The Old Testament (81 books in total for the full Bible, expanded to 88 in some counts):

A text distinct from the widely known Roman Clementine literature, written in the form of a revelation from Peter to Clement.

The survival of these texts is due to the isolation and devout preservation efforts of Ethiopian monastic communities. Christianized in the early 4th century under King Ezana of Axum, Ethiopian scholars immediately began translating Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac manuscripts into .

For the believer, these additional books provide a more "complete" picture of the spiritual world, filling in gaps regarding the nature of angels, the lives of the patriarchs, and the specific rituals of the early Church. For the scholar, they are an essential resource for understanding the diversity of early Christianity before the Council of Nicaea and the subsequent narrowing of the Western canon.

These are not considered "apocryphal" in the Western sense but as integral to church teaching and liturgy. They include:

, which discusses the fall of angels and celestial secrets, and the , a detailed retelling of Genesis and Exodus Meqabyan (Ethiopian Maccabees) : Three books ( Meqabyan I , , and III

The original texts are written in , an ancient South Semitic language. Complete, single-volume English translations of the entire 81-to-88-book Ethiopian canon are rare. Most available PDFs are either: Scans of traditional Ge'ez and Amharic manuscripts.

Unlike the Western Old Testament, the Ethiopian canon organizes texts into a unique order, blending protocanonical books, deuterocanonical works, and several completely unique texts.

Caveats