Ethiopian Bible (Why so different?)

hello my peoples have you ever wondered why the ethiopian bible is different from the rest of the world well you're in luck because that just happens to be the topic we'll be covering in today's lesson don't forget to grab your notebook so you can take some good notes here we go before we get into the differences let's first cover some basic material about the bible as you may probably know the bible or mezzo deuce in ethiopic refers to the authoritative scripture that many christians abide by throughout the world but the word bible is derived from the greek biblia meaning books pay close attention to the spelling biblia is the plural form of book there is a reason for that even though we mainly think of the bible as a singular book on present day many of our ancestors saw the bible as a collection of individual books this point is very important for our discussion and will come up again shortly so now we know what the bible is let's learn what it contains the bible is made up of two sections the old testament wikidan and the new testament hadith when you hear testament think of the word testimony an official address or statement about something in the biblical context the word testament refers to the official agreement that existed before man and god in the old testament we read that god created man and all was good and dandy but man disobeyed god and was kicked out of the garden of eden after realizing his errors man makes a pact with god the pact simply states that god would protect mankind and the people will do everything the lord has said as we continue reading we find that man is unable to hold on to his end of the bargain and nullifies the pact so now there is a need for a new testament see how that works good enter jesus christ in the new testament portion of the bible we find that christ the spoken word of god makes a new pact with man because man was unable to hold on to his end of the bargain christ offers a new treaty a new testament which allows us to enter into the kingdom of heaven with the new testament put in place the previous treaty became known as the old testament so now we know the basics about the bible where did the differences come from the differences have a lot to do with the way in which the bible was translated from one language into the next otherwise known as textual history the portion of the bible that we refer to as the old testament was compiled by various authors over a period of millennia it just happens to be most of the earliest authors of the old testament happen to speak hebrew so they largely wrote in the hebrew language with some exception of the book of daniel and ezra that contained aramaic however the hebrew language was extremely difficult to speak for starters it didn't have any real way of indicating the vowels in written form for example imagine reading the following sentence even if you imagined to decode the sentence you had to supply the vowels a e i o u in your head to give you the accurate and rather truthful reading daoit is the best and he's very cool what can i say the same way hebrew letters did not originally contain any vowels as you can imagine this created a big problem and many struggled to read it is important to mention however a vowel system was added to the letters by scholars to facilitate the reading process much later on nonetheless as the world was changing people started to speak less and less hebrew and more and more greek greek became the language that many people conversed with fun fact there are archaeological evidence of coincides covered in ethiopia that contain both good script and greek suggesting our ancestors spoke both greek and giz at one time okay back to the bible with many parts of the world speaking greek there was a need to translate the holy scriptures which were mainly in hebrew into the language of that time greek these efforts were largely made possible by the pharaoh patomious philadelphos in the 3rd century bce that's 300 years before christ he commissioned six scholars from each one of the 12 tribes of israel for a total of 72 to translate the text into greek at the end of the translation efforts it is said that the translations of each scholar was identical suggesting that the holy spirit was assisting them in this process from that point on there were two versions of scriptures the hebrew and greek version the greek version would later be known as the septuagint from the latin except johenta the hebrew version became known as the hebrew bible or tanaka an acronym of the sections of the old testament torah meaning law naveem meaning prophets katuvi meaning writings following this translation effort there were still important events that were occurring within the lives of the israelites most notable is the events surrounding the maccabee family the maccabees who are a priestly family resisted the hellenization period a period where many were adopting to greek life so they led a revolution to reclaim their jewish heritage like many pinnacle historical events in jewish history this dramatic event was recorded in the book of maccabees but since most of people spoke greek at the time this event was recorded in greek instead of hebrew this point will be important for our discussion coming up fast forward our lord and our savior jesus christ came into this world taught about love and peace and did many cool things only to be crucified by some very not nice people but christ jesus was able to defeat death resurrected and ascended to his heavenly father in heaven [Music] sorry i get carried away at this part of the story but it's not just me apparently so did the disciples and they began to share this amazing good news or gospel with the rest of the world and christianity began to spread throughout the world however the emergence of this new faith caused tensions within the roman empire and many people were persecuted and killed it many people fled from jerusalem as a result scared for their lives among those who fled a group of jews ended up fleeing to a nearby city named jamania having escaped danger the jewish community was now able to have serious conversations about the authority of scripture more importantly they wanted to distinguish normal scripture from holy scripture scripture that they thought was inspired by god to help them assess which one of the many scriptures were considered holy they came up with three criterias number one the scripture had to be written between the time period of moses and ezra so anything written before moses and after ezra was not considered holy i hope you see where i'm going with this the book of enoch according to the traditions of the church was written way before moses so the book of enoch was not considered to be holy by the jewish scholars it's important to keep in mind these were jewish scholars who are making these criterias number two the scriptures had to be originally written in hebrew which was thought of as being a sacred language if you recall the life of maccabees was written in greek and thus was not considered to be part of the holy scripture number three the scripture had to have god as the central character and had to promote jewish culture no complaint there after their analysis it was determined that 24 books were considered to be holy keep in mind in jewish culture first and second samuel are counted as one book so is first and second kingston chronicles therefore the 24 books that were accepted during this meeting are the same books as the old testament section of the protestant bible therefore if you compare the counting system from then and now you will see that the 24 books correspond to the 39 books of the old testament in the protestant bible by the fourth century there was a need to translate the bible once again into latin as this became the common language of the people especially