Ge'ez

DNA and other evidence suggests the early history of the Hebrew Old Testament concerns two entirely separate people united by monotheism and military conquest. The first, taking the name of Israelites from Israel (Jacob), the grandson of the Patriarch Jacob, had a brief stay in the Egyptian Eastern Delta before falling out of favour and eventually fleeing to West Arabia in the chaos of Bronze Age collapse ca.1200 BC. There they were overwhelmed in a lengthy campaign by a black Nubian Cushitic-speaking people called the Hebrew, recently converted to the cult of YHWH. The two peoples intermarried but the Nubian priesthood dominated thereafter and eventually reinvented itself as part of the Semitic Abrahamic tradition. Cut off through Babylonian exile from its gene pool in West Arabia, the Nubian high priesthood identified the present-day area of Israel and Palestine as the Promised Land of Moses and portrayed themselves as a special Middle East people who had escaped slavery in the Delta, not as a black Nubian enslaved gold mining force that had fled to Yemen during a time of ecological disaster characterised by severe earthquake and volcanic activity.

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

My sincere thanks to Edgar Xavier (https://independent.academia.edu/EdgarXavier2) for kindly pointing out some errors of fact in this paper. On page 70, the Herald is incorrectly identified as an Indonesian Catholic newspaper. The newspaper is Malaysian. And, of course, Kuala Lumpur (as mentioned in footnote 49), is the capital city of Malaysia - not Indonesia. So the phrase in parenthesis at the end of the second paragraph on page 70 should read "(an Arabic loanword in Malay [Bahasa Melayu])".  Again, sincere thanks to Edgar for his close reading of the paper and his taking the trouble to point out these errors.

Jonathan

As of March 2024 we have now finalizing of our review process. This PDF is now set up well for using an iPad. We will update this calendar each year. The format for the book was suggested to make it easier to read both the Ge'ez and the translated english text. We pray this true especially for those who will read this book in their assemblies.
As of Feb 2024 we found a few spelling and grammar errors.

This report provides scanned images of a non-figurative Ethiopian magic scroll for Yemeru Walda-Ab. Its imagery is of the diagrammatic type and has high talismanic density. Brief curatorial notes are included, including analyses of client name insertions, one of the drawings and some voces magicae, but the main intention is to provide high-resolution (zoomable) images that will allow others virtual access to the artifact.

This collection of words is from the Ge'ez text found in the Book of Henoch, chapters 1-108.  This is also a continued list of all the Ge'ez words we find. Recently we have worked to improve the descriptions and the format. We pray that this is a benefit to you. This extended version has words we found in EMML 2080 after folio twenty-eight, through to folio thirty.

The widely known account on the Christianization of Ethiopia by Frumentius is transmitted in a variety of Ethiopic sources. Among these, the homily De Frumentio for 18th Taḫśaś (so far preserved in two manuscripts only, neither of which is later than the 14th cent.) is here explored in a text-critical perspective. A set of peculiar readings and instances of misreading confirms that the literary core of the homily originates from an Aksumite translation made upon Socrates Scholasticus‟ Greek version of the account. In addition, the relationship between the homily and the Sənkəssar commemorative notice for 26th Ḥamle, composed in the 16th cent., is here investigated and interpreted within the context of reuse and reworking of the earlier textual heritage under new literary forms and for different expectations.

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the image of Muslims and Islam in the Ethiopic hagiographical texts written in the Ethiopic (Gə'əz) language. On the basis of ca. 20 texts (both edited and remaining in manuscripts) the author surveys how various themes related to Muslims and Islam are present in this genre of Ethiopic literature and what literary purpose they serve. These themes include: economic activities of Muslims, comparing them to Biblical figures, their conversion to Christianity or associating them with the satanic forces. Additionally, the article offers a comprehensive overview of the Ge'ez terms which are used in reference to the adherents of the Muslim faith.

