Geʽez

We talked about the fact that the Apocrypha had been removed.

What is that? So the Apocrypha are books that weren't included in the kind of standard canon, but they are included in the Catholic canon, for instance, and the Ethiopic canon.

And they even have a different list of Apocrypha.

They're

So Enoch says...

In chapter 7, verse 14, which by the way, for anyone who doesn't know, or I'm not sure if you know, Enoch was almost in the Apocrypha of the Catholic canon, but it got rejected.

But it stayed in the Ethiopic canon.

So they have the Ethiopic Orthodox Church has the book of Enoch.

Show of hands, who has heard of the Ethiopian Bible? Okay, we got some hands up.

Well, the Ethiopian Bible is, if you're reading in like fancy books, is usually referred to as the Ethiopic or Ge'ez Bible.

And it's part of the faith tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox, and I'm going to butcher this, Tewahedo Church.

So the reality is, is there are actually several Ethiopian Bibles in translations.

But the Ethiopian Bible is a little different.

Okay.

Because a significant amount of the Ethiopic Old Testament is based on the Greek Septuagint, and because of its dating, it's actually super useful.

And I have more information here, but we're going to kind of glaze over this a little bit.

who refer to it as the Book of Divisions.

In ancient Ethiopian Ge'ez, it is known as Metz Hafe Negest.

The Ge'ez language, an ancient Ethiopian tongue belonging to the Afro-Asiatic family, also known as Hamito-Semitic, is linguistically related to the languages of the descendants of Shem, the son of Noah, and Ham, his brother, highlighting a rich historical and cultural connection in the region.

The Book of Jubilees played a significant role in the religious and cultural thought of early Christians.

It is mentioned in the works of several ancient authors, including Epiphanius, Justin Martyr, Origen, Diodorus of Tarsus, Isidore of Alexandria, Isidore of Seville, Eutychius of Alexandria, John Malalus, Euthymius the Flemens of Constantinople, and George Cadrenos, demonstrating its wide influence.

The work presents a chronology based on cycles of 49 years called Jubilees, with each Jubilee subdivided into seven cycles of seven years.

This unique way of marking time reflects a commitment to sabbatical cycles deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.

Today, the only known complete manuscripts of the Book of Jubilees are preserved in Ge'ez and date back to the 15th and 16th centuries.

By the second century it was translated into Latin in North Africa, followed by another Latin translation in fifth or sixth century France, By the 4th century, Egyptian Christians had translated it into Coptic and spread the text into southern Egyptian monasteries.

By no later than the 500s, the shepherd made its way into the language of Ethiopia, Ge'ez, and remained a prominent text among Ethiopian Christians well into the modern age.

At some point in the 7th or 8th centuries, the shepherd was translated into Arabic as well, though this translation is unfortunately lost.

Finally, this shepherd was also translated into Middle Persian and was used in Manichaean communities.