in the west the vulgate bible was most noteworthy because unlike the previous attempted latin translations it was translated from the hebrew bible rather than the greek however the septuagint or the greek source was consulted especially when it came to scripture that was not accepted in the council of jamnia books like the book of maccabee for the next millennia christians would discuss among themselves what if any authority these secondary books had in context of the old testament for example where would the book of maccabee belong note the reason they were considered secondary is because they were not accepted in the council of jamania when it comes to the new testament in the second and third century many sects like the gnostics were circulating scriptures claiming it was inspired by god but the scriptures they were passing around were clearly not inspired by god for starters most of the false scriptures had bizarre claims like the old testament god being an evil god in the new testament god being a good god and what not these false scriptures began to confuse the public because people didn't know which one of the scriptures were truly the word of god by the way i've seen documentaries claiming that in the old days people randomly selected which books to include in the bible and this is the form of the bible that exists today this claim is false at best and extremely disingenuous in reality anyway some examples of these false scriptures are gospel of peter gospel of mary gospel of judah the problem with these so-called gospels is that they were written after peter mary judah had died unlike the gospel of matthew mark luke and john which were written by well matthew mark luke and john so when the scriptures were chosen to be part of the bible they were not arbitrarily chosen but based on what is historic and what is not in addition to the belief of which ones are inspired by god and which ones are not thus in 397 a.d in the council of carthage the 27 books of the new testament were accepted as being part of the bible although the majority of the old testament were accepted as being inspired by god there were still questions about the book that did not meet the criteria set forth in the council of germany this dispute would not be resolved in the west until the 16th century at the council of trent when it was determined by the catholic church that seven additional books known as the deuterocanonical books or second canon would be considered to be canonical so for the old testament catholic church accepted the 39 books from the council of jamnia and the additional seven books of the deuterocanonical books hence that gave a total of 46 books of the old testament and when adding the 27 books of the new testament that gave the catholic church a grand total of 73 books which were accepted as being part of the holy bible in the eastern orthodox church because they share much history with the catholic church they kept the additional seven books and added four additional books this gave a grand total of 76 books of the bible that's 49 in the old testament and 27 in the new however the protestant church which was emerging at this period rejected the deuteral canonical books and kept only the 39 books of the old testament which was decided in the council of jamnia and the 27 of the new testament which gave them a grand total of 66 books this is the form of the bible you commonly find in the bookstores and online on the other hand a very different conversation was taking place in ethiopia keep in mind by the 5th century the catholic church had separated from the oriental orthodox church so the oriental orthodox church was having independent conversations about what was considered sacred especially when we entered ethiopia ethiopian scholars were quick in translating the bible in the native language of goodis scholars believe that by the 6th century the bible had already been translated that's really really really early but oftentimes you may not hear about it in history because the history of africa is neglected and often dismissed but that's a point for a different day more importantly what makes the translational effort unique in ethiopia when we compare it with the west is that the original text was most likely translated from the greek source and not the hebrew source furthermore when it comes to deciding which books to include as being holy scripture the church fathers noticed that many of the new testament scholars themselves had cited scripture that the rest of the world had not included take for example the following verse in the book of jude the book of jude chapter 1 verse 14 says the following enoch who lived in the seventh generation after adam prophesied about these people he said and then he gives the prophecy of enoch so here's the point the book of jude is considered to be holy scripture inspired by god if the book of jude is referring to the prophecy of enoch should in the book of enoch also be considered holy scripture the answer is yes and that is exactly what our church fathers did they accepted the holy books which many of the new testament authors had already accepted then 46 books in the old testament were accepted as being holy and 35 books were accepted in the new testament giving a grand total of 81 books making it the biggest number of canonical books in the world even though the number is 46 books in the old testament the counting system of the ethiopian orthodox tradition mimics that of the jewish culture like first and second samuel and kings and chronicles being counted as one book therefore even though 46 books are accepted in the old testament there are a lot more than just seven additional books to the 39 books of the protestant bible now because there are just so many books that are accepted within the ethiopian orthodox ohio church you're simply not going to get it and easily published ethiopic bible that contains all of the 81 books in one edition but this should not discourage you from reading the bible keep in mind the differences mainly come into play when we are speaking about the number of books within the bible but genesis is genesis and matthew is still matthew so you should feel comfortable to read the bible that is close to you last note when people refer to versions of the bible they're not referring to the number of books within the bible but the process used during the translation efforts scholars always must determine what is the best strategy to translate text for example how would you translate the phrase what's up into amharic salam or mendino the first option gives the translation of the context recognizing that the phrase what's up is a greeting whereas mindanao gives a more literal translation the same situation occurs in translating the bible for example the amplified bible chooses to amplify the word by supplying multiple english words to translate the hebrew or greek words whereas the new international version attempts to provide a reading that many people can understand and relate to so which version should you read i always say pick a version that you can understand but remember our church teaches us that bible is read next to tradition meaning that church provides us the guidance for how to understand the scripture therefore as you read the bible make sure to ask church fathers how to interpret the meaning of what you're reading ask questions open up your heart and ask the holy spirit to guide you along your journey to finding god hopefully you were able to learn something today and god willing we'll meet again soon [Music] you

Channel: Dawit Muluneh

Views: 573,477

Keywords: ethiopian orthodox, ethiopian bible, orthodox bible, bible, african church, coptic church, old testament, new testament, counicl of jamnia, tewahedo, ethiopian church

Id: 3OQLhkZdcHI

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020