“God created us intelligent so that we can meditate on his greatness.”

Ze’ra Ya’aqob (Kiros, 2005,40)

Abstract

This article examines Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Hatata, a work that integrates reason, faith, and ethics within the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition. It highlights Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s critique of blind tradition and his emphasis on lebona (reason) as a divine tool for discerning truth. The article addresses debates about his originality while underscoring the significance of his contributions to both Ethiopian and global philosophy.

Introduction

A pivotal figure in Ethiopian philosophy, Ze’ra  Ya’aqob made intellectual contributions to global discourses on philosophy and theology that are both profound and enduring. Emerging from the unique ecclesiastical/pedagogical environment of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, his reflections, encapsulated in his seminal work, the Hatata, provide a rare example of African rationalism during a time when philosophy from the region was largely dismissed by the West. Written in seclusion in the caves of Northern Ethiopia, Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s meditations reflect a deep dissatisfaction with his contemporary religious and political context, as well as a commitment to pursuing truth and ethical behavior through reason and divine contemplation.

The Hatata not only interrogates Ethiopian customs but also presents a critical exploration of human nature, ethics, and the divine, all rooted in a distinctly Ethiopian intellectual tradition. Despite the philosophical depth of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s writings, his work remains largely unknown outside Ethiopia, often overshadowed by Western thinkers like Descartes. Scholars have noted uncanny parallels between the works of Ze’ra Ya’aqob and Descartes, parallels which have led to debates on the originality of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work. However, closer examination of his philosophical propositions – deeply embedded in the Ethiopian Orthodox traditions of orality, sacred music, and prayer – demonstrates the originality of his thought and its importance in the broader context of African philosophy.

This article offers an introduction to Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work. It situates his contributions within the broader intellectual culture of Ethiopia while highlighting his influence on discussions of faith, reason, and human nature. It especially emphasizes the importance of prayer as a means of understanding and engaging with God in Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s conception of the human character.

Historical Situation

Ze’ra  Ya’aqob’s long life spanned decades of tumult marked by civil unrest, foreign invasion, and religious persecution. He was born in Axum in 1599 and died in 1692. He earned his education under various Christian traditions, particularly the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, shaped his intellectual and spiritual development. He attended several years of education in Ethiopian Orthodox Church schools as well as schools of other Christian traditions. He was praised for his cleverness and patience. After his training, he served as a church teacher. However, his views were regarded unfavorably by those in power, which caused him to flee into self-isolation. His season of meditation in the caves of Northern Ethiopia produced his most famous work, the Hatata. (The title “Hatata” might be translated “Meditations”.) After Ze’ra Ya’aqob returned from his exile, his contemplations were published by his student Welde Heywat. 

Before proceeding, it is helpful to note one frequent point of confusion about Ze’ra Ya’aqob and Heywat. Ze’ra Ya’aqob wrote the Hatata as a single volume; it is a singular accomplishment of philosophical reflection. However, Heywat, Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s student and successor, composed a separate volume called the Hasesa that is often confused with the Hatata. The Hasesa is Heywat’s continuation or expansion of the Hatata. In some scholarly discussions, the terms Hatata and Hasesa are used interchangeably to describe Welde Heywat’s own work. Essentially, Hasesa is another name for Heywat’s version of or response to Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Hatata, rather than a completely separate work. We must recognize that while the Hatata of Ze’ra Ya’aqob and the Hasesa of Heywat share similar themes and are connected through their focus on rationalism, ethics, and faith, they are indeed distinct texts. This article focuses on the primary work, the Hatata. 

The Hatata adds to notions of human nature, the meaning of God, and ethics (Kiros, 1996). In the Hatata, Ze’ra Ya’aqob sought to “introduce a new tradition of critical reasoning, [and] a dispassionate interrogation of blind faith, sacrosanct customs and… dead traditions” to counteract trends in Ethiopian culture and religion in his own time (Kiros,1996, 43). In our time, his work counteracts the modern philosophical approach of “personal rationalistic critical investigation” (Sumner, 1997; Kiros, 1996; Bridges et al., 2004), as will be explored further below.

Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work is deeply indebted to his church education. Thanks to his years of studying in church settings, the presence of God and the concept of God as the source of everything, including knowledge and the means to find it, influenced all of his work. This background is evident in the Hatata’s opening, which quotes Psalms 65v16 and reflects the church’s deep-rooted tradition of singing and praying the Book of Psalms:

“(እግዚአብሔር) ለነፍሴ ምን ያህል እንደሠራላት ልንገራችሁ”

“let me tell you what he (the Lord) has done for my soul” (Ze’ra Ya’aqob, 1667/2014)

This quote frames the Hatata’s subsequent material, which includes autobiography and philosophical discussion. Overall, this material demonstrates Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s dissatisfaction with life, as he experienced war, division in the church, and Islamic invasion. He reacted particularly against the imposition of Portuguese Catholicism on Ethiopian Orthodox Christians and against the invasion of Geragn Ahmed, who led the Islamic state of Adal. In response to these upheavals, Ze’ra Ya’aqob sought to find truth by knowing the unchanging, holy God.

The Originality of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Thinking

Despite the key contributions made by  Ze’ra Ya’aqob, his work is little known outside of Ethiopia. This obscurity has happened for several reasons. 

First, scholars of Ethiopian or even African philosophy must contend with a certain strain within ethnophilosophy. Its underlying argument is that the work of African thinkers is unphilosophical because of ways of thinking that are too spontaneous or too based in myth. According to these scholars, within Africa, no literate tradition considered and responded to the metaphysical and normative question of human life; rather, mysticism and spiritualism dominated African thinking (Kiros, 1996, p. 41). Paulin Hountondji and Claude Sumner both respond to this dismissal of African thought (Kiros, 1996, 40). By working extensively with Ethiopian philosophy, Sumner demonstrated that philosophy is a dimension of every culture and contributes to each culture’s existential self-understanding. Sumner elevates Ze’ra Ya’aqob as an original thinker whose work stands as a solid monument to African and Ethiopian philosophy. 

Second, Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work has faced centuries of neglect because it is written in Geez, a Semitic language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, rather than in a more familiar Ethiopian language, such as Amharic or Oromo. 

Furthermore, and perhaps most harmfully, his work has been dismissed as a mere cultural transposition of Rene Descartes’s thinking. In his definition of philosophy, Summer argues for the authenticity of  Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work: 

Philosophy in the strict sense has received different historical definitions throughout the ages. But whatever the specific acceptance one adopts, it always refers methodologically to a reflective, systematic, deep, and thorough way of thinking and, historically, to a vast and rich display of subjects which have engaged the attention of different thinkers at various times and in distinct cultures: knowledge itself, its language, its method, being and non-being, good and evil, unity and multiplicity, motion, the world, living and inanimate beings, the human person and infinite being. (Sumner, 1997, 173)

This generous definition validates the inclusion of oral philosophy. Although Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Hatata was written down and is therefore not a work of oral philosophy, it is deeply rooted in the orality of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church because of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s education in that context. In the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the teaching of sacred music, Zema (liturgical chanting), the composition of spiritual poetry and hymns, Qene (a kind of improvised oral poetry), the translation of Scripture, and Sewasew (traditional treatises on grammar) pervaded education and religious practice with rich language, especially spoken or sung language. This atmosphere shapes all of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work. The Hatataengages especially with the tradition of Qene, which uses “intricate, highly symbolic and even cryptic language” (Sumner, 1997, p. 175). That kind of language informed how Ze’ra Ya’aqob constructed his arguments (Sumner, 1997; Kiros, 1996). 

It is true, however, that Ze’ra Ya’aqob was a contemporary of Descartes. Descartes was born in 1596 and died in 1650. Despite their vast geographical and cultural differences, both thinkers analyzed how reason may be used to explore truth. As a result, the Hatata has been compared to Descartes’ Discours de la méthode (1637). The similarities between the two thinkers’ writings are uncanny, starting with the settings of seclusion and self-reflection that led to their publications. In addition, both philosophers focus on the role of reason in the human experience. Both considered reason necessary for understanding. For them, rationality is the very foundation of human being; reasoning is the most useful means of inquiry. Both understood human nature to center on capacities for understanding and explaining (Sumner, 1997; Kiros, 1996; Bridges et al., 2004 ). 

