Meqabyan and Maccabees: Are They the Same Books?

The Ethiopian Meqabyan are distinct from the books usually called Maccabees in Greek and Latin biblical traditions. Open 1 Meqabyan and you meet Tsirutsaydan, a king whose priests secretly eat the sacrifices offered to his gods. A family refuses his worship of idols. The brothers are killed, but the king’s attempt to burn their bodies fails: the fire cannot touch even their hair (1 Meqabyan 3:37–38; 4:1–2 in this edition).

The story introduces a question that runs through all three books. What power does a king really possess if death is followed by resurrection and judgment? Much of Meqabyan is devoted to working out that question, long after the opening martyrdom narrative has ended.

Why are they called Ethiopian Maccabees?

The name Meqabyan is associated with Meqabis, a personal name used in the books, and it recalls the name Maccabees. The martyrdom story also invites comparison with the mother and seven sons in 2 Maccabees 7. In both, fidelity to God is tested by a ruler prepared to kill those who refuse him.

That resemblance helps readers find a point of contact. The characters and compositions remain different. A volume containing Greek 1 and 2 Maccabees has not supplied the Ethiopian Meqabyan, even if its contents page uses the same English label.

Catalogue titles can preserve the ambiguity. The British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme record for an early Meqabyan witness lists “1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees.” It also identifies the language as Ge’ez and supplies the Ethiopic titles. Those details tell us which works are actually in the manuscript.

What happens after the brothers’ martyrdom?

In 1 Meqabyan, the first three brothers are Abya, Sela, and Fantos; two younger brothers later join them. Their father is a Benjaminite named Meqabis. The king can order their deaths, but the narrative denies him the final authority he claims over them.

The long teaching that follows returns repeatedly to death and resurrection. Its addresses to rulers draw examples from biblical history, including Cain, the giants before the flood, Gideon, David, and Hezekiah. A reader expecting a continuous adventure may initially find the change of form surprising. The sermons extend the opening story’s concern: rulers will themselves answer to judgment.

The deceptive priests at the beginning also recall Bel and the Dragon, where the eating of offerings exposes the fraud surrounding an idol (Daniel 14:1–22). This is a comparison of narrative motifs, not proof that one composition directly borrowed from the other. Meqabyan draws its readers into a world of recognizable biblical episodes while using those episodes for its own sustained exhortation.

Why does 2 Meqabyan tell a different family story?

The Second Book begins with a Moabite ruler called Meqabis who attacks Jerusalem. A prophet rebukes his pride, and he repents. His family’s care for poor people, widows, and orphans becomes part of the work’s account of obedience to God.

When this book recounts the brothers’ martyrdom, it makes them the sons of the Moabite Meqabis. Tsirutsaydan is described here as king of Chaldea. The First Book gives the family a Benjaminite father and begins with three named brothers before adding two younger ones.

The accounts give their father different identities and the family different backgrounds, so reading the works as successive chapters of one family history would erase disagreements between them. The Fifth Estate edition’s introduction identifies the differences so that readers can follow each account on its own terms.

What does 3 Meqabyan add?

The Third Book contains little narrative. It begins with the devil’s boasting about leading humanity astray, followed by divine response and prophetic rebuke. Its attention settles on death, judgment, and the resurrection of the body.

Across the collection, the forms change from martyrdom story to repentance narrative to extended religious argument. Resurrection gives the three books a shared concern. Their arrangement in this edition comprises thirty-six chapters in the First Book, twenty-one in the Second, and ten in the Third.

How old are the Meqabyan?

We do not know when or where they were composed. Their teaching shows familiarity with Christian Scripture, and their surviving copies provide evidence that is firmer than guesses based on the ancient settings of their stories.

The manuscript now held at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, catalogued as EAP286/1/1/426, is dated to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It contains all three books. That establishes their existence by the period in which the copy was made. Their composition may be earlier; the manuscript date alone cannot tell us how much earlier.

The texts themselves need careful reading as evidence. In 2 Meqabyan 14:1, the narrator groups Pharisees among those accused of denying resurrection. Yet verse 6 gives them belief that souls receive a different body in heaven. The dispute is therefore more specific than a simple denial of any life after death: the work argues for the resurrection of the earthly body. Acts 23:8 affirms Pharisaic belief in resurrection without making that same distinction about bodies. Meqabyan’s hostile portrayal should not be treated as a neutral historical description of Pharisaic teaching.

What can comparing manuscripts recover?

The introduction describes British Library Or. 506 as the translation’s base, with Or. 502 and Or. 487 compared throughout and the older Addis Ababa witness consulted at difficult readings and gaps. The introduction reports an instructive result at 2 Meqabyan 9:19: the older witness preserves a verse missing from all three British Library copies.

Several copies can share an omission, but a passage found in only one witness could also be an addition. Age alone cannot decide which reading is earlier. The example here reports the edition’s judgment that the verse was omitted in the British Library copies; this article has not independently re-collated those Ge’ez passages.

According to the introduction, the manuscripts used for this translation lack its chapter and verse divisions. Numbering for the First and Third Books comes from a printed Bible Society of Ethiopia Ge’ez text. That printed text calls this collection’s Third Book “2 Meqabyan” and does not contain the work printed here as the Second Book; the latter’s divisions are supplied by Fifth Estate. A reference to “2 Meqabyan” therefore needs an edition as well as chapter and verse numbers.

Where do they belong in an Ethiopian Bible?

The Meqabyan belong to the Ethiopian biblical tradition and the narrower canon discussed by R. W. Cowley. He notes that one canonical enumeration counts the three works as two by combining the Second and Third. That grouping is a separate issue from the different titles used in the printed edition described above. Their place in the canon is clearer than claims about a fixed season in which all three are read; the sources used for this edition do not establish such a reading schedule.

All three are included in Fifth Estate’s The Lost Books of the Ethiopian Bible. Start with the opening narrative of 1 Meqabyan, then follow its turn toward the fate of rulers and the resurrection of the dead. Companion notes in the Reader Library, included with the book, can be opened alongside the texts.

Sources

The narrative details, textual comparison, and translation methods discussed here come from the Meqabyan introduction and the relevant translated passages in Breandan Lumpkin’s The Lost Books of the Ethiopian Bible (Fifth Estate, 2026). The British Library archive record independently identifies and dates the older manuscript. Cowley’s “The Biblical Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Today,” Ostkirchliche Studien 23 (1974), 318–323, supplies further canonical context. Story details are paraphrased; chapter and verse references follow the Fifth Estate edition unless another biblical book is named.