We have been collecting digital copies of Ge'ez manuscripts to compare the content. Here are the apographs we have compared from chapters 1-108. We did make some changes to our last publishing in October. At the April publishing, we added the introduction statement from the Bodleian and the Rylands Ethiopia MS 23. We have continued to search, making corrections to the text after further searching. Now we are starting to compare rubification between the texts and have rubified text where they appear. This comparison is a work in progress.

The Ethiopian native lexicographic corpus (the so-called sawāsǝw) and the traditional commentaries (the ʾandəmtā corpus) are intended to explain, with different strategies and expectations, the meaning of poorly understandable Gǝʿǝz words and canonical or non-canonical passages. This paper intends to offer an unprecedented evaluation of the role of the Physiologus as a literary source for both traditions. The influence of the small naturalistic treatise on the sawāsǝw compilations appears far less significant than previously believed. Several pieces of evidence prove that for most zoonyms treated in the native vocabularies a derivation from the Scriptures is to be privileged. It is known, by contrast, that a variety of accounts from the Physiologus were embedded into several Amharic commentaries. A thorough look at their textual features displays a certain closeness to one particular recension of the Physiologus, i.e. Et-α. The survey has also highlighted the repeated and intentional reuse of the same literary material in newly-composed commentaries, a phenomenon that might have implications for understanding the historical development of the traditional exegetical literature.

In the following study I will discuss the roots and nominal patterns of numerals in Akkadian. The base forms of cardinal numbers are well known in Akkadian, being etymologically closely related to their West Semitic cognates. This is despite the fact that Akkadian usually spells the numerals logographically, obscuring the morphological realization of many derived forms in various vernaculars in Akkadian. I will focus on the syllabic attestations and will ignore logographic forms and syntax to a large extent. Instead, I will discuss nominal patterns formed by cardinal numbers as they appear in Akkadian or might be reconstructed in Proto- Semitic. In order to do so, I will first list their forms as they appear for normal cardinal numbers. Many substantives and verbal roots are derived from the cardinal numbers, including the denominal ordinals. I will discuss the origins of this derivation together with the patterns used to build the denominal formations. Comparison will be drawn with similar formation of numbers in other Semitic languages.

"Saadia Gaon (892–942ce) viewed himself not only as a pedagogue and scholar, but also as the chief steward of his people’s religious health and interrelated constitutional ethos—that special scholar who is raised up by God “in every generation … to instruct and teach the people, that by his hand they might succeed in all of their affairs.” This self-perception is especially pronounced in Saadia’s commentary on Esther, which he construes as a specific paradigm of the manner in which Jewish life is to be lived amidst and in interaction with a dominant Gentile population. In his introduction Saadia didactically (and dialectically) unpacks the paradigmatic utility of the book by presenting seven “guidelines” (tadābīr) which are required for the socio-spiritual health of any ethnos (Arab. umma) “when abased beneath the population of the dominant powers”—which steps he subsequently applies to the situation of Israel in the book of Esther and around which, moreover, he organizes that book’s unfolding narrative structure. In the present article we briefly survey these seven “guidelines” and the manner in which they are “unpacked” by Saadia in the body of his commentary, focusing our attention on selected passages that reveal something of the realia—both psychological and practical—attending Jewish-Gentile conviviality, and Saadia’s approach thereto, in a tenth-century Islamicate milieu."

3 main traditions have been preserved historically for the Pentateuch: the Masoretic Text (MT), the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), & the Septuagint (LXX). But for the rest of the OT, there are really only 2 main traditions that have been preserved historically, those being the MT & the LXX. For the New Testament (NT), traditional scholarship has identified 5 main text-types. These can further be divided really down to 3 main text-types, those being the Alexandrian, the Western, & the Byzantine (the Majority Text). Defenders of each of these text-types of the NT & manuscript traditions of the OT will ardently defend their preferred text as the sole supreme or superior text or version of that portion of the Scriptures. However, with the discovery of many new & rare ancient manuscripts, the truth behind the matter has been proven to be much more complicated than most scholars were willing to admit, especially with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). The DSS  offered new & unique readings preserved nowhere else, but which suggest that the original text in many places was quite different from all other manuscripts preserved outside of the DSS. For the NT, many rare & ancient manuscripts have been discovered from diverse regions of the ancient world, so many, that we have strong evidence that the Byzantine text-type, which constitutes the majority of all manuscripts of the NT, is the latest in date & is the least faithful in regards to the original text. In addition to the OT & NT textual traditions, we have an increasing amount of manuscript evidence for various extra-biblical books.

