Which books included in the Ethiopian Orthodox canon are absent from Catholic and Protestant Bibles, and what are their contents?
Executive summary
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church recognizes an expanded canon—commonly described as 81 books—that includes several works not found in standard Catholic or Protestant Bibles, most notably 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the three Ethiopian Meqabyan books, and a suite of ecclesiastical texts such as the Sinodos and the Book of the Covenant [1] [2] [3]. Those texts range in genre from ancient Jewish apocalypses and legal chronologies to church orders and apocryphal histories, and they reflect a liturgical and theological tradition that preserved writings later excluded or marginalized in other Christian canons [4] [5].
1. The extra Old Testament‑era histories and apocalypses: 1 Enoch and Jubilees
Among the most distinctive additions are 1 Enoch and Jubilees, both Jewish works composed before the common era that survived in Geʽez in Ethiopia and were retained as canonical there; 1 Enoch is an apocalyptic composite that recounts angels’ fall, heavenly journeys, and judgment imagery, while Jubilees retells Genesis and Exodus with calendrical and legal emphases that recast patriarchal history into a covenantal timeline [4] [6]. These books are absent from Protestant canons and are generally treated as pseudepigrapha by Western churches; Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions do not accept them as canonical either, even though fragments of 1 Enoch are known from the Dead Sea Scrolls and are recognized by scholars as historically influential [4] [6].
2. The Ethiopian Meqabyan books: different “Maccabees” with distinct content
The three Meqabyan books in the Ethiopian canon—called 1, 2, and 3 Meqabyan—are not the same as the Greek Maccabees found in Catholic and Orthodox collections; instead they are different narratives focused on moral exempla, martyrdom themes, and theological reflections that do not recount the Hasmonean revolt in the same way as 1–4 Maccabees known elsewhere [3]. Wikipedia notes explicitly that these Ethiopian Maccabees are unique to the Tewahedo canon and should not be conflated with the familiar Maccabean books of other traditions [3].
3. Ecclesiastical and apostolic literature kept as canonical: Sinodos, Book of the Covenant, Didascalia, Clement
The Ethiopian New Testament list expands beyond the usual 27 books to include church order and apostolic writings preserved in Geʽez—most prominently the Sinodos (collections of canons and liturgical rules), the Book of the Covenant (ecclesiastical law), the Didascalia (church orders), and an epistle attributed to Clement—texts used for guidance in worship and governance and treated as canonical within the Ethiopian Church [5] [2]. These materials function like canonical law and ecclesiology rather than narrative scripture, and they are not part of Catholic or Protestant Bibles, which treat comparable materials (like some church fathers’ writings) as non‑canonical secondary sources [2] [5].
4. Additional biblical expansions and variant books: 3–4 Ezra, Prayer of Manasseh, 4 Baruch, Baruch material
The Ethiopian Old Testament also preserves versions or inclusions of books that sit on the margins elsewhere—such as 3 Ezra and 4 Ezra, the Prayer of Manasseh, and 4 Baruch—alongside broader inclusion of Jeremiah, Baruch and Lamentations in forms that local tradition counts as canonical [3] [2]. Some of these appear in varying forms in other Eastern canons or in apocryphal collections, but the Ethiopian Church’s decision to incorporate them into the official Bible differentiates its corpus from both Catholic and Protestant lists [3] [7].
5. How to read the differences and the limits of available reporting
Scholars and the Ethiopian Church itself emphasize that the canon’s formation was complex, with variations across manuscripts and editions and with some canonical items rarely printed or circulated outside Ethiopia; authoritative lists exist in church tradition but English‑language compilations and commercial “81‑book” editions vary in accuracy, so caution is warranted when consulting translations [5] [8]. The reporting used here identifies the major texts unique to the Ethiopian canon and summarizes their contents, but it does not provide full textual excerpts or exhaustive manuscript histories—areas where specialized academic studies and Geʽez editions would be required for deeper verification [5] [8].