A SKETCH OF RASTAFARI HISTORY
by Norman Hugh Redington (1995)
[NOTE FOR THE ST. PACHOMIUS LIBRARY EDITION, 2005]
This text was written a decade ago, and reflects the era in which it was composed. On the one hand, the Rastafari Movement has changed considerably. In particular, the Twelve Tribes group has moved much closer to mainstream Christianity; also a Protestant version of the Rastafari movement has emerged along side the Ethiopian Orthodox one. On the other, the Church of Ethiopia and her relations to the Eastern Orthodox Church have been strained. At the time that the text below was written, it appeared that little more than formal barriers remained to a full reunification; unfortunately, the recent emergence of a certain trend (not so much in Ethiopian as in Coptic theology) has made that appear, to me at least, rather less likely and even raised questions about the “purely linguistic” nature of the divide. Nevertheless, I have chosen to leave the original wording unaltered. I hope eventually to prepare an updated edition.read more
Marcus Opellius Antoninus Diadumenianus or Diadumenian (d. 218) was the son of Roman Emperor Macrinus, who served his father briefly as Caesar from May, 217 to 218, and as Augustus in 218.read more
New research published this week in the journal Heart confirmed the findings of two earlier controversial studies on calcium supplementation and heart attack risk published in the British Medical Journal last year. There is indeed at least a 24-27% increased risk of heart attack for those who take 500 mg of elemental calcium a day. read more
The 10th century Persian historian Ibn al-Faqih reported that “all the Khazars are Jews.”
Notwithstanding this statement, some scholars believe that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is some support for this in contemporary Muslim texts. Essays in the Kuzari, written by Yehuda Halevi, detail a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some consider a moral tale. read more
Italian archaeologists have discovered lotion that is over 2000 years old, left almost intact in the cosmetic case of an aristocratic Etruscan womanread more
The US state department has criticised Israel’s treatment of thousands of African asylum seekers who it says are being denied basic social services.read more
Rastafarian Views on Life, Politics and Social Issues
