Two pages from the Garima Gospels
Genesis in Geʽez

Bible translations into Geʽez, an ancient Ethio-Semitic language, date back to the 6th century at least, making them one of the world's oldest Bible translations.

Translations of the Bible in Geʽez, in a predecessor of the Geʽez script which did not possess vowels, were created between the 5th and 7th century, soon after the Christianization of Ethiopia in the 4th century. This took place in a period of time alongside which other canonical and liturgical texts were being translated into Geʽez, as is indicated by the Aksumite Collection.

The Garima Gospels are the oldest translation of the Bible in Geʽez and the world's earliest complete illustrated Christian manuscript. Monastic tradition holds that they were composed close to the year 500, a date supported by recent radiocarbon analysis; samples from Garima 2 proposed a date of c. 390–570, while counterpart dating of samples from Garima 1 proposed a date of c. 530–660. The Garima Gospels is also thought to be the oldest surviving Geʽez manuscript.

The milestones of the modern editions were the Roman edition of the New Testament in 1548 edited by Tasfa Seyon, which is the editio princeps, and the critical edition of the New Testament by Thomas P. Platt in 1830 (his edition of the Geʽez four Gospels was first published in 1826).

Biblical manuscripts in Geʽez existed until at least the late 17th century.

In 2009, the Ethiopian Catholic Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church associated themselves with the Bible Society of Ethiopia to produce a printed version of the Bible in Geʽez. The New Testament was released in 2017.

Further reading

  • Piovanelli, Pierluigi. "Aksum and the Bible: Old Assumptions and New Perspectives." Aethiopica 21 (2018): 7-27.
  • Mikre-Sellassie, G.A. (2000-07-01). "The Early Translation of the Bible into Ethiopic/Geez". The Bible Translator. 51 (3): 302–316. doi:. ISSN . S2CID .
  • Bausi, Alessandro (1999). . Rassegna di Studi Etiopici (in Italian). XLIII: 5–19 – via Academia.edu.
  • Hannah, Darrell. "The Vorlage of the Ethiopic Version of the Epistula Apostolorum: Greek or Arabic?." Beyond Canon: Early Christianity and the Ethiopic Textual Tradition (2020): 97ff.
  • LEFEVRE, RENATO (1969). "Documenti e Notizie Su Tasfā Ṣeyon e la Sua Attività Romana Nel Sec. Xvi". Rassegna di Studi Etiopici (in Italian). 24: 74–133. ISSN . JSTOR .
  • Knibb, Michael A. 2000. Translating the Bible: The Ethiopic Version of the Old Testament, by Michael A. Knibb. The Schweich Lectures for 1995. New York: Oxford University Press for the British Academy.
  • Ullendorff, Edward, Ethiopia and the Bible: The Schweich Lectures (Oxford: British Academy, 1968) ISBN 0-19-726076-4
  • Zuurmond, Rochus. "The Ethiopic Version of the New Testament." The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (1995): 142–56.

External links

  • (in Geez). National Central Library of Rome. 1548.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  • Platt, Thomas Pell, ed. (1830). (in Geez). University of Michigan. Impressit R. Watts.
  • , Ran HaCohen's text digitization of Augustus Dillmann's edited OT