Which specific books are in the Ethiopian Orthodox canon but not in Catholic or Protestant Bibles?
Executive summary
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon contains a set of Old and New Testament books that are not found in standard Catholic or Protestant Bibles, most notably 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the three Meqabyan books, and certain Esdras and Jeremiah paralipomena, among others [1] [2]. Scholarly and popular sources disagree slightly on totals (81 is the commonly cited canonical number inside the churches; some commercial editions advertise larger collections), which reflects differences in counting, transmission and editorial practice [3] [4].
1. What "unique" means here — canon, not apocrypha
The Orthodox Tewahedo canon is described internally as including works that other Christian traditions usually label apocryphal or pseudepigraphal; the Ethiopian canon ordinarily reaches 81 books by including extra Old Testament writings that Catholic and Protestant canons exclude from their core lists [1] [3]. This is a matter of local ecclesial authority and historical tradition rather than a single externally imposed standard: Ethiopian sources treat these books as fully canonical [2] [1].
2. The headline list — books present in Ethiopian canon but absent from Catholic and Protestant Bibles
Among the most frequently cited works found in the Ethiopian Orthodox canon but not in Catholic or Protestant canons are: 1 Enoch (Ethiopic Enoch), the Book of Jubilees, the three books called Meqabyan (1–3 Meqabyan, which are distinct from the Greek/Latin Maccabees), and the Paralipomena of Jeremiah (commonly called 4 Baruch) [1] [5]. Additional texts that Ethiopian lists often include but that are outside Catholic and Protestant canons are the third and fourth books of Esdras and other locally preserved writings sometimes named “the Book of the Covenant” or similar titles in English summaries [2] [6].
3. How these differ from what Catholics already have (Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah caveat)
Not every book that appears in the Ethiopian canon is wholly foreign to Catholic tradition: for example, Baruch (and the Letter of Jeremiah) already appear in Catholic Bibles, but the Ethiopian corpus treats Baruch, Lamentations, Jeremiah, the Letter of Jeremiah and the Paralipomena (4 Baruch) together in ways that differ from Western canonical arrangements, and it also adds 4 Baruch where Catholic and Protestant collections do not [1]. Thus the distinctive profile is both the presence of extra books like Enoch and Jubilees and a different aggregation and status for some overlapping writings [1].
4. The Meqabyan case — same name, different books
The three Meqabyan books in the Ethiopian canon are often translated as “Ethiopian Maccabees” in English-language summaries, but they are not the same as the 1–2 (or 1–4) Maccabees familiar in Catholic or Orthodox Greek/Latin traditions; Ethiopian Meqabyan contain entirely different narratives and theology and are canonically authoritative in the Tewahedo churches [1] [5]. This difference frequently causes confusion in comparative lists and is central to what makes the Ethiopian canon unique.
5. Numbers, editions and contested boundaries
Published editions and commercial descriptions sometimes inflate or vary the count — examples include claims of 88 books in some retail editions — but academic and church sources more consistently cite an 81‑book canon within the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo traditions; researchers and internal documents explain that counting methods (which items are treated as single books, which are appended, and which later collections are included) produce the variance [4] [3] [7]. Readers should note that commercial publishers may combine apocryphal or extra-liturgical materials with the canonical corpus, producing higher totals [4].
6. Sources, agendas and what remains uncertain
Primary Ethiopian church sources state the broader canon and name many of these books; scholarly summaries (Wikipedia, research papers, scripture-projects and lay-Christian sites) converge on the core unique titles but differ on margins and labeling — for instance, retail listings and some compilations use different titles or counts, reflecting editorial choices rather than canonical change [2] [1] [8]. Where the supplied reporting does not list every Ethiopic title or its exact modern English rendering, this analysis does not invent further items and instead relies on the named works in the cited sources [1] [2] [6].