HOLY BOOKS of ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX TEWAHEDO CHURCH ~ Emahoy HM
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The word of God is not contained in the Bible alone, it is to be found in tradition as well.
I am asked often about 'what Bible do the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church use and if we read the King James Bible,' and so on. ~ Many people in the West still only imagine Ethiopia as a place with starving children from decades ago, caused by famine due to no rain. They never imagine that there was and is still a very rich ancient Christian culture. ~ When the Protestants from the West go to Ethiopia with their good intentions to 'save those Ethiopians' by taking Christ message to them, they are surprised when they arrive to find that CHRIST has been in Ethiopia from centuries before Europeans knew of him and Ethiopia is one of the oldest CHRISTIAN NATIONS in history, still worshiping ONE G-D and indeed the eYesus Christos, since the time of the Apostles.
The Holy Books and ancient writings preserved in Ethiopian Monasteries are so numerous that even the Church of Rome and other Orthodox Churches has asked The EOTC to allow them copies of them, because their churches has lost many of these original Liturgical Writings.
The isolation of many of Ethiopian Monasteries allowed the early monks to keep many of these writings safely hidden from Arab invaders who pushed into Northen Africa and Later European who tried and failed to colonize the country. ~ Ethiopian leaders and people have over the centuries fiercly defended the CHRISTIAN FAITH and ANCIENT APOSTOLIC ways of worshiping Our Lord.
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Whenever I hear of a Protestant tell me they are traveling to Ethiopia to help them and teach them about Christ, I always smile and advise them to do research on internet and also read the Bible again and count how many times G-d and the prophets talk about Ethiopia and Ethiopian people, then they can travel and learn about worshiping Christ from the Ethiopians. Help is needed in many areas yes, but teaching Ethiopians how to worship Christ is like taking sand to the beach. ~ Intro by Emahoy Hannah Mariam.
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THE SACRED SCRIPTURES are the written word of God who is the author of the Old and New Testaments containing nothing but perfect truth in faith and morals. ~ But God’s word is not contained only in them, there is an unwritten word of God also, which we call apostolic tradition. We receive the one and other with equal veneration.
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~ The Canon of the Ethiopic Bible is more complete and differs both in the Old and New Testament from that of any other churches.
List all books. As a whole, books written in the Ge’ez language and on parchment are numerous. ~The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has 46 books of the Old Testament and 35 books of the New Testament that will bring the total of canonized books of the Bible to 81.
These are the following:
THE HOLY BOOKS of the OLD TESTAMENT are:
1. Genesis 2. Exodus 3. Leviticus 4. Numbers 5. Deuteronomy 6. Joshua 7. Judges 8.Ruth 9. I and II Samuel 10. I and II Kings 11. I Chronicles 12. II Chronicles 13. Jublee 14. Enoch 15. Ezra and Nehemia 16. Ezra (2nd) and Ezra Sutuel 17. Tobit 18. Judith 19. Esther 20. I Maccabees 21. II and III Maccabees 22. Job 23. Psalms 24. Proverbs 25. Tegsats (Reproof) 26. Metsihafe Tibeb (the books of wisdom) 27. Ecclesiastes 28. The Song of Songs 29. Isaiah 30. Jeremiah 31. Ezekiel 32. Daniel 33. Hosea 34. Amos 35. Micah 36. Joel 37. Obadiah 38. Jonah 39. Nahum 40. Habakkuk 41. Zephaniah 42. Haggai 43. Zechariah 44. MalachI 45. Book of Joshua the son of Sirac 46. The Book of Josephas the Son of Bengorion
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THE HOLY BOOKS of the NEW TESTAMENT are:
1. Matthew 2 .Mark 3.Luke 4.John 5.The Acts 6.Romans 7. I Corinthians 8. II Corinthians 9.Galatians 10. Ephesians 11. Philippians 12. Colossians 13. I Thessalonians 14. II Thessalonians 15. I Timothy 16. II Timothy 17. Titus 18. Philemon 19. Hebrews 20. I Peter 21. II Peter 22. I John 23. II John 24. III John 25. James 26. Jude 27. Revelation 28. Sirate Tsion (the Book of Order) 29. Tizaz (the Book of Herald) 30. Gitsew 31. Abtilis 32. The I book of Dominos 33. The II book of Dominos 34. The book of Clement 35. Didascalia
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The Ethiopic version of the Old and New Testament was made from the Septuagint. It includes the book of Enoch, Baruch, and the third and fourth Esdras. In the international Bible studies there are certain books belonging to the class usually designated pseudepigraphic.
