How did the Ethiopian Orthodox canon develop differently from Western Christian canons?

1. The shape of the Ethiopian canon: larger and distinct

Unlike the familiar Western counts (Protestant 66, Catholic commonly 73), the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church regards an 81‑book Bible as canonical, traditionally counted as 46 Old Testament and 35 New Testament books, a total reflected in official church listings and published Ethiopia‑church materials ^{[1] [2]}. That larger corpus includes books rarely or never accepted in Western canons — notably 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Paralipomena of Jeremiah (4 Baruch), and three distinct Meqabyan books — and preserves versions and groupings (for example, Jeremiah with Baruch and Lamentations) that differ from Western ordering ^{[2] [1]}.

2. Sources and textual inheritance: Septuagintal, Judaic and local seams

Scholars point to a complex inheritance: Ethiopia’s scriptures reflect early Christian use of the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament tradition) and local Semitic and Judaic strands, and many canonical texts exist in Geʽez translations and parchment manuscripts unique to the region ^{[4] [5] [1]}. This patchwork explains why some writings deemed apocryphal elsewhere were retained in Ethiopia’s biblical tradition: they were part of the textual ecosystem Ethiopic Christians had long used in liturgy and instruction ^{[4] [3]}.

3. Institutional formation: councils, law codes, and local assertion

Whereas Western Christian canon formation is often linked to late‑fourth‑century North African councils (Hippo 393 and Carthage 397) and successive Western ecclesial consolidation, the Ethiopian process was less directly shaped by those Roman decisions and more influenced by internal compilations, legal‑canonical texts such as the Fetha Negest, and later local scholarly efforts that asserted a fixed 81‑book total even while listings varied ^{[4] [2]}. Some historians argue that Ethiopian scholars, commenting on the Fetha Negest, identified missing titles to make the canonical number conform to tradition, a move that produced the “broader” canon category used by Western researchers ^[2].

4. Ecclesiology and authority: tradition over sola scriptura

The Ethiopian Church’s approach privileges long standing liturgical, canonical and priestly traditions alongside Scripture; that contrast is highlighted when compared with Protestant impulses toward sola scriptura and Western appeals to universally ratified lists ^[7]. The Ethiopian tradition treated canonicity as embedded in community praxis, canonical collections, and imperial and ecclesiastical endorsement—practices that preserved texts outside Western consensus ^{[1] [5]}.

5. Scholarly uncertainties and competing narratives

Contemporary scholarship warns against simple narratives: the EOTC itself has not produced an uncontested, uniformly agreed list in scholarly terms, and research remains incomplete and sometimes contradictory, leaving the precise historical steps of formation obscure ^{[6] [8]}. Popular accounts that cast the Ethiopian canon as simply “older” or the result of deliberate Western suppression oversimplify the evidence; historians instead point to local continuity, textual availability, and different criteria of authority that produced divergent canons ^{[4] [3]}.

6. Contextual pressures: isolation, politics, and preservation

Ethiopia’s early conversion to Christianity and long periods of political and geographic separation from the Roman imperial church helped preserve local textual traditions; in the twentieth century, the Ethiopian Church also framed its canon as part of defending a Christian heritage amid colonial and missionary pressures, a motive visible in institutional efforts to print and standardize the canon under imperial and ecclesial auspices ^{[4] [1]}.