Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Significance of Ethiopia

"The Jews regarded Ethiopia as “the extreme boundary of the habitable world in the hot south”. … The Ethiopia of those days corresponded to what we call “the Upper Nile”, reaching approximately from Aswan to Khartoum. … Candace is known to have been not a personal name but a dynastic title for the Queen Mother who performed certain functions on behalf of the king. The Ethiopian eunuch to whom Philip was sent was her treasurer or chancellor of the exchequer, presumably a black African. [It is likely] that he was actually Jewish, either by birth or by conversion (cf the promise of Isaiah 56:3-7 with the prohibition of Deuteronomy 23:1), for the Jewish dispersion had penetrated at least into Egypt and probably beyond.”

[From Stott, J.R.W. (1991) The Message of Acts pg 160.]

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