Textual Commentary on the Ethiopic Text of Ezekiel 1–11

Abstract

This article provides a textual commentary on the Gǝʿǝz text of Ezekiel 1–11 as edited by Michael Knibb in his recently published edition, The Ethiopic Text of the Book of Ezekiel: a Critical Edition (2015), and complements what is said in the introduction to the edition. It also serves to complement Knibb’s Schweich Lectures, Translating the Bible: the Ethio-pic Version of the Old Testament (1999). The textual notes are primarily concerned to provide a detailed comparison of the Ethiopic version with the underlying Greek text in the light also of the Hebrew text and of the Syriac and Syriac-based Arabic versions; to comment on the vocabulary used in the Ethiopic version of Ezekiel; and to discuss difficulties in the Ethiopic text. The notes demonstrate clearly the dependence of the Ethiopic text of Ezekiel on the Alexandrian text (the A-text), particularly the minuscule pair 106–410 and the minuscule 534, the close ally of 130, which has been regarded as the most closely related of the minuscules to the Ethiopic text of Ezekiel. They also provide evidence of the influence of the Syro-Arabic version on the text.