Beyond Canon: Early Christianity and the Ethiopic Textual Tradition

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This book highlights the significance of a group of five texts excluded from the standard Christian Bible and preserved only in Geez, the classical language of Ethiopia. These texts are crucial for modern scholars due to their significance for a wide range of early readers, as extant fragments of other early translations confirm in most cases. Yet they are also noted for their eventual marginalization and abandonment, as a more restrictive understanding of the biblical canon prevailed everywhere except in Ethiopia, with its distinctive Christian tradition in which the concept of a closed canon is alien. In focusing upon 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Epistula Apostolorum, and the Apocalypse of Peter, the contributors to this volume group them together as representatives of a time in early Christian history when sacred texts were not limited by a sharply defined canonical boundary. In doing so, this book also highlights the unique and under-appreciated contribution of the Ethiopic Christian Tradition to the study of early Christianity.

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The volume ... offers a valuable contribution to boundary-bridging research of apocrypha broadly defined, studying the ancient works as they were transmitted in Eastern Christian contexts. * Journal for the Study of the Old Testament *

Author Bio

Meron Gebreananaye is a doctoral research student at Durham University, UK. Francis Watson is research chair in early Christian Literature at Durham University, UK. Logan Williams holds a doctorate in Theology & Religious Studies from Durham University, UK.