How many books are in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible?

81 in its standard ('narrow') canon, with nine more in its 'broader' canon — the largest biblical canon of any major Christian church. The exact count varies slightly by tradition and era, since the list was never fixed by a single universal decision.

Why does the Ethiopian Bible include 1 Enoch?

Because the Ethiopian church received it early and never stopped treating it as scripture, unlike every other major Christian and Jewish tradition, which set it aside by around the fourth century AD.

Is the Ethiopian Bible written in a different language?

Its historic liturgical text is in Ge'ez, an ancient Semitic language still used in Ethiopian and Eritrean church services today, though modern printed Bibles also exist in Amharic and other languages.

Is the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in communion with other Orthodox churches?

It's part of the Oriental Orthodox communion (alongside the Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, and Malankara churches) — a distinct family from the Eastern Orthodox communion of Constantinople, Russia, and Greece, separated since a fifth-century dispute over the nature of Christ.

What Is the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible?

No other church's Bible is bigger. And it isn't padding — Ethiopia is the reason two genuinely ancient Jewish books survived complete at all.

The largest canon in Christianity

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts 81 books as scripture in its standard (“narrow”) canon — everything in the Protestant Bible, most of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Apocrypha, and a further set of books no other tradition treats as canonical at all, most famously 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees.

Why Ethiopia, specifically

Christianity reached the Kingdom of Aksum, in what is now northern Ethiopia, in the fourth century AD — making it one of the very first nations to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Its church translated scripture into Ge'ez, its own ancient liturgical language, early and thoroughly, and — crucially — it was never subject to the fourth- and fifth-century Mediterranean church councils that settled canon and doctrinal questions for the communities that produced the Bibles most Christians use today. Ethiopia simply kept using what it had already received.

Books found nowhere else

1 Enoch is the clearest example. Quoted directly in the New Testament's book of Jude, read widely in the early church, and then set aside everywhere else, it survived as a complete text only because the Ethiopian church never stopped copying it in Ge'ez — the only reason a modern reader can pick up all 108 chapters today.

Jude's own quotation of the book only Ethiopia kept complete:

Jude 1:14–15

14And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
See also: 1 Enoch 1:9, Matthew 12:36
15To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
See also: Hebrews 9:27, 1 Peter 4:18

Read in full chapter →

Jubilees shares the same story: complete only in Ge'ez, because one church kept reading it without interruption. (The Ethiopic Testament of Our Lord is a different case — a church-order text also preserved in Syriac.)

Where its own canon still varies

Even “81 books” isn't the whole picture — Ethiopian tradition itself distinguishes that standard, “narrow” canon (whose Old Testament includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees) from a “broader” one that adds nine more books, among them the Sinodos, the Books of the Covenant, and the Ethiopic Clement and Didascalia — and different lists from different eras don't agree down to the last book. What's constant is the underlying principle: once received, kept.

Where to read it

This site carries the distinctively Ethiopian books in full — from the standard canon, 1 Enoch and Jubilees, and from the broader canon, the Ethiopic Testament of Our Lord — in public-domain translations, alongside the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha it shares with other traditions. Each book's page says which churches receive it as scripture.

Common questions

How many books are in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible?: 81 in its standard ('narrow') canon, with nine more in its 'broader' canon — the largest biblical canon of any major Christian church. The exact count varies slightly by tradition and era, since the list was never fixed by a single universal decision.
Why does the Ethiopian Bible include 1 Enoch?: Because the Ethiopian church received it early and never stopped treating it as scripture, unlike every other major Christian and Jewish tradition, which set it aside by around the fourth century AD.
Is the Ethiopian Bible written in a different language?: Its historic liturgical text is in Ge'ez, an ancient Semitic language still used in Ethiopian and Eritrean church services today, though modern printed Bibles also exist in Amharic and other languages.
Is the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in communion with other Orthodox churches?: It's part of the Oriental Orthodox communion (alongside the Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, and Malankara churches) — a distinct family from the Eastern Orthodox communion of Constantinople, Russia, and Greece, separated since a fifth-century dispute over the nature of Christ.