What do Sinodos and Fetha Nägäst say verbatim about the canon and how have scholars used those texts to reconstruct Ethiopian canonical history?
Executive summary
Sinodos and the Fetha Nägäst function as the twin pillars that Ethiopic tradition points to when defining what belongs in the church’s Bible: Sinodos is a composite corpus of apostolic constitutions, council canons and church-order texts classed with the Ethiopic New Testament, and the Fetha Nägäst (Law of the Kings) explicitly cites Sinodos in its canon section and reproduces a comparable list of books [1] [2] [3]. Scholars have treated these two works as primary internal sources for how the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church historically understood and negotiated a broad “81‑book” canon, even while noting discrepancies between stated totals and enumerated titles [4] [5] [6].
1. What Sinodos actually is and what it "says" about the canon
Sinodos is not a single short proclamation of a fixed canon but a patchwork collection: constitutions attributed to the Apostles, statutes, the canons of various councils (Nicaea, Gangra, Sardica, Antioch, Laodicea and others), plus didactic and pastoral treatises that have been integrated into the Ethiopic New Testament tradition as “Books of Church Order” [1] [3]. The available reporting emphasizes that Sinodos supplies a list of texts and church‑order materials that Ethiopian tradition treats as canonical or quasi‑canonical, but none of the provided sources reproduces a single verbatim “canonical formula” from Sinodos for the modern reader to quote [1] [3] [7].
2. What the Fetha Nägäst says about the canon, and its relation to Sinodos
Fetha Nägäst, the medieval Ethiopic law code used as canon law, explicitly cites Sinodos when it sets out its canon list, and the two works therefore share the same core list in Ethiopic tradition [2] [8]. The Fetha states the church recognizes eighty‑one books in its broader claim, but in its actual listing the number of enumerated titles can be fewer (commonly cited as 73 in secondary discussion), a tension that Ethiopian scholars and later commentators have long tried to reconcile [4] [5]. The sources show that the Fetha’s canon section functions more as a juridical summary and reference to Sinodos than as an exhaustive bibliographic appendix [2] [6].
3. How scholars have used Sinodos and Fetha Nägäst to reconstruct Ethiopian canonical history
Scholars treat Sinodos and Fetha Nägäst as the principal internal witnesses to the Ethiopian canonical tradition and therefore as primary evidence for the development of a distinct, broader canon in the Horn of Africa; R. W. Cowley and others used these texts to map which books were regarded as canonical in practice, while modern studies discuss the “narrow” versus “broad” canon debate and the historiographical problem that the stated total does not always match enumerated lists [6] [9] [4]. Academic work therefore combines textual comparison of Sinodos lists, Fetha’s citations, and manuscript evidence to trace how Books of Church Order were folded into the New Testament corpus and how additional Old Testament books (Judith, Tobit, Ethiopian Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, etc.) were canonized in local practice [2] [9] [5].
4. Points of contention, alternative readings and scholarly caution
There is scholarly disagreement about whether the 81‑book figure represents an authoritative closed canon or a theological ideal that coexisted with variable local practice; some scholars argue that later Ethiopian commentators expanded or inferred missing titles to make lists match the traditional number, while others see the discrepancy as evidence of evolving boundaries between scripture, church order and legal texts [4] [5] [9]. The sources warn that many modern popular accounts collapse Sinodos, the Fetha, and printed Amharic/Geez Bible editions into a simple fixed canon when manuscript and print history actually show variation and editorial choices [2] [3].
5. What the available reporting cannot provide verbatim and why that matters
None of the provided documents reproduces full verbatim runs of the Sinodos canon list or the exact Fetha Nägäst passages in Geez or in authoritative English translation within the excerpts cited here, so precise word‑for‑word quotations of what those texts “say” about the canon cannot be supplied from these sources alone; scholars therefore rely on editions, translations and manuscript collation [2] [6]. This gap matters because reconstruction depends on comparing variant lists and commentaries across manuscripts rather than on a single definitive pronouncement preserved in the supplied reporting [9] [4].