The Gә’әz Bible: Notes on its origins and translation techniques

Abstract

The aim of the present contribution is to offer some information about the birth of the Gә’әz version of the Bible. Gә’әz is one of the languages used in what is commonly known as the Kingdom of Aksum (early 1st century to the 10th century), in the northern part of the Horn of Africa. In the African continent, Gә’әz is a rare example of a language with its own homegrown alphabet and a tradition of writing, which was as important as orality. Gә’әz, in its written heritage came into existence as religious literature, and the Bible has pride of place among some other Christian works, such as the Cyrillian Corpus, translated during the apex of the Aksumite kingdom’s influence in the region (4th to 7th centuries). Although the few surviving, large and oldest scriptural witnesses are the Garima Gospels I, II (their dating is a subject of different hypotheses), there is no doubt that the whole Bible was translated from Greek to Gә’әz from the 4th to the end of the 6th century. The Old Testament was initially rendered from the Septuagint. The Vorlagen of the New Testament are more complicated to trace back. In this paper, several concrete examples have been selected to try to establish the matrix of the Gә’әz Bible, which as a matter of fact contains 81 canonical books. The Gә’әz Bible is the first version carried out in the context of a black African Christian Community, a Community that has for centuries preserved in its integrity, texts attested by fragments only such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees to mention some of the most famous ones.