"We pronounce it the most interesting book we have ever met with." -Kingston's Magazine, 1863
"Henry Aaron Stern...was described as the most courageous missionary...as a Jew by birth Stern was deemed in a far better position to judge the many characteristics and customs of the Falashas than other foreign observers." - From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews (2017)
"Stern...cannot escape a major share of the responsibility for the situation which led to...the costly military expedition...later mounted in order to free him and others from imprisonment." -The Falashas: A Short History of the Ethiopian (2012)
"The Jewish monks showed great dislike to Mr. Stern and his work, for they knew well that if the Falashas followed his instructions, their occupation would be gone." - Biography of the Rev. Henry Aaron Stern (2012)
Missionary Stern had a very simple method of persuasion. He would approach Ethiopian Jews and tell them about his Jewish past...the king...was furious...ordered that Stern be caught and flogged." -The Journey to Jerusalem (2011)
Were Ethiopians that practiced a form of Judaism, the lost descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba?
Rev. Henry A. Stern (1820 - 1885) arrived in Abyssinia in the early part of 1860, as the agent of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, for the purpose of establishing a mission among the Falashas or native Israelites.
On Mr. Stein's return from Abyssinia he published in London (in 1862) a book entitled "Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia." It introduces us to scenes and events strange and startling, and to persons entirely unheard of before.
So uncertain and complex had been the accounts which from time to time had reached Europe concerning the origin, habits, and religious belief of this remarkable people, that it needed personal inquiry and observation in order to arrive at just and satisfactory conclusions concerning them. That they professed to be jews, and were in the habit of observing many Jewish ceremonies, had been well known. But the evidence on which their claims rested, and the extent to which their practices coincided with those enjoined in the Levitical Law, was the subject still of considerable uncertainty.
It was part of Mr. Stern's duty to endeavour to arrange and reduce to order this tangled skein of mingled truth and fable, and to elucidate the facts which would justify his mission being accepted, as one essentially to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
According to their own tradition, and the concurrent testimony of native Christian writers, they came to Ethiopia in the reign of Maqueda, the Queen of Sheba. After a lengthened sojourn at Jerusalem, the queen returned to her own dominions, laden with munificent presents, and, what greatly enhanced her happiness, with a youthful heir and prince, in the person of her son Menilek.
Other theories propounded by Europeans for the origins of the Falashas included:
• When Solomon's fleet made the tour of the Red Sea, some Jewish adventurers, or traders, settled in Ethiopia.
• Some of the Jews who fled into Egypt at the time of the Babylonian Captivity (B.C. 586) sailed up the Nile and established themselves in the province of Kwara, subsequently extending into Abyssinia.
• Jews fled into Abyssinia after the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70).
• The Falashas are Jews by religion only, and not by descent.
It was with missionary objects that Mr. Stern visited the Falasha people, in Abyssinia. His starting-point was Boulak, the port of Cairo, whence he voyaged up the Nile to Korosko, above Assouan, thence across the Desert to Khartum, and up, by way of the Blue Nile, into Abyssinia. In the country of the Falashas, —who have hitherto been so little known that Dr. Jost, in his History of the Jews, doubted even their existence, — he sojourned, and preached freely; and his narrative contains many pleasant pictures of their primitive life.
As Stern notes, the Falashas practiced certain Jewish rites, are not acquainted with the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud. They possess, in Geez, an Ethiopic dialect of great antiquity, the canonical and apocryphal books of the Old Testament; a volume of extracts from the Pentateuch; the Te-e-sa-sa Sanbat, or laws of the Sabbath; the Ardit, a book of secrets revealed to twelve saints; lives of Abraham, Moses, etc., and a translation of Josephus. A copy of the Orit, or Mosaic law, is kept in the holy of holies in every synagogue. Various pagan observances are mingled in their ritual.
