Bible translations into

Geʽez Geez ( or ; , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgical langu ...

, an ancient South Semitic language of the

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

branch, date back to the 6th century at least, making them one of the world's oldest Bible translations. Translations of the Bible in

, in a predecessor of the

Geʽez script Geʽez ( ; , ) is a script used as an abugida (alphasyllabary) for several Afroasiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It originated as an abjad (consonantal alphabet) and was ...

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 A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

Monastic Monasticism (; ), also called monachism or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual activities. Monastic life plays an important role in many Christian churches, especially ...

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 390–570, while counterpart dating of samples from Garima 1 proposed a date of 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 In Textual scholarship, textual and classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts. These had to be copied by han ...

'', and the critical edition of the New Testament by Thomas P. Platt in 1830 (his edition of the Geʽez

four Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sense ...

was first published in 1826). Geʽez Bible manuscripts existed until at least the late 17th century. In 2009, the Ethiopian Catholic Church and the

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church () is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. One of the few Christian churches in Africa originating before European colonization of the continent, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church dates bac ...

associated themselves with the Bible Society of Ethiopia to produce a printed version of the Bible in Geʽez. The

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

was released in 2017.

References

External links

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VETERIS TESTAMENTI AETHIOPICA
Ran HaCohen's text digitization of Augustus Dillmann's edited OT {{DEFAULTSORT:Bible Translations Into Geez Apocrypha History of Christianity in Ethiopia Bible versions and translations Ge'ez Texts in Ge'ez

References

Further reading

External links