These similarities between Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s and Descartes’s works have encouraged the ascription of the Hatata to Giusto d’Urbino (1814-1856). D’Urbino was a Capuchin missionary from Italy to Ethiopia who was commissioned by Antoine Thomson d’Abbadie, a geographer and the head of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, to explore Ethiopia in order to procure materials of cultural relevance. D’Urbino was renowned for his knowledge of Ethiopia’s Semitic languages. He brought the works of Ze’ra Ya’aqob to Europe and to Western scholarly attention. Suddenly, the Hatata became famous. Led by Boris Turayev (1905) and Enno Littmann (1909), scholars produced editions and translations. These translations attempted to reproduce the unique language and organization of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s treatise. Later, scholars traced connections between Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work and that of other European thinkers; they attributed these connections to influences available through church schools (Wion, 2013). 

During these decades, Carlo Conti Rossini, an Italian colonial administrator in Italian Eritrea, published a prominent article questioning Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s authorship of the Hatata. In the Journal Asiatique in 1920, he claimed that the Hatata was a forgery by d’Urbino, a way for d’Urbino to bolster his fame in nineteenth-century Europe by bringing to light such an exotic but understandable text. Rossini posed linguistic and cultural arguments centered on the lack of any possible free thinking in Ethiopia. He said that Ethiopians suffered from a predilection for blind faith, partly thanks to extensive Byzantine influence. Rossini’s claim was motivated by his colonialist agenda; he received the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze award from Mussolini in 1937, when Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia was underway. Rossini offered Ethiopia’s lack of original, civilized thinking as a reason for why the Ethiopian people needed to be conquered. It took many years for Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s work to emerge from this haze of colonialism and from false attributions. 

For, in fact, the approaches and contexts of Ze’ra Ya’aqob and Descartes were quite distinct. Sumner argues that the thinkers’ goals serve as the starting ground for their differences (1997). While Descartes sought to build a foundation for science that would be unquestionable, Ze’ra Ya’aqob concentrated on communicating pure divine knowledge, free from all human claims. These very different purposes shaped their thinking and writing styles. Descartes operates in linear, mathematical patterns, paralleling the straightforward scientific methodologies he seeks to uphold, whereas Ze’ra Ya’aqob sends his thoughts in many different directions that connect to central conceptualizations, just as he sees all knowledge as ultimately radiating from God and drawing the human self back to God (Sumner, 1997). 

Over time, decolonialist critics have helped to reorient philosophy to include African thinkers. To demonstrate the Hatata’s authenticity as a work by an Ethiopian, these scholars have noted that the Hatata uses styles drawn from Geezand from Qene, as mentioned above. Only an Ethiopian thinker like Ze’ra Ya’aqob could be the primary author. As one would expect from a book written by a person with Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s background, the Hatata’s mannerisms, vocabulary, and organization are heavily influenced by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s schools and linguistic traditions (Kiros, 1996).  

Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Philosophical Propositions 

Against this background, a consideration of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s actual propositions will now be clearer. Lebona is Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s term for the concept called “reason,” “intellect,” or “insight” in English. For Ze’ra Ya’aqob, lebona allows humanity to differentiate between good and evil and to interact with God’s created world. Because God created the whole world, including humanity, acknowledging the creator God is the only reasonable path. As Ze’ra Ya’aqob writes,

Was I created by my own hands? But I did not exist before I was created? If I say that my father and mother created me, then I must search for the creator of my parents and of the parents of my parents until I arrive at the first who were not created as we (are), but who came into this world in some other way without being generated… He who created them from nothing must be an uncreated essence… Therefore there is a creator, else there would have been no creation. (Kiros, 1996, 46)

Out of his “uncreated essence,” God created humanity to have a mind that can discern good and evil, light and darkness. So God put lebona in us. For Ze’ra Ya’aqob, lebona is not a human function developed merely for social or academic learning, and humans are not simply social creatures. Instead, lebona is a divinely endowed light that guides humans toward goodness, and humans are to exercise this faculty to discern not just how to behave ethically but also how to relate to God (Bridges et al., 2004; Egid, 2022). Intelligence, the passion to seek what is right, and the integrity to live it out are united gifts bestowed on humanity by God. As Ze’ra Ya’aqob points out, “God did not speak to you otherwise than with the voice of your reason” (quoted in Kiros, 1996, 45). 

Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s major claims can be summarized under five headings that demonstrate the interactions between lebona and faith.

First, lebona is the only basis for knowledge (rationalism). 

Second, humans are mind and faith (spiritualism and orthodoxy). 

