Ethiopian Kg Books

[Cecelia Seiner]

Jane Kurtz was born in Portland, Oregon, largely raised in Maji, Ethiopia, and in fourth grade went to boarding school in Addis Ababa. She is the author of numerous books for children and educator resources. She returned to the United States for college and, among other adventures, lived through the 1997 Red River flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Jane now makes her home in Kansas and is a visiting faculty member at the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Learn more about Jane. Read a 2005 Cynsations author update with Jane.

After World War II, Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia to find that a whole generation of educated Ethiopians had been killed during the Italian occupation. Until that moment, Ethiopia had fought off a series of invaders, from Ahmed Gran in 1543 to the Italian army defeated by King Menelik in 1896.

I was invited to write a short story for an anthology about war [Shattered: Stories of Children and War (Knopf, 2002)]. The editor of that book, Jennifer Armstrong, was the one who suggested I consider editing a collection of short stories about Africa.

I finally did submit my story to be considered for the anthology, but so did a couple of my writing friends in Kampala. So you can imagine that when mine was the only accepted story, I felt I was in a bit of a difficult position with my friends who obviously imagined that a rejection slip for them meant that their writing must have been a little short.

When I was asked that question as part of a radio interview in Uganda, I thought about libraries. I thought about book publishing in the United States. I thought about books in classrooms. These are treasures we barely notice we have, but the knowledge of how to set such things up is something teachers and librarians (and other readers and writers) in the U.S. and Canada and Europe could be sharing with readers and writers the world over.

Language is always one tough-cookie barrier and challenge, but the worldwide community of readers is pretty well-versed in English these days, so lots more communication is possible than people sometimes think.

Not until 2002 were we able to pull anything off. That year we published the first color picture book for Ethiopian children, a retelling of a folk tale in English and Amharic, Silly Mammo [scroll for information].

Two years later, Yohannes opened a rural reading room and started a donkey mobile library in the provincial capital near where he grew up. This year, the original library will have 60,000 visits from readers.

We need translators. We need teachers and librarians who will go to Ethiopia and share what they know about reading and books there. We need people with good ideas to raise the $20,000 match of operating money for the Room to Read grant. We need people to speak to their local civic groups and churches and tell our story.

The Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon is a version of the Christian Bible used in the two Oriental Orthodox Churches of the Ethiopian and Eritrean traditions: the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. At 81 books, it is the largest and most diverse biblical canon in traditional Christendom.

It is not known to exist at this time as one published compilation. Some books, though considered canonical, are nonetheless difficult to locate and are not even widely available in the churches' home countries of Ethiopia and Eritrea.[1][2]

The Orthodox Tewahedo narrower Old Testament canon contains the entire established Hebrew protocanon. Moreover, with the exception of the first two books of Maccabees, the Orthodox Tewahedo canon also contains the entire Catholic deuterocanon. In addition to this, the Orthodox Tewahedo Old Testament includes the Prayer of Manasseh, 3 Ezra, and 4 Ezra, which also appear in the canons of other Christian traditions. Unique to the Orthodox Tewahedo canon are the Paralipomena of Jeremiah (4 Baruch), Jubilees, Enoch, and the three books of Meqabyan.

The books of Lamentations, Jeremiah, and Baruch, as well as the Letter of Jeremiah and 4 Baruch, are all considered canonical by the Orthodox Tewahedo churches. Additionally, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Books of Ethiopian Maccabees are also part of the canon; while they share a common name they are completely different from the books of Maccabees that are known or have been canonized in other traditions. Finally, within the Orthodox Tewahedo tradition, 3 Ezra is called Second Ezra, 4 Ezra is called Ezra Sutu'el, and the Prayer of Manasseh is incorporated into the Second Book of Chronicles.

The broader canon seems to have been created by Ethiopian scholars commenting on the Fetha Negest law code, which says that the canon contains 81 books, but only lists 73. The additional eight books were those presumed to be missing from the list.[3]

[This is the third in a series of posts as I write and gear up for the publication of a new introduction to biblical apocrypha for general audiences. EDIT: Apocrypha for Beginners is on sale now! Check out all of the posts in this series here.]

Whatever the origins of Judaism and Christianity in Ethiopia, both were firmly established in the Middle Ages. Evidence about scriptures used in Ethiopian Judaism and Christianity challenge many expectations about the biblical canon and apocrypha that are often taken for granted.

There is ample evidence from the medieval period to the present of both Beta Israel Jews and Tewahedo Christians accepting more books within their canons than other communities. The biblical canons for Beta Israel and Tewahedo Christians include all of the Hebrew Bible as well as several other books considered deuterocanonical or apocryphal in other communities:

The Kebra Nagast, as already mentioned, is also an important part of Ethiopian Judaism and Christianity. As an expansion of the story of Solomon in the Bible (1 Kings 10 and 2 Chronicles 9), it is a key apocryphal narrative for Ethiopian communities. While not included in the formal canons, the work is venerated as a foundational narrative of religious origin for both the Beta Israel and Tewahedo Christianity.

