Which books are included in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon but absent from the King James Version?
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Executive summary
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church recognizes an expanded biblical canon—commonly cited as 81 books—that contains a significant number of works not found in the 66‑book King James Version (KJV) Protestant canon [1] [2]. Key additions include ancient texts such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees and a distinct set of “Meqabyan” books, as well as several books associated with Jeremiah and Baruch that the KJV either omits or treats differently [3] [1].
1. What the question is actually asking and why it matters
The user seeks a direct accounting: which named books appear in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon but are absent from the King James Version; that is, concrete titles rather than theological explanation, because the Ethiopian canon is larger and contains texts outside the Protestant/Reformation canon represented by the KJV [1] [2].
2. The headline extra books most commonly cited
Among the most repeatedly identified works present in the Ethiopian canon but absent from the KJV are 1 Enoch (often called “Ethiopic Enoch”), the Book of Jubilees, and the uniquely Ethiopian 1, 2 and 3 Meqabyan (often labeled “Ethiopian Maccabees” but distinct from the Maccabees in other traditions); these titles are explicitly named as canonical in descriptions of the Ethiopian Bible and contrasted with Protestant lists like the KJV’s 66 books [3] [1] [4].
3. Jeremiah‑family books and other Old Testament additions
The Ethiopian canon includes the full corpus associated with Jeremiah as treated in its tradition—Jeremiah together with Baruch, Lamentations, the Letter of Jeremiah and a text called 4 Baruch—which are treated as canonical in the Ethiopian churches though some of these are absent or placed differently in the KJV tradition [1]. In total the Ethiopian Old Testament is usually counted as 46 books, reflecting these extra inclusions compared with the Protestant Old Testament [2].
4. New Testament counts and some New Testament divergences (what sources do and do not enumerate)
The Ethiopian Orthodox New Testament is normally counted at 35 books, bringing the overall canonical total to about 81 books, which means there are New Testament writings included in Ethiopian lists that the KJV does not contain; however, the provided sources emphasize the numerical difference without providing a definitive, universally accepted enumeration of every additional New Testament title in mainstream English summaries, so a complete itemized New Testament list beyond the overall 35‑book count is not consistently presented in the cited material [2] [5].
5. Why these differences exist and how scholars frame them
Scholars and church tradition link the Ethiopian canon’s divergence to long local use of Ge’ez liturgical texts, the Fetha Negest legal/clerical tradition that codified an 81‑book count, and independent transmission lines that preserved writings like Enoch and Jubilees as authoritative in Ethiopia even when they became pseudepigraphal or apocryphal elsewhere; academic treatments note the canon’s uniqueness and the fact that the 81‑book total can be reached in more than one way, reflecting variability and local choices [1] [5] [4].
6. Practical summary and reporting limits
In practice, the short answer is: notable books found in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon but not in the King James Version include 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 1–3 Meqabyan, and additional Jeremiah/Baruch materials such as Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah and 4 Baruch; the Ethiopian Old Testament counts 46 books and the New Testament 35, producing a larger canon overall than the KJV’s 66 books [3] [1] [2]. The sources also show that detailed listings vary across printings and scholarly works, and while several sources name many of the principal extras, a single authoritative English checklist of every extra New Testament item is not fully spelled out in the provided reporting [5] [4].