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The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Bible

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church holds the largest biblical canon of any church in the world: 81 books — 46 in the Old Testament and 35 in the New Testament — as set out in the Church's own authoritative list. ("Tewahedo," Geʽez for "made one / unified," names the church's Miaphysite Christology.) This canon preserves, as full scripture, books that the rest of Christendom either lost, set aside, or reduced to apocrypha: the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the four (or more) books of Meqabyan, and a cluster of distinctive "broader-canon" works in both Testaments. The Ethiopic version of both Testaments was made from the Greek Septuagint, and for several of these books — most famously 1 Enoch and Jubilees — the complete ancient text survives only in Geʽez (Classical Ethiopic).

This page is a reference and composite landing page, not a single bound text. There is an important reason for that, stated plainly below: no faithful, complete, public-domain English edition of the full 81-book Tewahedo Bible exists. Rather than hand you a fabricated or fraudulent "complete" volume, this library assembles the canon honestly from verified public-domain sources — the standard books from the King James Version and Brenton's Septuagint, the distinctive books from R. H. Charles's scholarly translations (including the Book of Enoch we already host in full), and the Geʽez original from Dillmann's critical edition.

Source (authoritative canon list): https://www.ethiopianorthodox.org/english/canonical/books.html

Disclaimer — read before buying or trusting any "complete Ethiopian Bible"

There is no authoritative, complete, public-domain English translation of the entire 81-book Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Bible. Be on guard:

If you want certainty about the canon, trust the Church's list — not a marketplace listing.

The 81-book canon (as the Church states it)

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's official site states: "The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has 46 books of the Old Testament and 35 books of the New Testament that will bring the total of canonized books of the Bible to 81." It also notes that "The Ethiopic version of the Old and New Testament was made from the Septuagint," and credits the Ethiopian church with preserving books such as Enoch, Jubilees, and the Ascension of Isaiah in their entirety.

The canon is conventionally described as a "narrower" canon (the count most often cited) and a "broader" canon (which folds in additional liturgical/canon-law books); different Ethiopian sources enumerate the 81 slightly differently, which is itself a point of scholarship. The Church's own list (linked above) is the authority for this library; the table below is an orientation map, not a substitute for it.

Old Testament (46) — the distinctive additions beyond the Protestant 39

| Book(s) | Note |

|---|---|

| The Protestant 39 (Genesis–Malachi) | Present, ordered per the Septuagint tradition. |

| The Deuterocanon (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, additions to Esther/Daniel) | Held as scripture, as in the Septuagint. |

| Jubilees (Geʽez Kufale, "Little Genesis") | Full scripture; complete text survives only in Geʽez. |

| 1 Enoch (the Book of Enoch) | Full scripture; complete text survives only in Geʽez. Quoted in Jude 14–15. |

| 1–3 Meqabyan (the "Ethiopian Maccabees") | Distinct from the Greek 1–4 Maccabees — a different work entirely. |

| The Book of Joshua son of Sirach (Wisdom of Ben Sira) and the Book of Josephas (Joseph) son of Bengorion (Pseudo-Josephus / Sefer Josippon) | Named in the Church's OT list. |

New Testament (35) — the distinctive "broader canon" additions beyond the standard 27

| Book(s) | Note |

|---|---|

| The standard 27 (Matthew–Revelation) | Present. |

| Sirate Tsion (the Book of Order) | Church-order / canon-law book. |

| Tizaz (the Book of Herald) | Church-order book. |

| Gitsew, Abtilis | Distinctive canon-law/liturgical books. |

| I and II Books of Dominos (Covenant / Testamentum Domini) | The "Books of the Covenant." |

| The Book of Clement (Qälementos) | Ethiopic Clement, distinct from the Greek Clementine literature. |

| The Didascalia (Ethiopic Didesqelya) | Church-order book. |

(Headings and book-names above follow the Church's English canon list verbatim where it names them; the count of 46 + 35 = 81 is the Church's own.)

The honest composite — where to read each part (verified public-domain sources)

Because there is no single trustworthy complete English edition, read the canon in three verified, public-domain pieces:

1. The standard books — King James Version (PD)

The 39 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books that the Tewahedo canon shares with the rest of Christendom can be read in the public-domain King James Version (the 1769 Blayney revision).

2. The Septuagint / deuterocanonical books — Brenton (PD)

Because the Ethiopic OT was translated from the Septuagint (LXX), the deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, and the Greek additions) are best read in Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton's English translation of the Septuagint (1851) — long in the public domain.

3. The distinctive books — R. H. Charles (PD), incl. our own hosted Enoch

The books that make the Ethiopian canon unique survive in scholarly public-domain English translations by R. H. Charles (Robert Henry Charles), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912–1913.

Note: Meqabyan (1–3) and several of the distinctive broader-canon New Testament books (Sirate Tsion, Tizaz, Gitsew, Abtilis, the Books of Dominos/Covenant, Qälementos, the Didescalia) have no public-domain English translation of established fidelity. This is precisely the gap that the fraudulent "complete" commercial editions pretend to fill. We do not supply a fabricated text for them. For these, the Geʽez original (below) and the Church's canon list are the honest references.

The Geʽez (Classical Ethiopic) original — Dillmann's critical edition (PD)

For the books whose only complete witness is the Ethiopic, and for the canon as the Church actually transmits it, the foundational scholarly edition of the Geʽez Old Testament is August Dillmann's Biblia Veteris Testamenti Aethiopica (Leipzig, 1853 ff.), in five volumes. Volume 5 (1894) contains the apocryphal/distinctive books. These are page-image facsimiles in the Geʽez script (not inlined here — the Ethiopic script and critical apparatus are best consulted in facsimile).

Provenance & licence note. This is a reference/landing document, not a reproduction of scripture: it presents no inline biblical text. The authoritative canon (the count of 81 books = 46 Old Testament + 35 New Testament, and the "Tewahedo" naming) is taken from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's own published list at ethiopianorthodox.org/english/canonical/books.html. The English source texts it links are public domain: the King James Version (1769 Blayney revision, via Wikisource); Sir Lancelot Brenton's English Septuagint (1851); and R. H. Charles's translations of Enoch and Jubilees (1912–1913). The Geʽez original is linked via August Dillmann's critical edition (1853–1894, Internet Archive). The Book of Enoch is hosted complete elsewhere in this library. DISCLAIMER, repeated for emphasis: there is no authoritative complete public-domain English translation of the full 81-book Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Bible, and commercially sold "complete Ethiopian Bible in English (81 books)" editions are NOT authoritative — several have been flagged as fraudulent or AI-generated. Trust the Church's canon list, not a marketplace listing. All linked sources are public-domain or freely published for educational use; nothing here is a sanctioned ecclesiastical translation.

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