In modern centuries, these amazing manuscript discoveries have led to a complete reassessment of all the evidence & a reconsideration of conclusions that were formerly regarded as settled. High profile critical editions of the Biblical & extra-biblical texts have been being worked on in these modern times, & continue to be produced with an ever increasing level of quality & authority. For any comprehensive critical edition of the Bible, these new critical editions that are being produced absolutely must be taken into consideration when available & their readings must be included. The question comes to us: if all these other critical editions are being produced, why does my critical edition need to be produced? I will explain the aspects that my critical edition will feature which differ from the other critical editions to such an extent that make it highly worthwhile & desirable to make my critical edition. First & foremost, a large portion of the main critical editions of the Biblical & extra-biblical texts are written in languages other than English. A comprehensive critical edition is needed which translates the information for a lay audience that can only read in English. This is a tedious task, & has never been attempted to any satisfactory degree. My Bible project would be the first to produce such. Furthermore, most critical editions feature a reconstruction of their respect text-traditions. The critical editions of the OT & NT are woefully inadequate, placing undue emphasis on only 1 textual tradition primarily (such as only the MT, or only the LXX, or only the Peshitta, etc). My critical edition will be the first edition to incorporate comprehensively all the main textual traditions, & will give a much more balanced consideration for all their various readings.

    Another thing that separates my critical edition from most critical editions is the high level of textual emendation that I intend to incorporate into the actual main text of the edition. The reason for this decision is based on a high degree of evidence of major corruption in both the OT & NT books.  Using the DSS & LXX, we can see that there is a large amount of evidence that many books of the OT have been radically altered from their original text forms. This reflects the best scholarship currently available. My critical edition will incorporate the emendations that I believe reflect the original text, & will reflect my unique theories about each of the Biblical books. Also unique to my critical edition will be a highly literal English translation which will allow for a much deeper & fuller understanding of the original Hebrew text that can be reconstructed. It is also my hope that this Bible project can also be translated into other languages such as Mandarin Chinese, but if this was ever to happen, it would be much farther down the line.

Les fouilles réalisées en 1999 à l’emplacement de la stèle
2 du site antique d’Aksum, dans le nord de l’Éthiopie, ont permis de documenter la fondation de cette stèle emportée à Rome en 1937 et de préparer son retour sur place en 2005 et sa réérection en 2008 à l’endroit exact où elle se dressait au IIIe ou IVe siècle de notre ère. Elles ont également permis de renouveler la perception que l’on a des trois stèles géantes du site, de leur conception jusqu’à leur destruction en passant par leur mode d’érection.

Kebra Nagast is normally translated "Glory of the kings"; the "national epic of Ethiopia" is seen as a piece of legitimation of the so-called "Salomonic" dynasty.
The article argues for a different view. The Kebra Nagast is written in praise of the sacntuary of Aksum, and, probably and as a secondary aim, served a rebellion in Northern Ethiopia against the "Salomonic" dynasty in the South.
The titel thus is translated. "(This, the sanctuary of Aksum is) a glory for the kings (who venerate it)."

