Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert also known as Teacher Hibbert was born in 1894 in Bull Bay, St Andrew. Hibbert is one of four individuals, including Howell, Hinds and Dunkley, among whom the earliest expressions of Rastafari developed. All these leaders are considered patriarchs of the faith. By some accounts Hibbert may have been the very first to preach the doctrine of Haile Selassie as the returned Messiah. Teacher Hibbert's early life is not well documented but it is known that he traveled in North and Central America where he studied and became acquainted with the Ethiopian Coptic Faith and other ecumenical systems. Hibbert declared that he had studied the Bible for over twenty years and was a certified member of an ancient brotherhood, and his mission was "to go root out, pull down, to destroy, to build and to plant. (Jeremiah 1:5, 10) Hibbert returned to Jamaica in 1931 a year after the coronation of the Ethiopian Emperor. He is usually associated with the more esoteric / mysterious philosophies of Rastafari, the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF) as well as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He never really gathered a following, but he made attempts to organize Howellites in Kingston under the name Ethiopian Coptic Church. At the time of Howell's arrest in St. Thomas, Hibbert was present and subsequently gave evidence in Howell's defense.

 

Outside of his founding of a branch of the EWF - Local 27 - Hibbert never sought to develop a populist following. He was more of a spiritual leader, given to promoting the teachings celebrations and the development of an Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jamaica. This is a vision he helped bring to reality in 1970 when the church arrived in Jamaica. After 1970 however, Hibbert, though always considered one of the founding fathers of Rastafari, became less visible up until his death in 1986 at the age of 96.