What are the names of the books in the Ethiopian Bible that are not found in the Hebrew Bible?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo churches preserve a broader Old Testament canon that includes a number of writings absent from the Hebrew Bible; prominent examples named in the sources are 1 Enoch (often called the Book of Enoch), Baruch (and its associated Letter of Jeremiah), 3rd and 4th Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, and three uniquely Ethiopian “Maccabean” books called 1, 2 and 3 Meqabyan (not the same as the Greek Maccabees). These additions reflect the Tewahedo tradition’s Septuagint-based transmission and local reception rather than the Hebrew (Masoretic) textual tradition embraced by Judaism and most Protestant canons [1] [2] [3].
1. How the Ethiopian canon came to include extra books
Ethiopia’s Christian canon developed partly from the Septuagint textual stream and preserved Jewish‑Christian and pseudepigraphal writings that were never adopted into the Hebrew (Masoretic) Bible; that history helps explain why works such as Enoch and Baruch appear in the Ethiopic corpus while they are absent from the Jewish canon that underlies the Hebrew Bible [1] [3].
2. Key named books absent from the Hebrew Bible — cited examples
Multiple sources explicitly list books present in the Ethiopic canon but not in the Hebrew Bible: the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) is repeatedly singled out as canonical in Ethiopia though excluded from the Hebrew canon and most Protestant Bibles [3] [1]; Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah and 4 Baruch in some Ethiopian lists) is named as part of the Orthodox Tewahedo canon while it is not part of the Hebrew Bible [1] [2]; the Ethiopian canon also includes the Prayer of Manasseh and the third and fourth books called Esdras (3 Esdras and 4 Esdras) — texts that are outside the Jewish canonical collection [1] [2]. Likewise, Ethiopia’s 1, 2 and 3 Meqabyan are treated as canonical in the Tewahedo churches but are distinct from (and not found among) the books of the Hebrew Bible [2].
3. What “not found in the Hebrew Bible” means in practice
Saying a book is “not found in the Hebrew Bible” does not always mean it never circulated among Jews; rather, the Hebrew (Masoretic) canon consolidated a particular set of texts and excluded many intertestamental and pseudepigraphal works that survived in Christian or regional traditions — the Ethiopian Church retained several of those works as authoritative scripture [3] [1].
4. Conflicting perspectives and implicit agendas in sources
Sources reflect differing confessional viewpoints: a Protestant apologetics site emphasizes why reformers affirmed the Hebrew‑based canon and therefore excludes books like Enoch [3], while Ethiopian Orthodox materials present the broader canon as historically and liturgically normative [1]. Wikipedia and other surveys describe the Tewahedo canon as the largest traditional Christian canon and list many of the extra books; these reference compilations aim to be descriptive rather than prescriptive but rely on diverse manuscript and liturgical evidence [2].
5. Limits of available reporting and what remains unsettled
The provided sources name several specific extra books (Enoch, Baruch and its letter, 3rd–4th Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, 1–3 Meqabyan) and describe the canon’s Septuagint influence [3] [1] [2], but none supplies a single, exhaustive, canonical roster of every Ethiopian text that is absent from the Hebrew Bible. Scholarly lists vary and the Tewahedo tradition itself recognizes both a narrower and a broader “81‑book” conception, so any attempt to publish a definitive checklist requires consulting primary Ethiopian canonical lists and manuscript catalogues beyond these sources [2] [1].
Conclusion: a clear but partial answer
Based on the sources provided, the clearest examples of books found in the Ethiopian (Orthodox Tewahedo) Bible but not in the Hebrew Bible are 1 Enoch, Baruch (including Letter of Jeremiah and related 4 Baruch in Ethiopian usage), 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the Ethiopian Meqabyan books (1, 2, 3 Meqabyan); these illustrate the distinctive Septuagint and regional textual heritage that produced the Ethiopian canon, even though a wholly exhaustive list is not presented in the supplied material [3] [1] [2].