The Ge'ez Bible likely began as a translation from Greek sources, perhaps in the ᴀᴅ 4th century. The Ge'ez tradition underwent various developments in transmission, which may have included adjustment toward Hebrew Vorlagen. Since the earliest Ge'ez manuscripts for most of the Bible date to the 15th century, reconstructing the history of the Ge'ez tradition, and more precisely describing its relationship to the Greek and Hebrew sources, must be done primarily on the basis of features in the Ge'ez text. Applying principles developed during a study of the Greek text of Ezra-Nehemiah, this paper describes a qualitative onomastic method for identifying the relationship between Ge'ez manuscripts and the Greek traditions. The spelling of non-Greek and non-Ge'ez names are not fixed by the grammar of Greek and Ge'ez, and therefore changes in their spellings can be used to map the relationships between different manuscripts. Such data are particularly relevant in corpora such as Ezra-Nehemiah that contain large lists of names. There are, however, various factors that must be qualitatively weighed in order to make effective use of these data and avoid false conclusions. It is these factors that this paper will describe and illustrate. Aim Persuade you that the spellings of onyms, when qualitatively assessed, can provide a valuable contribution to reconstruction of Ge'ez text history and its relationship to the Greek text, and illustrate a sound method from the text of Ezra-Nehemiah.

"This anthropological study describes a specific form of mediation, as it is practiced in Ethiopia (Northeast Africa) by members of the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups. It introduces elders as male household-heads in their advanced ages, who settle conflicts and arrange marriages for the members of the junior generations. There are not only 'easy' cases dealt with, which one might assume to be too 'unimportant' for state courts or other juridical institutions but also aggravated cases that may affect the wider group or that have inter-ethnic dimensions. The study uses specific case studies of marriage, bride abduction, physical injury and homicide for illustration. Within the book, reference is made to speech-act-theory and the 'new ethnographic' approach related to it. Both rhetoric strategies and non-verbal means of communication are discussed, such as postures, gestures, spatial arrangements, numerical symbolisms, or the deliberate use of certain kinds of dress and of material objects. Special attention is paid to the use of ritual in mediation procedures. The book brings to light significant regularities that are inherent to the different types of elders' proceedings. Peculiar elements and phases can be distinguished that re-occur in all types of processes analysed in the study. This cannot exclusively be explained by reference to 'process', as a general idea of people negotiating law. It moreover hints to the existence of a formal 'procedure', which follows its own rules. Accordingly, a change of perspective 'from process to procedure' is suggested in the book's programmatic title.

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_2776.ahtml

Book Order US:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Process-Procedure-Aethiopistische-Forschungen/dp/3447066113/

Book Order Germany:
http://www.amazon.de/Process-Procedure-Mediation-Formality-Ethiopia/dp/3447066113/
http://www.buchhandel.de/detailansicht.aspx?isbn=9783447066112"

Among Carlo Conti Rossini’s many merits it should be recalled that he was the first to recognize traces of an early layer in the textual history of the Gädlä Sämaʿtat (or “Acts of the martyrs”), a well-known collection of Vitae of foreign saintly martyrs mostly translated from Arabic, and to connect this layer to the Greek-based translational phase that characterized the Askumite age (4th–7th cent.). In the wake of Conti Rossini’s contribution, this study intends to carry out a text-critical survey of the Ethiopic Passio of Anicetus and Photius, commemorated in Ethiopia on 12 Taḫśaś. A large amount of textual evidence, including faithful transcriptions of Hellenistic god names and numerous instances of misinterpretation and preservation of the Greek word order, make a strong case for a direct Greek Vorlage at the root of the Ethiopic version. In accordance with the thesis advocated in this paper, the Ethiopic Passio of Anicetus and Photius is added to the increasing number of hagiographical sources reasonably datable to the Aksumite age.

Within a few days the totalitarian colonial state of Abyssinia, comically self-styled as ‘Ethiopia’, will inaugurate the macabre ceremonials of the supposedly Ethiopian Millennium. This is not Ethiopian, and certainly not a Millennium by any means.

Why this anachronistic and dysfunctional, dictatorial entity celebrates the beginning of the third millennium on September 11, 2007?

The correct term: the Ge'ez Millennium of the Abyssinians

We will briefly analyze the falsification of the name, before presenting an enumeration of miscalculations that led the Abyssinians assume that 2000 years separate us now from the birth of Jesus.

