What is the complete canonical list of books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church according to official church sources?
Executive summary
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church traditionally counts an 81‑book Bible made up of 46 Old Testament and 35 New Testament books, a total asserted repeatedly in church materials and secondary scholarship [1] [2] [3]. However, which specific books make up those 81 is not fixed in a single, universally‑published, authoritative list from the Holy Synod and significant variation exists between the “narrow” and “broader” canons attested in manuscripts and printed editions [4] [5].
1. The claim from the Church: 81 books (46 OT, 35 NT)
Official church pages and widely cited overviews describe the Ethiopian canon as containing eighty‑one books, divided into forty‑six Old Testament and thirty‑five New Testament books — a figure repeated on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s own site and in multiple scholarly summaries [1] [2] [3].
2. What that numeration means in practice: core plus uniquely Ethiopian texts
The 81‑book total is reached by combining the broadly familiar books of the Hebrew/Christian protocanon with a set of writings that are canonical in Ethiopia but not elsewhere: notable inclusions named in the literature include Book of Jubilees and 1 Enoch, the uniquely Ethiopian Meqabyan books (1, 2 and 3 Meqabyan), and expanded materials associated with Jeremiah (Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah) and 4 Baruch — all of which scholarship and church lists identify as part of the Ethiopic tradition [6] [2] [3].
3. The “narrow” and “broader” canons, and the liturgical corpus beyond the Bible
Scholars and church projects distinguish a narrower canon (closer to other Christian traditions) and a broader canon that adds works such as the Sinodos, Didascalia (Ethiopic church orders), Ethiopic Clement and other ecclesiastical collections; these liturgical and canonical books are treated as part of the church’s scriptural and authoritative corpus in practice and appear in some canonical counts [5] [7] [2].
4. Textual variability, availability, and the limits of an “official” enumerated list
Research cautions that lists vary across manuscripts and printed editions and that some canonical works are rare, printed only outside Ethiopia, or hard to locate; the scholarly consensus is that which exact books are “the 81” has been fluid and, despite repeated traditional claims, remains obscured by transmission history and editorial practice [4] [8] [9].
5. Recent editorial efforts and competing agendas
There have been institutional and academic efforts to publish and translate the Ethiopic corpus — including large publishing projects and a Geez edition said to assemble the full tradition — that aim to standardize which books are available to clergy and laity, but these projects sometimes reflect editorial choices (for liturgy, translation, or national commemoration) rather than a single clerical fiat from the entire Holy Synod [10] [6].
6. Bottom line: what can be stated with confidence and what cannot
It is certain that the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo tradition asserts an 81‑book canon (46 OT, 35 NT) and that the corpus includes several uniquely Ethiopian canonical texts [1] [2] [3]; it is equally certain that no single, universally accepted, line‑by‑line “official” list published by a clear church pronouncement and reproduced unchanged across all editions is available in the public record cited here, and scholars warn that canonical boundaries have been historically unstable and manuscript‑dependent [4] [8] [9].