For many years, Matt Miles and myself have conducted a week of church camp called Genesis Week. Recently, a former camper now in college emailed with questions regarding the Ethiopian Bible and the canon of Scripture after hearing about them in a college class. The following is my response.

Your questions about the Ethiopian Bible, the Book of Enoch, and the legitimacy of the books of the Bible are excellent questions that should always be studied and answered. It all boils down to, “How do we know that the books of the Bible are legitimate (meaning inspired by God) and no others are?”

If I may, I shall first answer this in general and then specifically with the Ethiopian Bible and Book of Enoch.

The list of books included in each testament are referred to as “canon”. Canon simply means authoritative, authentic, or inspired. Those that are not included are non-canonical, meaning they didn’t pass the requirements for inclusion. Thus there is the Old Testament canon and the New Testament canon.

The Old Testament books are easy to confirm. All one has to do is look back in history and see which books the Jews have always accepted as inspired from God.

We have in our Bibles today 39 books. All 39 have been considered inspired / canonical since before Jesus’ time!

For example, 1 ^st century A.D. Jewish historian Josephus wrote,

(Flavius Josephus, Against Apion , Vol. 1, in  Josephus, Complete Works,  Grand Rapids, Kregel, 1960, p. 8.)

Wait a minute! Josephus says there are only 22, not 39!

That’s because of how the books were grouped:

            5 Torah:          Genesis

                                    Exodus

                                    Leviticus

                                    Numbers

                                    Deuteronomy             (5 books)

             8 Prophets:   Joshua

                                    Judges (with Ruth)

                                    Samuel (1 & 2)

                                    Kings (1 & 2)

                                    Isaiah

                                    Jeremiah (with Lamentations)

                                    Ezekiel

                                    Minor Prophets (Hosea,

                                    Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah,

                                    Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk,

                                    Zephaniah, Haggai,

                                    Zechariah, Malachi)              (23 books)

            9 Writings:     Psalms

                                    Proverbs

                                    Song of Solomon

                                    Ecclesiastes

                                    Esther

                                    Daniel

                                    Job

                                    Ezra (with Nehemiah)

                                     Chronicles (1 & 2)     (11 books)

            22 books                                             (39 books)

Today, the Jewish / Hebrew Bible ( Tanakh ) contains 24 books as Lamentations and Ruth are now listed separately.

But as you can see, the Old Testament books have been confirmed for thousands of years.

In like manner, the 27 books of the New Testament have been confirmed for nearly 2,000 years.

When churches and individuals began putting together lists of which books were safe / inspired for people to read and believe, each book had to meet 4 criteria.

If it did not meet all 4 criteria, it was not included.

Now here’s the great thing about this. For the first 3 to 4 centuries, there were people all over the place putting these lists together! It was not one centralized effort by a controlling group! This means we have a collective witness of early Christians independently confirming for us the true, authentic, inspired books of the Bible!

It is important to note, that not every one of them had all of them at first as it took a while for the books to circulate and for everyone to get a chance to read them. Persecutions greatly contributed to this.

However, we rarely have one saying a book is inspired while another says it isn’t. For example, we don’t have one Christian one place saying Matthew is an inspired book and should be in the Bible while in another place we have someone saying it isn’t inspired and should not be included.

Here is how early we have records of people quoting from or referring to the New Testament books as inspired / as Scripture.

Matthew                    by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

Mark                           by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Hermas (A.D. 115-140)

Luke                            by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202)

John                            by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

Acts                             by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Hermas (A.D. 115-140)

Romans                      by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

I Corinthians              by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

II Corinthians             by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Hermas (A.D. 115-140)

Galatians                    by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202)

Ephesians                   by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Ignatius (A.D. 110)

Philippians                 by Ignatius (A.D. 110), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

Colossians                  by Ignatius (A.D. 110), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

I Thessalonians          by Ignatius (A.D. 110), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

II Thessalonians         by Ignatius (A.D. 110), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

I Timothy                    by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Polycarp (A.D. 110-130)

II Timothy                  by Hermas (A.D. 115-140), Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202)

Titus                            by Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202), Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215)

Philemon                    by Clement of Rome (A.D. 95-97), Origen (A.D. 185-234)

Hebrews                     by Hermas (A.D. 115-140), Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202)

James                          by Hermas (A.D. 115-140), Origen (A.D. 185-234)

I Peter                         by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Hermas (A.D. 115-140)

II Peter                        by Origen (A.D. 185-234), Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 313-386)

I John                          by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Hermas (A.D. 115-140)

II John                         by Polycarp (A.D. 110-130), Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202)

III John                        by Muratorian canon (A.D. 170), Old Latin translation (A.D. 200)

Jude                            by Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202), Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215)

Revelation                  by Hermas (A.D. 115-140), Papias (A.D. 130-140)

(inclusive list found at https://carm.org/new-testament-canon-chart – A General Introduction to the Bible, revised and expanded , by Norman Geisler and William E. Nix, 1986, p. 294, with data updated based on more recent research)

These are just a few of the people of whom could be referenced (the Epistle of Barnabas is an even earlier source of A.D. 70-130, but the author is unknown). But as can be seen, ALL 27 books had been recognized at some point by the year A.D. 170. That’s nearly within 100 years of when the New Testament books were written, most of them much sooner than that (50 years or less)!

