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Overview
May God Bless this Bible and all who read from it.
Why this Bible?
I started with one truth: In the scripture, it says that God will preserve "every jot and every title" of His word. The church in which I was raised has only 66 books, while other churches in Christendom around the world have more. This made me curious – Where did the others go? Who decided which ones should go and which ones should stay? Which church has the "right" ones? I began reading and researching church history, and I discovered many things, but specifically that the oldest known Bible in existence is held in Ethiopia, on animal skin, it has 81 books of scripture, and that the current Orthodox Ethiopian church today continues to read them all and hold them as their sacred canon.
I needed to know what was in those books, and whether they would provide additional insight that might benefit my and other believers' walk and relationship with our Heavenly Father. Soon I found that I was not the only one seeking this. Ultimately, I felt led that those 81 books, still held to this day as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's sacred text, needed to be brought forward into English to the larger world. This turned out to be much more of an undertaking than I could ever have imagined, and still a full, direct translation of the text in their languages (Ge'ez and/or Amharic) has yet to be developed. While this remains a passionate goal for the future, in the meantime I endeavored to sort through various versions of accepted canon from other churches, locate references that provide the details of what can be found in the Ethiopian canon, and then piece them all together to make a full compilation in English unredacted by outside influences.
When one studies the history of the church and the development of the various canons adopted by various churches within Christendom, one discovers that every synod or council that met to agree on changes, slowly "made" the current Bible through a series of redactions. While the Ethiopian Church sent representatives to each one of those council meetings, they never followed those recommendations. They kept and preserved the word as it was prior to those redactions, (thus fulfilling what God said would happen). Interestingly, there are two canons accepted in the Ethiopian church – one is called the "broader canon", and one the "narrow canon." In compiling the text for this Bible, we relied upon the narrow canon as a reference because we felt this was the purest of the two. The broader canon only came to be official in 1927 by order of the King of Ethiopia. Shortly after this was accomplished, the king's lineage came to an end despite the monarchy's previous persistence through multiple invasions and various atrocities over many centuries. We interpreted these things to be God reprimanding the king for failure to preserve and protect God's treasured Word, and with that in mind went with the older, "narrow canon."
When the former king of Ethiopia ordered his new Bible written, he had it translated from the country's classic language, Ge'ez (currently used in liturgy only), into the more modern language, Amharic (much more widely spoken outside of the context of church worship) and added the books telling the history of the Ethiopian church. However, to keep it as 81 books, in lieu of redacting any text, he compiled multiple books into new ones and called it the "broader canon."
So, this work is the collection of all 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's narrow canon, in English. Not a translation but a compilation. Some of the included books have been translated outside the Church's purview, so we have included warnings at the beginning of each of those. The remaining have been compiled from either the 1885 RSV or the KJV Apocrypha.
Why this Bible?
I started with one truth: In the scripture, it says that God will preserve "every jot and every title" of His word. The church in which I was raised has only 66 books, while other churches in Christendom around the world have more. This made me curious – Where did the others go? Who decided which ones should go and which ones should stay? Which church has the "right" ones? I began reading and researching church history, and I discovered many things, but specifically that the oldest known Bible in existence is held in Ethiopia, on animal skin, it has 81 books of scripture, and that the current Orthodox Ethiopian church today continues to read them all and hold them as their sacred canon.
I needed to know what was in those books, and whether they would provide additional insight that might benefit my and other believers' walk and relationship with our Heavenly Father. Soon I found that I was not the only one seeking this. Ultimately, I felt led that those 81 books, still held to this day as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's sacred text, needed to be brought forward into English to the larger world. This turned out to be much more of an undertaking than I could ever have imagined, and still a full, direct translation of the text in their languages (Ge'ez and/or Amharic) has yet to be developed. While this remains a passionate goal for the future, in the meantime I endeavored to sort through various versions of accepted canon from other churches, locate references that provide the details of what can be found in the Ethiopian canon, and then piece them all together to make a full compilation in English unredacted by outside influences.
When one studies the history of the church and the development of the various canons adopted by various churches within Christendom, one discovers that every synod or council that met to agree on changes, slowly "made" the current Bible through a series of redactions. While the Ethiopian Church sent representatives to each one of those council meetings, they never followed those recommendations. They kept and preserved the word as it was prior to those redactions, (thus fulfilling what God said would happen). Interestingly, there are two canons accepted in the Ethiopian church – one is called the "broader canon", and one the "narrow canon." In compiling the text for this Bible, we relied upon the narrow canon as a reference because we felt this was the purest of the two. The broader canon only came to be official in 1927 by order of the King of Ethiopia. Shortly after this was accomplished, the king's lineage came to an end despite the monarchy's previous persistence through multiple invasions and various atrocities over many centuries. We interpreted these things to be God reprimanding the king for failure to preserve and protect God's treasured Word, and with that in mind went with the older, "narrow canon."
When the former king of Ethiopia ordered his new Bible written, he had it translated from the country's classic language, Ge'ez (currently used in liturgy only), into the more modern language, Amharic (much more widely spoken outside of the context of church worship) and added the books telling the history of the Ethiopian church. However, to keep it as 81 books, in lieu of redacting any text, he compiled multiple books into new ones and called it the "broader canon."
So, this work is the collection of all 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's narrow canon, in English. Not a translation but a compilation. Some of the included books have been translated outside the Church's purview, so we have included warnings at the beginning of each of those. The remaining have been compiled from either the 1885 RSV or the KJV Apocrypha.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940185972144 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Charles Eaton |
| Publication date: | 06/04/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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