What are the Garima Gospels and what do carbon‑dating studies say about their age?
Executive summary
The Garima Gospels are two (with traces of a third) illuminated Geʽez gospel codices long preserved at the Abba Garima Monastery in northern Ethiopia; they contain all four canonical Gospels with decorative canon tables and evangelist portraits and were traditionally thought medieval but recent scientific and stylistic work has pushed their origin into Late Antiquity (4th–7th centuries CE) [1] [2] [3]. Radiocarbon testing carried out on samples at Oxford and reported by scholars such as Jacques Mercier produced calibrated ranges that place Garima 2 substantially earlier than Garima 1—commonly cited as roughly 390–570 CE for Garima 2 and 530–660 CE for Garima 1—making Garima 2 a candidate for the earliest surviving complete illuminated Christian manuscript [1] [3] [4].
1. What the Garima Gospels are: codices, language, contents and custody
The Garima Gospels are two thick vellum Gospel books written in Geʽez—the classical liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church—containing the four canonical Gospels, Eusebian canon tables and multiple illuminated pages including evangelist portraits; scholars note traces of a possible third volume within the ensemble, and the manuscripts have been housed continuously at Abba Garima Monastery near Adwa in Tigray [1] [2] [3] [5].
2. The older scholarship: palaeography and a medieval dating consensus
For much of the 20th century Western scholarship dated the Garima books to the medieval period (around the 10th–12th centuries) on the basis of paleographic and art-historical comparison, a view reinforced by the relative inaccessibility of the codices and the assumption that Ethiopia had few surviving late‑antique book productions [1] [6] [7].
3. Radiocarbon testing: methods, practitioners and results
Small vellum samples were analyzed using accelerator mass spectrometry at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit under projects arranged or reported by scholars including Jacques Mercier and the Ethiopian Heritage Fund; calibrated 95%‑probability ranges most often cited across the reporting put Garima 2 between circa 390–570 CE and Garima 1 between circa 530–660 CE, with some individual sample results reported more narrowly (e.g., samples reading c.330–540 and c.430–650 in various accounts) — collectively these place both books in Late Antiquity rather than the medieval era [3] [4] [5] [8] [7].
4. What the dates imply — originality, provenance and scholarly caveats
If accepted, the Oxford radiocarbon results make Garima 2 older than the Syriac Rabbula Gospels of 586 and potentially the earliest surviving complete illustrated Gospel codex, but scholars caution that carbon dating gives a calendar age for the animal skin (terminus post quem for writing) and must be integrated with palaeographic, textual and iconographic evidence; debates remain about the textual ancestor (Greek vs Syriac influences), Egyptian versus Syrian artistic sources, and the chronology and authorship narratives surrounding the so‑called Nine Saints and Abba Garima himself [1] [4] [9].
5. Ongoing questions and responsible conclusions
Reporting and specialist studies converge on the revisionary conclusion that the Garima Gospels originate in the late antique Aksumite world and are much earlier than once thought, yet open questions persist — some sample dates vary, full publication of all radiocarbon contexts and further dating (for the third volume and related marginalia) would strengthen chronological claims, and alternate readings of the art and text argue for mixed Mediterranean influences rather than a single provenience; therefore the strongest, evidence‑based claim is that radiocarbon tests place Garima 2 roughly in the 4th–6th centuries and Garima 1 in the 6th–7th centuries, making them among the oldest surviving illuminated Christian manuscripts known to scholars [1] [7] [9] [3].