By the time of Irenaeus’s writings (A.D. 130-202), he had all but 4 books in his list, and Origen (A.D. 185-234) possibly has all of them! ALL 27 were in full acceptance in the A.D. 300s. This is absolutely remarkable and shows how reliable our New Testament is.

Regarding other books some attempt to group with the New Testament, there are two main categories: spurious and heretical.

The spurious books are ones that early Christians may have had and read, but they were never considered inspired or Scripture. They were not worth dying for. These would include:

Then there are the heretical books, ones that were completely rejected as fake and not to be trusted. These would include:

Additionally, there is a group of books included in Roman Catholic Bibles, commonly referred to as the Apocrypha (means “hidden away”). These would include:

Others sometimes included in other lists would be:

These books were composed anywhere from 300 B.C. to A.D. 100. They were first included in a canon by the Roman Catholic Church in A.D. 382, and then solidified in the Canon of Trent in 1546.

Additionally, there are those called the Pseudepigrapha (means “false name”). They are considered even less reliable than the Apocrypha, composed from 300 B.C. to A.D. 300. They would include:

Again, none of these were ever included by either ancient Jews or early Christians. Neither Josephus (A.D. 37-100) nor Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. – A.D. 40) nor any other Jewish religious leader, historian, or philosopher of that time considered them inspired or Scripture.

They would have been known of in New Testament times, but none of them are ever referenced to or quoted as Scripture. The closest one can get is in Jude 9, a possible reference to the Assumption of Moses. But the book itself is not referenced, let alone quoted as Scripture. Some material in any of these books may be accurate, but that does not make them inspired, just as a history book might be accurate but not inspired of God.

Bible scholar F.F. Bruce stated it well:

(F. F. Bruce,  The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? , Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1960, p. 27.)

The first thing to clarify with the Ethiopian Bible is that there are at least two groups to note: 1.) Ethiopian Jews (also known as Beta Jews) and 2.) the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Both share the same version of the Old Testament. There is also the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church that has the same version as it is a split from the Ethiopian church.

That being said, according to the Ethiopian church’s own website ( https://www.ethiopianorthodox.org/english/canonical/books.html ), they have 81 total books (46 Old Test., 35 New Test.). The claim that “when they took the books to England, England sorted through the books they wanted and didn’t want and that’s why we have only 66 books” isn’t quite accurate for either English Bibles or Ethiopian Bibles. The Ethiopians still have the same books as before, and the English Bibles have the same number that’s been used for nearly 2,000 years.

In 1773, Scottish traveler James Bruce brought 3 copies of the compilation of Ethiopian books back to Europe. So, nothing changed for either side, except European missionaries probably trying to get the Ethiopians to get rid of some of their books.

Their additional books included in the Old Testament are:

Their additional books included in the New Testament are:

Based on what we’ve previously learned, these books have either already been shown throughout history to not be inspired / canonical / Scripture or this is the only place they have ever been found. If for some of these books this is the only place they’ve ever been found, then why did the Lord hide them from the rest of the world for so long? Why did He provide only the original 66 books to the rest of the world?

First, when addressing the Book of Enoch, one must first ask, “Which one?” There are actually three different books of Enoch. New World Encyclopedia notes, “Most commonly, the phrase ‘Book of Enoch’ refers to  1 Enoch , which is wholly extant only in the Ethiopic language. There are two other books named ‘Enoch’:  2 Enoch  (surviving only in Old Slavonic, c. first century; Eng. trans. by Richard H. Charles (1896); and  3 Enoch  (surviving in Hebrew, c. fifth-sixth century. The numbering of these texts has been applied by scholars to distinguish the texts from one another” ( https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Book_of_Enoch ).

So there is an Ethiopian book of Enoch, a Slovic book of Enoch, and a Hebrew book of Enoch (and this Hebrew version is not considered the original). The guess is that the original book of Enoch was written somewhere between 300 to 100 B.C. If that is the case, then, as stated before, ALL Jewish witnesses from that time declare that it is not inspired / canonical / Scripture. The same goes for all of the Christian witnesses as well.

After years of studying this, it seems very evident to me that the 66 books of our modern Bibles are the inspired Scriptures given to us by God. Not only that, the incredible reliability of these books (also called textual criticism) is unlike anything else in history. The evidence that what we have today is practically identical to the original writings is absolutely overwhelming! No other book in history has been preserved as well as the Bible! For more on that, check out my article on our website entitled “Divinely Dependable” ( /divinely-dependable/ ).