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The whole Christendom and whole-learned world owes a debt of gratitude to the church of Ethiopia for the preservation of those documents. Among these books is the book of Enoch which throws so much light on Jewish thought on various points during the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era.
The book of Jubilee (Kufale, i.e. Division) otherwise known as the Little Genesis has also been preserved entire only in the Ethiopic version.
~ The preservation of yet one more book in its entity, namely, the Ascension of Isaiah, is to be remembered to the credit of the Ethiopic Church.
~ May we all be judged worthy to praise His Holy Name forever and ever, world without end. Emahoy Hannah Mariam ~ Please share with your non-Orthodox friends too. They truly don't know our deep roots and many would like to learn. They can buy 'The Orthodox Study Bible' from Amazon.com and it has some more books in it which is left out of KJV Bible but is in Torah (Old Testament) and some which Roman Church have in theirs but more. Still none is as complete as Liturgical Books of EOTC. ~ Many Blessings to you all. Thank-you.
- Emahoy / Female Monk at Beté St Maryam and St Kiristos Semra Denagl Tebabat Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Monastery, So. Florida
Although Christianity became the state religion of Ethiopia in the 4th century, and the Bible was first translated into Ge'ez at about that time, only in the last two centuries have there appeared translations of the Bible into Amharic.
Abu Rumi translation[edit]
The first translation of the Bible into Amharic was by Abu Rumi in the early 19th century.[1] In the opinion of Edward Ullendorff, 'The hisouis Asselin de Cherville]], possessed a manuscript containing a complete translation of the Bible into Amharic, created by the mutual efforts of the Consul and Abu Rumi. As Ullendorff relates, for ten years 'every Tuesday and Saturday his de Cherville's door was shut to all visitors when he read with 'my Abyssinian, slowly and with the utmost attention, every verse of the Sacred Volume, in the Arabic Version which we were able to translate.' But we are not told from which Arabic version the rendering was made.'[2] Where the Arabic words were 'abstruse, difficult, or foreign', de Cherville then consulted 'the Hebrew Original, the Syriac Version, or the Septuagint' for clarification.
William Jowett purchased de Cherville's manuscript, consisting of 9,539 pages written in 'the fine hand' of Abu Rumi for £1,250, which he then presented for review to Professor Samuel Lee, and the final manuscript was printed by Thomas Pell Platt[3] in increasing portions: the four Gospels in 1824, the entire New Testament in 1829, and the complete Bible in 1840. This translation, 'with some changes and amendments, held sway until the Emperor Haile Selassie I ordered a new translation', which was published in 1960/61.[4][5]
First Haile Selassie I Bible (1935)[edit]
A new translation was underway, under the Emperor Haile Selassie I's patronage, when the Italian army invaded. This manuscript was later sent to Britain and printed, but most of the copies were destroyed in a fire during the bombing of London.[6] This translation is sometimes known as the 'Buxton' translation, because a British missionary named Alfred Buxton (1891–1940)[7] was instrumental in sending the manuscript from occupied Ethiopia to Britain. This same basic translation, with some changes, was later printed in the USA, with funds raised by Rev. Donald Barnhouse. After it was printed,[8] this translation (sometimes referred to as the 'Barnhouse New Testament') was found to contain a serious error in Rev. 19:10 & 22:9 (an angel commanding John to worship him, rather than prohibiting John to worship him), so most copies were destroyed.[9]
New Haile Selassie I Bible (1962)[edit]
In 1962, a new Amharic translation from Ge'ez was printed, again with the patronage of the Emperor. The preface by Emperor Haile Selassie I is dated '1955' (E.C.), and the 31st year of his reign (i.e. AD 1962 in the Gregorian Calendar),[10] and states that it was translated by the Bible Committee he convened between AD 1947 and 1952, 'realizing that there ought to be a revision from the original Hebrew and Greek of the existing translation of the Bible'.[11][12] It included the 66 books of the protocanon (i.e. those held canonical in common with Protestant and Catholic Christians), as the 5 narrow canon deuterocanonical books were published separately. The five narrow canon Ethiopian deuterocanonical books comprise 1 Enoch (Henok; different from the standard editions of Ge'ez manuscripts A~Q by foreign academics), Jubilees (Ge'ez: Mets'hafe Kufale) and I, II, and III Meqabyan (substantially different from I, II, and III Maccabees) [13]
The 81 book Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Bible, including the deuterocanonicals, 46 books of the Old Testament and 35 books of the New Testament, was published in 1986. This version incorporates a few minor changes or corrections to the 1962 Amharic text of the New Testament, but the text of the Old Testament and Deuterocanon are identical to those previously published under Haile Selassie I.
