyril of Alexandria's anathemas and the Council of Ephesus.
- Distinguish what the canonical texts assert from what the Kebra Nagast adds, identifying the points held by faith within the tradition.
- State precisely where Ethiopian Orthodox teaching diverges from Chalcedonian Christianity and how recent ecumenical dialogue has reframed that divide.
Scripture
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