Another Treatise of Aphrahat the Persian Sage in Ethiopic Translation a Short Note

Abstract

In 1964, Enrico Cerulli published a treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead which he had found in Ms. Palat. Orient. 148 of the Bibliotheca Mediceo–Laurenziana at Florence. The text of this treatise turned out to be a very important theological treatment of the final resurrection. Since the text dated from the fourteenth century, it was thought that it would shed some fresh light on the theological discussions of the Ethiopian church of that age. The treatise deals with an existing heresy which called in question certain orthodox opinions with respect to resurrection. Therefore, Cerulli concludes, there must have been a group of people which had spread heretical ideas with respect to the doctrine concerning resurrection in Ethiopia at that time; and he suggests that they may have been connected with a gnostic movement which, it can be demonstrated, existed in Ethiopia during the fourteenth century. I am not qualified to judge the correctness of the theological Sitz im Leben which Cerulli gives to this text. Whether or not the Ethiopic text gives us a clue to a better understanding of the historical conditions of the Ethiopian Church in that period, I am not able to decide. What I wish to demonstrate in this short note is that from another angle Cerulli's publication is most welcome.