What Is the Book of the Covenant in the Ethiopian Bible?

The Ethiopian Book of the Covenant brings together two works attributed to the teaching of the risen Jesus. One describes the life of a Christian community, down to the burial of its poorest members. The other asks what it means for a dead body to rise again. They are counted as two books in the broader Ethiopian New Testament enumeration described by R. W. Cowley.

Their Ge’ez name, Mashafa Kidan, means Book of the Covenant or Testament. Scholars usually discuss the first as the Testament of Our Lord, or Testamentum Domini. The second contains an opening apocalypse followed by the Epistle of the Apostles. The labels need care: the Testamentum Domini also has its own division into two books in Syriac editions. Those internal books are not the same pair as the Ethiopian First and Second Books of the Covenant. Sebastian P. Brock’s account describes the Testamentum Domini’s structure.

A church order that makes room for the poor

The First Book of the Covenant belongs to the literature scholars call church orders: writings that prescribe how a congregation should worship, appoint its ministers, and conduct its common life. Here the instructions are presented as teaching given by Jesus after his resurrection.

Some concern the arrangement of the church and the duties of its clergy. Others address baptism, the Eucharist, and prayer at different hours. Chapter 58 directs the community to arrange a poor person’s burial. When a stranger dies without a burial place, those with means should contribute, and the church should give if it has the means. Someone who can afford burial is to be buried from their own property. If the church has a cemetery keeper, the bishop should support him from church resources so that visitors are not burdened.

The author’s concern with worship extends into the obligations a congregation has toward people who cannot pay. Appointed widows form an order with duties of prayer and care; the word does not describe every bereaved woman indiscriminately (chapters 36–38 and the edition’s glossary). The community is imagined through its responsibilities as well as its ceremonies.

We are reading rules for the community the author wanted to see. Rules reveal priorities and anxieties, but they cannot tell us how consistently people obeyed them. The work also assumes social arrangements many readers will find unfamiliar or troubling, including slavery and restrictions associated with menstruation. Its practical detail gives us a closer view of its historical world, with the difficulties left in place.

How old is the First Book?

The Testament of Our Lord was composed in Greek and incorporates earlier material. Its date and place remain debated. Brock summarizes proposals ranging from the second century to the late fourth and late fifth centuries; the collection’s introduction favors a late fourth- or fifth-century setting. The setting after the resurrection belongs to the work’s claim to authority. It does not establish that the instructions were written in the first century.

The text survives through several language traditions, including Syriac and Ethiopic. According to its introduction, Fifth Estate’s Book One uses Robert Beylot’s 1984 Ge’ez edition and his record of manuscript variants. It sometimes follows readings of the Ethiopic witnesses rather than Beylot’s printed choice. An English translation made from Syriac may give a different reading because its source gives a different reading.

Why does the Second Book insist that Jesus can be touched?

In the Second Book, the risen Jesus directs the disciples to examine him. Peter is to touch the marks of the nails, Thomas his side, and Andrew to observe whether his feet leave a mark on the ground. The scene presses a concrete question: is this the body of the person who died? These details occur in Book Two 22:7–9 in this edition.

The insistence has a theological purpose. If Jesus merely appears to have a body, what becomes of the promise that human bodies will rise? The dialogue returns to the fate of flesh and soul, their relationship in judgment, and the apostles’ duty to teach what they have received. The argument starts with an encounter the narrative makes physical and moves toward the future of the believers’ own bodies.

The Epistle names Simon and Cerinthus as opponents. Warren C. Campbell’s NASSCAL entry discusses its presentation as a letter from eleven apostles and its possible late-second-century composition. Its author is unknown. The apostolic names tell us how the work presents its authority, while its theological concerns help scholars investigate its historical setting.

The apocalypse before the letter

The Second Book printed in this collection begins with eleven chapters of apocalyptic teaching. The Epistle of the Apostles follows in chapters 12–62. Tony Burke’s NASSCAL entry on the Testament of Our Lord in Galilee identifies the opening material and describes its warnings of tribulation and judgment.

For editions using the Epistle’s fifty-one-chapter numbering, chapter 1 corresponds to this collection’s chapter 12, and chapter 17 to chapter 28. That eleven-chapter offset applies to this particular numbering system; it should not be assumed for every translation. Check the edition’s concordance before deciding that a passage is missing.

It also affects dating. An argument about the composition of the Epistle cannot automatically settle the date of the apocalypse attached to it. The collection’s introduction treats those questions separately.

What did Ethiopia preserve?

The Epistle survives incompletely in Coptic, while Ge’ez preserves its complete text. The manuscript evidence entered modern scholarly discussion through a sequence of discoveries and editions around the beginning of the twentieth century. The Ethiopic text published by Louis Guerrier and Sylvain Grébaut in 1913 is used for comparison in this edition.

Ethiopia’s role here is tangible: passages missing from the surviving Coptic witness can be read in the Ethiopic tradition. This is one reason a reader interested in early Christian arguments about resurrection may find an Ethiopian collection relevant even before taking up questions about its canon.

Is the Covenant used in the Ethiopian Church?

R. W. Cowley’s study places the Covenant’s two books in the broader canonical enumeration. That standing should be distinguished from their availability in a particular printed Bible.

The Covenant also has a connection with worship. Paulos Tzadua’s account of the Ethiopian liturgy identifies the Testament of Our Lord as the source of the Anaphora of Our Lord, an Ethiopian eucharistic prayer. Its basis appears in the prayer of the offering in Book One, chapter 16 in this edition. The collection’s introduction also connects the Prayer of the Covenant with this text. Readers can therefore follow the work from instructions on a page into a continuing liturgical tradition.

Reading the Covenant in English

Fifth Estate’s The Lost Books of the Ethiopian Bible includes both Books of the Covenant. Read Book One with its glossary nearby; words such as “widow” and “reader” can name particular roles within the community. In Book Two, keep the distinction between the opening apocalypse and the Epistle in mind. The book includes access to companion texts and notes in the Reader Library, available for online reading and comparison.

Sources and numbering

This article draws principally on the Covenant introduction in Breandan Lumpkin’s The Lost Books of the Ethiopian Bible (Fifth Estate, 2026), checked against the translated burial provisions in Book One 58 and the disciples’ encounter with Jesus in Book Two 22. Its account of editorial methods is attributed to the publisher; this article does not independently re-collate the Ge’ez manuscripts. The linked NASSCAL entries provide additional identification and transmission history; Cowley supplies the canonical context. Brock supplies the additional discussion of the Testamentum Domini, and Tzadua supports the Anaphora’s textual connection. Chapter references follow the Fifth Estate edition. The narrative scenes above are paraphrases, not quotations.