Eighty-one books
What is kept here, and what the West cut
The church counts eighty-one books: forty-six in the Old Testament and thirty-five in the New. It is the largest canon in traditional Christianity, and it is the number taught in every parish.
46Old Testament35New Testament81books
The count is reached in more than one way. The law code of the Fetha Negest says eighty-one and then lists seventy-three, so the scholars who commented on it named the eight books of church order that the list had left out. Printed Bibles often take the other road: fifty-four books in the Old Testament and the familiar twenty-seven in the New. Either way the total is eighty-one, which is why you will also see eighty-four or eighty-eight where a collection is subdivided.
What follows is the shape of it: what this church kept, what the West let go, and what is honoured here without being called Scripture.
Kept here, cut in the West
Books the Ethiopian church never set aside. Two of them were read everywhere in the first centuries and then let go; three are its own, and are found in no other canon on earth.
- 1 EnochሄኖክScriptureScripture. Quoted by Jude, read by the fathers, and then dropped in the West. Here it was never dropped, and the only complete text in any language is the Ge’ez.Read it →
- JubileesኩፋሌScriptureKufale, the book of divisions: Genesis retold by weeks of years. It gives the calendar its shape and the festivals their reckoning.Read it →
- 1, 2 and 3 MeqabyanመቃብያንScriptureEthiopia’s own books of the Maccabees. They share the name with the Greek ones and nothing else: different books, canonical here alone.Read it →
- The Rest of the Words of BaruchባሮክScriptureAlso 4 Baruch, the Paralipomena of Jeremiah: what happened after the city fell.Read it →
The deuterocanon the church keeps
The books the Reformers moved to an appendix and the Orthodox and Catholics kept. This church keeps them too — with one plain exception: the two Greek books of Maccabees are not in its canon, though the three Ethiopian ones are.
- TobitጦቢትScriptureHeld as Scripture, as among the Orthodox and the Catholics.Read it →
- JudithዮዲትScriptureHeld as Scripture; set aside by the Protestants.Read it →
- Wisdom of SolomonጥበብScriptureKept — the wisdom the Reformers moved out of the Bible proper.Read it →
- SirachሲራክScriptureEcclesiasticus, the wisdom of Ben Sira.Read it →
- Baruch and the Epistle of JeremiahባሮክScriptureKept with Jeremiah, as Scripture.Read it →
- 1 and 2 EsdrasScriptureEzra as the Greek tradition hands it down, with Ezra Sutuel beside it.Read it →
- The additions to Daniel and EstherScriptureSusanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Children, and the Greek Esther.Read it →
- The Prayer of ManassehScriptureThe repentance of the worst of the kings of Judah.Read it →
The broader canon: the eight books of church order
The eight that make the count come out at eighty-one. They are law and order rather than narrative — how the church is to be governed, how it prays, who may do what — and they are counted inside the New Testament, not after it. Printed Bibles usually leave them out, which is why so many Bibles labelled eighty-one hold twenty-seven New Testament books.
- Sinodos, in four booksሲኖዶስChurch orderThe Order of Zion, the Commandments (Te’ezaz), the Gitsew and the Abtelis: apostolic constitutions and the canons of the early councils.Read it →
- The two Books of the Covenantመጽሐፈ ኪዳንChurch orderMäṣḥafä Kidan: the Lord’s instructions to the apostles, with the church’s prayers.Read it →
- Ethiopic ClementቀሌምንጦስChurch orderQalementos — held to be Peter’s teaching written down by Clement. Not the First or Second Clement of the Greeks.Read it →
- Ethiopic DidascaliaዲድስቅልያChurch orderDidesqelya, church order in forty-three chapters; close to the first seven books of the Apostolic Constitutions, and distinct from the Syriac Didascalia.Read it →
Venerated, and not Scripture
Books the church honours, teaches from and prints, without calling them canonical. The distinction is the church’s own, and it is worth keeping: outside Ethiopia these are often presented as part of the Bible here, and they are not.
- Kebra Nagastክብረ ነገሥትVeneratedThe Glory of the Kings: Makeda, Menelik, and the Ark carried south. The book of the nation, never counted as Scripture.Read it →
- Te’ezaza Sanbatተእዛዘ ሰንበትVeneratedThe commandments of the Sabbath, kept among the Beta Israel as well.Read it →
- The Ascension of IsaiahVeneratedAn early apocalypse preserved in full only in Ge’ez.Read it →
- The Fetha Negestፍትሐ ነገሥትVeneratedThe Law of the Kings: the law code that gave the count of eighty-one, and listed seventy-three.
- The Synaxariumመጽሐፈ ስንክሳርVeneratedSenkessar: the lives of the saints, read day by day through the year.
Four things worth saying plainly
- The twenty-seven books of the New Testament are all here, in the order the West knows them.
- The whole Hebrew protocanon is here, and the Psalms carry a hundred and fifty-first.
- The Greek 1 and 2 Maccabees are not canonical in this church, although 4 Maccabees survives in Ge’ez. The Ethiopian Meqabyan are other books entirely.
- Nothing in the list is a claim that the other churches are wrong. It is what this church received, kept and reads aloud.
The whole collection is free to read: the library holds a hundred and eight books in Ge’ez, Amharic, English, Greek and Hebrew, with the scanned pages beside the text.