This includes the typical Septuagint order (Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah) plus:
The number 88 often arises from adding the 46 Old Testament + 35 New Testament = 81, then adding the unique broader books (Jubilees, Enoch, Ascension of Isaiah, etc.) to reach 84–88. Some lists split the Psalms into multiple books (Psalm 151 is canonical in Ethiopia). Other counts exclude certain liturgical works that are "read in church" but not considered fully canonical for doctrine. The most authoritative listing is found in the Fetha Nagast (Law of the Kings) and the church's own synodical records. 88 books of the ethiopian bible pdf
To understand the "88 books," one must understand the unique history of Christianity in Africa. The Ethiopian Church is one of the oldest in the world, tracing its roots back to the 4th century AD. Isolated for centuries by geography and politics from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox spheres, Ethiopia developed a scriptural tradition that preserved texts considered too dangerous, too "Jewish," or simply too obscure by Western councils. This includes the typical Septuagint order (Genesis, Exodus,
The translation of the Bible into Ge’ez (the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia) predates the King James Version by nearly a millennium. While the Western church was finalizing its canon in the 4th century councils (Hippo and Carthage), the Ethiopian church was receiving texts from Jewish-Christian communities that the West had severed ties with. The most authoritative listing is found in the
The result? A bible that breathes with the atmosphere of the early Church, unfiltered by the later theological editing of Europe.
The “Ethiopian Bible” typically refers to the Orthodox Tewahedo biblical corpus used by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Oriental Orthodox churches. Unlike most Christian canons, it includes a large “narrower” canon roughly equivalent to the Hebrew/Septuagint plus Catholic deuterocanonical books, and a broader corpus (sometimes counted as 81–88 books, depending on counting conventions and which auxiliary ecclesiastical texts are included) that contains unique works such as 1–3 Meqabyan, Jubilees, 1 Enoch, the Paralipomena of Jeremiah (4 Baruch), Jubilees, Ezra Sutu’el (4 Ezra), Josippon fragments, and several liturgical/canonical collections (Sinodos, Didascalia, Ethiopic Clement, etc.).