In addition to including more works in their canons, Ethiopian Judaism and Christianity are responsible for preserving important versions of apocryphal works. Although Jubilees and 1 Enoch survive in a range of languages (like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), both survive in full forms only in Geʽez. In other words, the Ethiopic versions of these works are the most complete and best witnesses.

The story of Jubilees is similar. Excerpts of it were known before, but many believed that the book had been lost. Knowledge of Jubilees become widespread only in the nineteenth century, based on some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ethiopian manuscripts.

Fragments of both Jubilees and 1 Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century, which again shifted what scholars now think about the origins of these books. But the Geʽez translations remain key to understanding both works in their full forms.

The Apocalypse of Paul presents a tour of heaven and hell concerned with the afterlife, the fate of souls after death, punishments for sinners, and rewards for believers. It was probably composed in Greek between about 250 and 300 CE, and Latin translations emerged between about 400 and 520 CE. From these versions are derived other translations in many languages, and the Apocalypse of Paul survives in around 300 witnesses from Europe, Africa, and the Near East. The relationships between them all are dizzyingly complex.

Two works based on the Apocalypse of Paul were translated and used by Beta Israel Jews: the Book of the Angels and the Apocalypse of Gorgorios. Each of these is based on a different portion of the Apocalypse of Paul. Of course, knowledge of this apocalypse would have come from Christians, but Jewish scribes adapted the details for their own local needs. For example, the author of the Apocalypse of Gorgorios shifted the narrator from Paul to a venerated Jewish figure named Gorgorios, while the Book of the Angels omits a visionary narrator altogether. Both Jewish versions remove explicitly Christian elements from the tours of heaven and hell.

The Jewish Ethiopic texts based on the Apocalypse of Paul portray some of the hallmarks of apocrypha as useful vehicles to transmit ideas across cultural contexts. After all, one of the most substantial ways that apocrypha survived throughout the medieval period was through constant use, reuse, adaptation, and appropriation across cultures, languages, and media.

For more about the Miracles of the Virgin Mary, see the work of Wendy Laura Belcher, especially her forthcoming book Ladder of Heaven: The Miracles of the Virgin Mary in Ethiopian Literature and Art (under contract with Princeton University Press).

Translations of a selection of Geʽez texts revered by the Beta Israel Jews (including those based on the Apocalypse of Paul) may be found in Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology: Translated from Ethiopic Sources, Yale Judaica Series 6 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951). Leslau provides bibliography for editions of the Geʽez texts he bases his translations on.

For translations of Jubilees, 1 Enoch, and the Ascension of Isaiah, with introductions about the history and transmission of these texts, see James H. Charlesworth (editor), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 volumes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985).

On 1 Enoch among other texts about the figure Enoch, see especially John C. Reeves and Annette Yoshiko Reed, Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Sources From Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Ethio Book Review is the website that provides you reviews of Ethiopian Amharic and Afaan Oromoo books to spread the culture of reading accross the community and to help you consider your decision which book to buy or to read.

Amharic Books Online PDF for FREE: You can search through thousands of Amharic books covering all aspects of Ethiopian life and beyond. Amharic book categories such as Amharic Biography Books, Amharic History Books, Amharic Fiction Books, Amharic Reference Books, Amharic Audio Books, Amharic Teacher Aids Books, Amharic Children Books, Amharic Tracts Books, Amharic Marriage and Family Books, Amharic Islam Books, Amharic Articles, Amharic Magazines, Amharic Scriptures, Amharic Old Testament Studies, Amharic New Testament Studies, Amharic Doctrines, Amharic Apologetics, Amharic Prophecy, Amharic Christian Life Books, Amharic Church History Books, Ethiopian Orthodox Church Books, Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church Books...Oromo Books, Oromiffa Books, Tigrinya Books, Sidama Books, Amharic Books Online PDF for FREE, Gurage Books, Wolaita Books... Disclaimer: We do not claim to own any of these books, they were sourced through the help of the Lapsley/Brooks Foundation and thier collaboration with the following copyright holders: Moody Press, Baker Book House, Intervarsity Press, Ethiopian Bible Society,SIM Press, Kale Hiwot Publishing, Raey Publishing, American Bible Society, Paul Enns, Stan Gundry, Bob Thomas, Dallas Theological Seminary, African Christian Publishers, Tyndale House Publishers, and Zondervan Press. A special thanks to volunteers working from Grace Bible Church. If any book on this platform violates any copyrights, please inform us immediately and we shall take appropriate action. Please read our Terms of Use for more information.

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