Dawit Amanuel (1862–1944) is noted in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

n and

Eritrea Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...

n ecclesiastical history as being the main translator of the New Testament in the

Tigre language Tigre (, ), also known as Tigrayit (), is an Ethio-Semitic language spoken in the Horn of Africa, primarily by the Tigre people of Eritrea. It is believed to be the most closely related living language to Ge'ez, which is still in use as th ...

, published in 1902. (By local custom, he is properly referred to as "Dawit".) In 1877, at about the same time as his father converted from the

Ethiopian Orthodox 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 ...

to Islam, Dawit became the first evangelical believer from among the Mänsa people. Dawit was educated at Gäläb at a school run by the

Swedish Evangelical Mission The Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM) ( Swedish: 'Evangelical Homeland Foundation', EFS) is an independent, low-church, New Evangelical () movement within the Church of Sweden. Described as "middle-of-the-road" due to maintaining its independ ...

. There, he worked on Scripture translation, for some years together with

Tewolde-Medhin Gebre-Medhin Tewolde-Medhin Gebre-Medhin (1860–1930) was a spiritual scholar, educator, ordained pastor, and translator, originally from the town of Tseazega Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. He was ordained as a deacon in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in 1 ...

. In addition to translating, Dawit began a Tigre dictionary and collected many Tigre songs and proverbs. Many of these were later published by the German scholar

Enno Littmann Ludwig Richard Enno Littmann (16 September 1875, Oldenburg – 4 May 1958, Tübingen) was a German orientalist. In 1906, he succeeded Theodor Nöldeke as chair of Oriental languages at the University of Strasbourg. Later on, he served as a profe ...

. Dawit was also active serving the church as a pastor and evangelist and was ordained in 1925. Senait Wolde Mariam showed that Dawit was not given full credit for his contributions, some Swedes being given disproportionate credit.Senait Wolde Andemariam. 2013. Who should take the credit for the Bible translation works carried out in Eritrea? ''Aethiopica'' 16: 102-129
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Cited references

* Arén, Gustav. 1978. Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia. Stockholm. * Littmann, Enno. (1910–15). Publications of the Princeton expedition to Abyssinia, 4 vols. in 4, Leyden. * Unseth, Peter. 2005. "Dawit Amanu’el," ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' vol. 2, edited by Siegbert Uhlig, p. 114. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
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References

1862 births 1944 deaths 19th-century evangelicals 20th-century evangelicals Converts to Protestantism from Oriental Orthodoxy Converts to evangelical Christianity Ethiopian evangelicals Ethiopian translators Translators of the Bible into Tigre Place of birth missing {{Ethiopia-translator-stub