Ge'ez / Ethiopic Bible

The Ge'ez, or Ethiopic, Bible represents one of the world's earliest complete Christian Bible traditions outside Greek, Latin and Syriac. Ge'ez, the classical language of the Ethiopian highlands and still the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, received the scriptures in the early centuries of Christianity in the region, and the text was copied and reworked by scribes over many subsequent generations. It was rendered from Greek, with later Syriac and Arabic influence, resting on Greek Christian textual forms as its base text, and its scope follows the broad Ethiopian Orthodox canon. In approach it is an ancient vernacular translation, best classified as a fresh translation and revision tradition rather than a single fixed version. Among its distinctive features, it contains books absent from most other Christian canons; works such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees survive complete only in Ge'ez, giving the tradition lasting importance for biblical scholarship.