They are of intrinsic importance to scholars either because no other complete version of the text is extant in any language other than Ge’ez or because the Ge’ez version is authoritative. Noah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Maccabces, Moses and Tobit. A number of these Books are apocryphal or deuterocanonical, such as the Ascension of Isaiah, Jubilees, Enoch, the Paralipomena of Baruch. The Ethiopic Bible contains 81 Books 46 of these comprise the Old Testament and 35 are found in the New Testament. The translation of the Old Testament was rendered from the Lucianic recension current in Antioch at that time. This grate undertaking was the work of a group of learned Syrian monks known as the Nine Saints who came to Ethiopia in the fifth century to escape the Byzantine persecution of the Monophysites. The major literary achievement of this period was the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Ge’ez. The literary achievements of the Aksumite Period c. In other words, these works have been submitted to such a process of adaptation and transformed that instead of being mere copies or hackneyed translations they stand as literary works of art in their own right. It is interesting to note that while many of the literary works extant in Ge’ez are based on translations from Greek, Syriac, Coptic and in later times, Arabic originals, in every case the work in question has been not merely translated but, in Professor Ullendorff’s phrase, has been “conveyed into the spirit and ambiance of Christian Abyssinia”. Their subject matter and their style strongly imbued with religious concepts. Ethiopian men of letters have, in almost all cases, also been men of the Church and many scholars consider that the most distinctive attainment of Ethiopian culture lies in the vast collection of manuscript, compiled and preserved in the monasteries and churches, which embody the national literary tradition. Religion lies at the very core of Ethiopian civilization and the Ethiopian Church has been not only the storehouse of the national culture, but also it propagator, instrumental in shaping and moulding Ethiopian literature and art. Almost all of these works are religious in content. A vast body of literary works in Ge’ez grew up from fifth century A.D onwards.
THE ROLE OF THE ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN LITERATURE AND ARTĮthiopia occupies a unique place among African countries south of the Sahara, having evolved her own literary language, Ge’ez, in very early times.
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