Scriptural Research Institute 
Ge’ez 1st Maccabees [EPUB ebook] 

The Orthodox Tewahedo Churches of Ethiopian and Eritrean have maintained many deuterocanonical books that are not included in the Bibles of various other Christian churches. Some of these books are shared with the Beta Israel community, the ancient Israelites of the Ethiopian highlands who are also sometimes referred to as ‘Ethiopian Jews.’ Most of these texts were translated into Ge’ez, the classical language of Axum, sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries AD. Axum was the kingdom that ruled Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the 1st through 9th centuries AD. At its peak in the 3rd through 6th centuries, Axum also controlled Yemen and was considered by some to be one of the four great powers in the world, alongside Rome, Persia, and China.

One of the unique collections of texts found in the Orthodox Tewahedo Churches and Beta Israel community is the Ge’ez books of the Maccabees. These books are different from the books of the Maccabees used by the Orthodox churches across Eurasia. Within Greek biblical manuscripts, there are four books named Maccabees, all of which were translated into Syriac, and are part of the Syriac churches’ bible. The Syriac bible also includes a fifth book of Maccabees, which is a translation of part of Josephus’s writing from the 1st century AD, and the Syriac tradition churches have maintained additional Maccabean literature, but none of it parallels the Ge’ez Maccabean literature. Medieval Hebrew and Arabic books of Maccabees also exist, however, they do not include any of the same content as the Ge’ez literature.

Western scholarship regarding the texts is sparse, and they are generally dismissed as Axumite in origin. There are a number of reasons for this, the biggest one being that if they are ancient, they challenge a lot of common assumptions about the origin of Christianity. This bias against the Ge’ez books runs so deep that many Christian scholars refuse to recognize them as Maccabean literature, and simply refer to them as Meqabyan books, a direct transliteration of ‘Maccabean’ from the Ge’ez script to the Latin script. Nevertheless, the books contain many linguistic relics that support an ancient origin.

Based on linguistics, the content of Ge’ez 1st Maccabees must have existed in 4 forms before finally being translated into Ge’ez. The final translation would have been directly into Classical Ge’ez, not the older South Arabian script, and likely took place sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries. The Ge’ez translator added a curious scribal note in chapter 36 that explains that manna was similar to injera, a flatbread commonly eaten in East Africa. This suggests the book was translated by a Christian, and before the books of Moses were commonly used by the churches in the region. A member of the Beta Israelite community would have been familiar with manna and therefore would have not needed the explanation.