The people who believe this fallacy are the Amhara and Tigray tribes that are the descendants of the Axumite Abyssinians; their Semitic origins have been retraced in Pre-Islamic Yemen, where epigraphic evidence informs us about the tribe of Habashat that in various successive waves during the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BCE migrated from there to Africa, across the Bab el Mandeb straits.

All pre-Christian remains the Habashat / Abyssinians left in Africa (exclusively unearthed in today’s Eritrea and the Tigray northernmost province of Abyssinia) bear witness to an absolutely Semitic Yemenite – non African – Culture, Religion, Language and Scripture; we could comfortably call it the Yemenite Annex on African soil. This would not be the only; according to the Periplus of the Red Sea, an Ancient Greek text written in the times of Emperor Nero by an Alexandrian Egyptian merchant and captain who had traveled extensively throughout the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the entire East African coast from the Horn of Africa (Cape Guardafui – in Ancient Greek Akroterion Aromaton, the Cape of Perfumes) down to Rhapta (approx. Dar es Salam, in today’s Tanzania) was named Azania. Azania was a Yemenite colony absolutely controlled by the Sabaean King, and Yemenites had practiced – according to the aforementioned text – mixed marriages, and learned the local language in order to implement their policies more efficiently.

Contrarily to Azania, ‘the Other Berberia’ (in the area of today’s Somaliland) was a locally ruled oligarchy, and Axumite Abyssinia was an independent kingdom mostly active around Adulis, the harbour and port of call in the area of today’s Massawa. In the middle of the 1st century CE, Axum was always overshadowed by Ethiopia, the great Kushitic kingdom of Meroe in the area of today’s Northern Sudan that was bordering with the Roman province of Egypt.
Published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 6th September 2007
http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/The-Bogus-Ethiopian-Millennium-of-Ignorance-and-Aberration/40932

This volume consists of an edition, translated into English and with an extensive introduction, of the Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Esther by one of the preeminent litterateurs of the Karaite “Golden Age” (10th–11th centuries), Yefet ben ‘Eli ha-Levi. Yefet’s text represents the first completely extant, devoted commentary on Esther and, consequently, provides fascinating insight into the history and development of exegetical thought on this book, both among the Karaites as well as the Rabbanites. Various facets of Yefet’s exegesis which we explore in our introduction … read moreinclude his rationalistic method, compilatory tendency, relationship to the doctrines of the Islamic Mu‘tazila, and his influence both by and upon other Jewish exegetes (Karaite and Rabbanite). We also assess Yefet’s Arabic translation technique and include a survey of all extant Karaite commentaries on Esther, both in Arabic as well as Hebrew.

This Excel file provides a searchable list of Proto-Semitic most stable basic lexicon (as defined in https://www.academia.edu/23425060/Basic_lexicon_and_its_diachronic_stability_-_A_comparison_of_several_ranked_lists).
It includes all extant reflexes of each proto-form.
Its key sources are various works by L. Kogan, S. Weninger, A. Militarev, E. Lipiński and P. R. Bennett (see dedicated sheet for details).
This database is intended as a stepping stone for researchers who want to try and understand the origin of Semitic languages by comparing their basic lexicon against other languages and language families.

In this volume is presented, for the first time, a critical edition of the earliest retrievable text (i.e., the «Versio Antiqua») of the Gospel of John in Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez). Altogether 21 manuscripts have been collated, representing four different text types and, for the first two of these, three and four sub-types respectively. The «Versio Antiqua» is represented by the first text type, of which, for the most part, the important Mss Abba Garima I and III, dated to 1270 or earlier, have been employed for the basic text. Five appendices are also included, in the last of which is supplied a collation of the «Versio Antiqua» with the critical apparatus of the 27th edition of «Novum Testamentum Graece». This volume, consequently, should prove useful to anyone interested in textual criticism of the New Testament, the textual history of the Ethiopic Gospel of John, or Ge'ez literature generally.