Third, some humans are privy to exceptional gifts of intellectual and spiritual knowledge (illuminism). 

Fourth, lebona and faith both center on God (fideism). In other words, contrary to Western patterns of thought, both reason and faith stem from God himself, for the complex world that God has made can only be known by a faith through which the divine rational, infallible light is perfectly applied. Ideally, each person can use lebona to seek and find God and God’s righteous ethics (Kiros, 1996, 43). As Kiros notes, this complete method of inquiry uses “the tools of inspection and examination piece by piece, layer by layer” to “search for one who is absent” (Kiros, 1996, 44). Eagerness and reaching toward God characterize this pursuit of knowledge. 

Fifthly, because all of these concepts and actions center on God, rationality and faith must be conducted in prayer (Kiros, 2005, 40). The practice of prayer contributes to the nonlinearity of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s writings, as he does not write systematically but only as he experiences knowledge in conversation and relationship with God. His spiritual encounters with God through prayer are the point at which lebona and faith meet. 

Because God does not speak to humans except through lebona, human foolishness at its worst is essentially the denial of this voice. A refusal to use the intellect given by God leads to darkness (Kiros, 2012, 45). So Ze’ra Ya’aqob ascribes human evil to our inadequacy in using our intellect. This inadequacy causes humans to pollute the pure world they were given to inhabit. Ya’acob saw the consequences of rejecting God’s lebona in the secular and sacred authorities of his day. He exhorted political and spiritual leaders thus: 

“If you don’t believe, God’s judgement will fall upon you,” I say to them, “God can’t order me to believe falsehood, nor can he judge me for not believing in a faith that does not appear to me to be true; for he himself gave me light of reason that I may discriminate between good and evil, true and false…” (Sumner, 1978, quoted in Bridges, et.al., 2004, 536-7)

As this statement demonstrates, Ze’ra Ya’aqob actually took lebona as the foundation for refusing to agree with the contemporary authorities who disliked his thought. He claimed that the “light of reason” that came from God allowed him to “discriminate” for himself, regardless of what politicians or religious leaders said or did to try to impose their rules on him. 

Perhaps because of his emphasis on lebona, faith, special knowledge, and personal dialogue with God through prayer, Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s ethics are highly individualistic. Morality grows from each person’s own relationship with God. Heywat, Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s successor, applied this morality to develop concepts such as self-care, the holiness of marriage, happiness, and hope (Kiros, 2012, 48).

Applying Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Philosophy to Learning

The fifth point above – the role of prayer – is one of Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s greatest contributions to philosophical discourse. His enthronement of prayer as the method of human reasoning stands opposed to traditional Western, Cartesian dichotomies between faith and reason, prayer and science. Rather than seeing prayer as a means of growing in faith only, Ze’ra Ya’aqob positions prayer as a way for humans to use their reason and grow in their understanding of God, of themselves, of the world, and of ethics – in other words, as a means of education. Meditative or prayerful reasoning allows humans to come to understand God and life. As Kiros writes, Ze’ra Ya’aqob stretches “the meaning of rationality to include a place for prayer as a natural vehicle of philosophizing” (Kiros, 2005, 74). The centralization of prayer as a learning tool relies on the claims that God is the source of all knowledge and that people can partake in this knowledge through worshipping God (Kiros, 2005, 52).

Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s own experience, described in the Hatata, evidences the power of this centralization of prayer. He begins by asking God to open his mind to understand humans’ evil and quarrelsome nature. Yet this prayer seems counterproductive. In section three of the Hatata, Ze’ra Ya’aqob studies human evil, and this study catapults him into doubting the existence of God (Ze’ra  Ya’aqob, 2014; Kiros, 1996). Grappling with his unbelief that there is a God, Ze’ra Ya’aqob prays through the Psalms. He begins to identify with King David, especially with Psalm 12v4 118v73. This contemplation draws him to the idea of a “creating creator.” All creation reveals the creator, as it could not create itself (Ze’ra Ya’aqob, 2014, 17-18). The very existence of creation demonstrates the necessary preexistence of God. Furthermore, this creator could not make humanity without reason. As prayer using Scripture illuminates his mind and reignites his faith, Ze’ra Ya’aqob praises God with the words of Psalm 139v2-3, declaring that God knows him and his thought and begging in the same breath for reason to know God. This reason returns him to his faith in God, to the ability to discern evil without doubting, and to the ability to choose what is good. 

