Remember the Sabbath Day by Keeping it Holy

Q: Watch the video on Moodle that gives a view of life in a small Rastafari village. Write in your blog about how this village participates in the system of symbols that we see reflected in our textbook. Don't give a laundry list of every kind of symbol, but pick out an element that you find striking. Interact also with what our textbook has to say about the symbol you have chosen. Is the symbol used in a surprising way or is it what you would expect from our book.


A: The symbol that I found most striking was not a symbol in the sense of something that can be physically seen, but rather something to be experienced; a ritual practice. What struck me was there observance of the sabbath, not that this is an uncommon practice in other Christian denominations, but that they likened it more to the Jewish tradition of resting on the shabbat is what interested me. They mentioned that the tradition was taken straight from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (true) which reminded me greatly of the Ethiopian practices taken from the Old Testament.


What was so interesting to me is how similar the Rastas' mindsets seemed to be to those of the Ethiopian Christians that we looked at. The Ethiopians take the Bible very literally, and pay close attention to the Old Testament, treatments which seem somewhat lost in most modern Biblical traditions. Obviously, the Rastas tweak the meaning of the Bible a bit to fit their view (that they are the modern Babylon), but at the same time take it very seriously. The prism through which they view the world seems to be taken very literally, the way the Ethiopian's seem to see their life through the Bible.


The Rastas feel a strong religious connection to Ethiopia; it's an essential part of their faith. I think though that sometimes it's easy to overlook these sorts of deep links to Ethiopian beliefs in favour of looking simply what's on the surface and what's novel. The fact that the Rastas took on the Ethiopian national colours is a bold statement and their invention of new words and ways of language is undeniably facsinating (and wonderful, I feel), but these sorts of practices directly reflect the Ethiopian way of thinking, which I think is even more interesting. There's nothing (at least that I can remember) that specifically speaks about this sort of relationship between the Rastas and Ethiopian Christians, but it is an underlying current in any discussion of Rastafari.