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Bible Q

What are the 15 extra books in the Ethiopian Bible, and are they reliable?

Answered by .

For a related subject see What are the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha?

Protestants in Ethiopia use the same basic canon as Protestants worldwide, of 66 books. But the main church in Ethiopia the Tewahedo Orthodox church has a Bible of 81 books.

Tewahedo (Ge’ez: ተዋሕዶ tewaħido ) is a Geʽez word meaning “united as one.” This word refers to the Oriental Orthodox belief in miaphysitism a variant of the Trinity which does not separate Jesus into divine nature and human nature, but to all intents and purposes the denial of Christ’s literal and real beginning in birth at Bethlehem and real and total death during the time in the grave is denied by Tewahedo Orthodox just as it is denied by Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, so this is a minor point not greatly related to the canon of the Tewahedo Orthodox church.

The fifteen extra books in the Tewahedo Bible are distributed between Old and New Testaments. This is the structure of the Tewahedo canon:

  • Old Testament (46 books): Includes standard books from the Septuagint alongside unique texts like 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Books of Meqabyan (Maccabian). [1, 2]
  • New Testament (35 books): Features the standard 27 books plus eight additional ecclesiastical and church-order texts, such as the Sinodos and the Ethiopic Didascalia
The additional texts that distinguish the Ethiopian biblical canon from standard Western editions include:
  • 1 Enoch (The Book of Enoch): A 3rd-2nd Century BCE apocalyptic text that details the watchers, fallen angels, and cosmological visions.
  • Jubilees: Also called the Lesser Genesis, it retells the narrative of Genesis and early Exodus divided into periods of 49 years (Jubilees).
  • 1, 2, and 3 Meqabyan: Unique Ethiopic books of Maccabees that differ significantly in content from the books of Maccabees found in Catholic or Eastern Orthodox canons. [1, 2]
  • 3 and 4 Ezra (Esdras): Additional apocalyptic and historical writings attributed to Ezra. [1, 2]
  • 4 Baruch (Paraleipomena of Jeremiah): A narrative text expanding on the stories of Jeremiah and the Babylonian exile.
  • Josippon (Book of Joseph ben Gorion): A medieval Jewish writing from 11th Century Italy retelling the history from the Maccabees to the fall of Jerusalem. [1, 2]

And then these books of “The Broader Canon” are added to the New Testament:

  • The Sinodos (4 books): Early church order and apostolic constitutions. 
  • Books of the Covenant (2 parts): Early liturgical and legal church texts.
  • Ethiopic Clement: An epistle traditionally attributed as written by the apostle Peter to Clement. .
  • Ethiopic Didascalia: An apostolic teaching document regarding church life and Christian ethics. [1, 2]

From the above list it can be seen that most of these extra books in the Old Testament fall into the category of pseudepigrapha, literally fake writings, which is why the first link in this article at the top is to another article. The New Testament additions reflect the teachings of the Ethiopian church.

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Are they reliable?

No. Christ and the Apostles do not cite the Apocrypha as found in Roman Catholic as scripture, so that applies even more so to the expanded Old Testament beyond the Roman Catholic Apocrypha found in the Ethiopian Bible. What is worse 1 Enoch and Jubilees, books condemned as “Jewish myths” by Paul, Peter and Jude – and directly repudiated by Christ’s teaching against angels marrying women, should not be found in any Bible.

There may be some historical value to the 1st and 2nd books of Maccabees as found in Roman Catholic Bibles, but the texts of the Ethiopian versions are significant corrupted and expanded from those Greek originals.

 

 

 

 

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