nation in the south with which they were no longer directly connected.
Like the name "India," the word "Ethiopia" is used in the vaguest way by ancient writers. There can be no doubt that these two names sometimes overlap. The land on both sides of the Red Sea to the south was known as Ethiopia. The Queen of Sheba may have come either from Asia or from Africa. But the Ethiopia of which we know in Christian times was undoubtedly in Africa. The extent of land to which the name is given is never defined, but we may understand it as roughly corresponding to our modern Abyssinia, a country the limits of which are not determined in the present day. Abyssinia is a form of the name given by the Arabs (Habeʿsh, meaning "mixture," "confusion," because of the mixed character of the peoples inhabiting it); but the Abyssinians still call themselves "Ethiopians" (Itiopyavan) and their country "Ethiopia " (Itiopia). The Jewish character of some of the customs of the Abyssinians has given rise to the conjecture that these people were influenced by the Jews before they became Christian; but the fact that some of those customs, such as circumcision, distinctions of clean and unclean food, and the levirate marriage, are much more widespread, being found more or less in Arabia and in other parts of Africa, tends to destroy the grounds of this hypothesis. Dr. Reynolds suggested that the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath in Abyssinia may be traced to Judaic influences in ancient Christianity.[1] Still, the number of coincidences creates a cumulative argument in favour of the spread of early Jewish ideas. There can be no doubt that the diaspora was immensely influential for two or three centuries. Its missionary activity has been unfairly disregarded because thrown into the shade by the greater activity of the Christian evangelism that both absorbed and superseded it. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts points to the early introduction of Christianity into Africa. But the name "Candace" which is there given to
- ↑ Smith, Dic. Christ. Biog. vol. ii. p. 234a.
