iv. Source of the Text.— (A) Old Testament.— The Ethiopic or Geez version, which from the earliest times was universally used in all branches of the Abj'.ssinian Church as well as amongst the Jewish Falashas, was, according to some of the poets of the country, derived from the Arabic, its authors being variously said to be the Abba SalAmft ( = Frumentius, the Apostle of the Abys- sinians, according to Ludolf, see Zotenberg, Cat. dcs MSS Eth. pp. 3, 4, or a later Abba SalAmft,
• See alHo Margoliouth's art. on the Kth. V.S in Miller's editioB of Scrivenor'i hitroductivn to th« Criticutn n/ tht NT.
792
ETHIOPIC VERSION
ETHIOPIC VERSION
«ee Zotenberg, 194 ; Dillm. Zur Gesch. des axum. Reichs, p. 20) or tlie holy Nine (Guidi, Le traduziuni degli evangelii in arabo e in efiopico, p. 33, note). But Ludolf saw reason for doubting this view later (Historia iHhiopica, pp. 295, 296) when he came to recognize that the Ethiopic version was closely dependent on the text of the LXX. Subsequent investigation has tended to substantiate tlie later view of Ludolf. Hence the view of Kenaudot, that the version was made from the Egyptian, must be sumniiirily rejected ; likewise the preposterous theory of Lagarde, that it was derived either from the Egyp. or Arab, in tlie 14th cent.
It is unquestionable that our version was made in the mam from the Greek, — in the main, for there are certain phenomena in the MSS which cannot be e.xplained from this hypotliesis alone. These we will touch upon presently, and in the meantime give Dillmann's account of the various te.\ts attested by the MSS. In his V.T. ^thiopici, Tom. i. apparat. crit. p. 8 (1853), he draws atten- tion to a large number of readings which agree with the Hebrew against the LXX, and suggests that these are due to the use of the Hexajda of Origen. Later he revises this theory and replaces it by another ; thus in Herzog's RE, 1877, i. 205, he writes that there are three distinct types of text. i. The original translation more or less corrupted but seldom represented in the MSS. (See also Zotenberg, op. cit. 3, 5, 7, 8.) ii. A text revised and completed from the Greek, and found most frequently in the MSS. This is the Eth. Koin) or Text us receptus. iii. A text corrected from the Hebrew, younger in age. See also V.T. ^thiopici, Tom. ii. Fasc. i. apparat. crit. pp. 3-6. This tneory has been accepted by Zotenberg, and lately by Pra'torius, Herzog's RE ' iii. p. 87 tt'.
It is possible, however, to interpret the evi- dence otherwise. Thus Dillmann may be wrong (n) in his later rejection of his Krst theory that the Hexapla of Origen was used by the Eth. trans- lators, and (6) in attributing all Eth. translitera- tions of Heb. words and many Eth. readings which agree with the Heb. against the LXX to tlie work of later scholars correcting from the Heb. text.
Some evidence will now be cited which points in this direction. This evidence will be drawn from Lamentations and Malachi. First as regards (a), we tind that in La 2" the Eth. AstamAsUiki agrees exactly with the version of Symmachus i^njuiaw at again.st the Heb., LXX, and all other Gr. VS.S. Likewise in 3" and 5" our text again agrees with Syram. against the LXX, but this time it is in harmony with the Hebrew. As some other diver- gences from the LXX can be explained by tliis version and that of Aquila, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Hexapla was used by the Eth. translators. These divergences, however, may have been derived directly from the Heb. text. In many passages in all the biblical books the Eth. version is independent of and attests a purer form of text than the LXX. Next aa regards (/;), it is just as likely that many of the transliterations of Heb. words which are found in certain Eth. MSS,* but not in the LXX, may be survivals of the earliest form of the text made directly in many cases from the Hebrew. If they are all to be ascriued to the corrections of later scholars, how are we to account for their appearance in all MSS of La 3" and Job 16"? What we usually find in the history of a version is that the unintelligible or foreign words are by degrees displaced either by their antive equivalents or by emendations, or
* Such u the MS E (or the books o( the Kings. See Dill- mann, op. eit. ii. apparat. crit. p. 5 ; Bee also Zotenberg, Cat. pp. 9, 10, 11 on Ytreion corrift^e d'apr^ le texte ybreu. Dom •ailed attention as earlv as IBJ') to the use of the Heb. text in hu Introduction to Luaolfs edition of the Psalter,
else they are simply omitted. The theory that the primitive Eth. version contained a large number of words transliterated from the Hel). receives some confirmation from the fact that the Abyssinians first received Christianity through Aranifean missionaries, and that very many Aram, words were actually naturalized in order to ex- press the new doctrines of the Christian faith, riie Levitical character of Ethiopic Christianity points in the same direction, i.e. its acceptance of the rite of circumcision, and the Levitical lawi regurdiii" the purification of women.