Everything African Christians Need to Know About the Ethiopian Bible and Why It Didn't Make It to the Canonized Bible
Everything African Christians Need to Know About the Ethiopian Bible and Why It Didn't Make It to the Canonized Bible Introduction In recent years, social media videos and viral posts have claimed that the Ethiopian Bible is the "complete" or "original" Bible, and that the Western Church deliberately removed 14, 15, or even 88 books from it. For many African Christians, this claim is powerful because it touches on identity, history, and a justified suspicion of colonial manipulation. Ethiopia is, after all, one of the oldest Christian nations on earth, a nation that was never colonized, with a Christian tradition dating back to the eunuch of Acts 8 and to King Ezana in the fourth century (Metzger, 1987). But history is more complex than a conspiracy. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church does indeed use a larger canon than Protestant, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox churches. That does not mean the rest of the Church lost books. It means different Christian tra...