As this autobiographical narrative demonstrates, although prayer is a powerful tool for asking God for knowledge, it is also itself the means of acquiring knowledge. In response to the contemporary political and religious problems noted above, Ze’ra Ya’aqob commends prayer to the warring kings and debating theologians of his time. He directs them to pray for guidance to use their God-given reason. Kiros beautifully describes the centrality of prayer by comparing Ze’ra Ya’aqob to Heidegger: 

Mediative thinking is calculative thinking for Heidegger, as prayer is ordinary thinking for Zara Yacob. The first seeks to get near the religion of the transcendent, and similarly, the second strives towards God in thought correctly. In both instances thought seeks to address its contingency by moving towards infinity and completion. (Kiros, 2005, 78)

Ze’ra Ya’aqob would go so far as to conceptualize rational thinking itself as prayer. Humanity must depend on God to learn what goodness is because humans are finite, their perspectives limited and tainted by evil. Continual interaction with God allows humans to see their shortcomings and to drink from God’s holy wisdom. Only the infinite God can direct humans in the best ways to pursue a world free from evil. As a reasonable being, God is available when humanity seeks him for direction toward rational, orderly goodness.

Thus, prayer serves as the link between God, who is the source of knowledge, and humanity. Most importantly, it is the means of growth for individual humans. Ze’ra Ya’aqob applied his philosophy to education to argue that education should emphasize personhood. Personhood is not automatically bestowed on one at birth but must be achieved gradually through learning and virtuous actions (Bridges et al., 2004, 239-41). Virtues are the essence of personhood (Bridges et al., 2004, 239-41). As students seek to know God, they will live in accordance with God’s virtues. If humans do not develop the skill of reasoning necessary to live a life of virtuous action, they will become mere “followers” (Kiros, 2005, p. 66). For Ze’ra Ya’aqob, the most influential teachers are parents and the community. As Heywat emphasizes later, drawing on Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s thought, “the neglect of educating a child is a moral crime” (Bridges et al., 2004, 239-41). Because education is the development of society’s members into rational, virtuous individuals, it requires the ethical engagement of the whole society.

Conclusion

Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s Hatata exemplifies the profound interplay between faith, reason, and prayer. His integration of lebona as both a divine gift and a tool for discerning truth, alongside his emphasis on prayer as an essential means of rational inquiry, challenges traditional Western separations between faith and reason. By recognizing prayer as a tool for deepening knowledge and fostering virtuous living, he encourages a contemplative approach to existence that transcends mere intellectualism.

Despite historical attempts to diminish his contributions, Ze’ra Ya’aqob’s thought offers valuable insights into the nature of human understanding, ethics, and the pursuit of truth, as his work brings the intellectual richness of Ethiopian Orthodox traditions into the global discourse on philosophy. Through his meditations, he calls for the harmonious blending of intellect and faith, a call that remains relevant today, especially for practices of theology, ethics, and pedagogy.

Author Bio: Ruhama Gezahegn Worku is pursuing a PhD in Educational Studies at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology (California, USA). Her research investigates how education shapes identity in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Ruhama serves as Registrar and Online Program Director at Evangelical Theological College (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), where she also teaches courses in Christian education.

References

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Kiros, Tewodros. “Claude Sumner’s Classical Ethiopian Philosophy.” Northeast African Studies 3.2 (1996): 39-52.

–. Zara Yacob: Rationality of the Human Heart. The Read Sea Press, 2005.

Mbodj, Aïssatou and Anaïs Wion. “The History of a Genuine Fake Philosophical Treatise (Ḥatatā Zar’a    Yā‘eqob and Ḥatatā Walda Ḥeywat).” Translated by Lea Cantor, Jonathan Egid, and Anaïs Wion. Afriques 2013. https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.3178. 

Sumner, Claude. “The Significance of Zera Yacob’s Philosophy.” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 22.3 (1999):172-188.

–. Ethiopian Philosophy, Vol II: The Treatises of Zara Yaecob and Walda Hewat – Text and Authorship. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University, 1976. 

Ze’ra Ya’aqob. ሐተታ ዘዘርአ ያዕቆብ. Trans. Getachew Haile. Collegeville, 2014. Original work published 1667.