UBS Versions (1987, 2005)[edit]
Under the Bible Society of Ethiopia (a member of the United Bible Societies), a new translation was printed in 1987, translated directly from Hebrew and Greek. A revised version of this appeared in 2005. These versions contain only the 66 books of the Protestant canon, and they have not been widely embraced by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
IBS Version (2001)[edit]
Living Bibles International produced a New Testament in 1985.[14] Following the 1992 merger of LBI with IBS, the International Bible Society produced a complete Bible in 2001.[15] This is a translation from the English NIV, or is at least very heavily reliant upon it.
New World Translation of Holy Scriptures[edit]
In 2008, the Watch Tower Society produced an Amharic translation of Jehovah's WitnessesNew World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.[16]
Millennium Amharic Bible[edit]
For the millennium celebration on the Ethiopian calendar, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Bible Society produced a new translation.[17] This translation differed from recent Amharic translations in that the translators generally followed the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation for the Old Testament and the Ge'ez for both the Old and the New. It was warmly welcomed by the Orthodox, but not by Protestants, both sides misunderstanding some points of history and the Biblical canon.[18]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^William Jowett, Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from MDCCCXV to MDCCCXX in Furtherance of the Objects of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1822), pp. 171-229.
- ^Ullendorff, Ethiopian and the Bible, p. 64
- ^http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Platt,_Thomas_Pell_(DNB00)
- ^Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, pp. 65f.
- ^Electronic access to the Abu Rumi version
- ^A. F. Matthew. 1956. The Revision of the Amharic Bible. The Bible Translator 7.2: 72-76 online version
- ^Buxton died in the London bombing in 1940. Alfred Buxton of Abyssinia and Congo by Norman Grubb, with a foreword by the Rt. Hon. Viscount Caldecote. Published 1942 by Lutterworth.
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2012-03-15. Retrieved 2012-03-11.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- ^Brian Fargher, The Origins of the New Churches Movement in Southern Ethiopia, 1927-1944; Studies of Religion in Africa, 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1966), p. 291.
- ^Bible.org: The Haile Selassie Amharic Bible, Lapsley/Brooks Digitalization project. Ullendorf misreads this as AD 1955 (Ethiopia and the Bible, p. 66)
- ^s:Statement on the Revised Amharic Bible
- ^Ullendorff comments 'I have not made a systematic comparative study of the Abu Rumi and Emperor translations, but from desultory reading of both versions the following picture seems to emerge: I can find no evidence that the new recension has been subjected to any perceptible collation with the Hebrew and Greek originals. The Amharic has certainly been modernized and updated; the order of words in particular has been brought into conformity with contemporary stylistic tastes in Amharic. The use of Abu Rumi's text can clearly be discerned, even where the changes that have been introduced are by no means negligible.' (Ethiopia and the Bible, p. 67)
- ^'1962 Amharic Bible at Good Amharic Books'. Archived from the original on 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- ^Electronic version of 1985 New Testament
- ^Amharic Bible (c) International Bible Society, Amharic (2001) Index
- ^Online version
- ^Bruk A. Asale. 2014. A millenium translation based on the Ge'ez and LXX: A new Bible translation in the Ethiopian church and its controversy. The Bible Translator 65(1): 49-73.
- ^Bruk A. Asale. 2014. A millenium translation based on the Ge'ez and LXX: A new Bible translation in the Ethiopian church and its controversy. The Bible Translator 65(1): 49-73.
External links[edit]
- An 1886 Amharic translation of the Old Testament (protocanon only) - reprinted by E.O. Tewahedo Church
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