The Letter that Kills

Variant Readings of Genesis 37:3 in the Andemta Corpus

now, he who plays jujitsu with el loved may he add more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors.

Six months ago, I sat down and talked digitally with Deacon aleme'silasé about his then recently released The Letter that Kills: Variant Readings of Genesis 37:3 in the Andemta Corpus (Agora University Press, 2023). Thus, audio/video stans, my dear hearers and watchers, have already been fed. The following is for my dear readers.

Lit Review

3lem begins, as is the custom in academe, with an assessment of all the scholarship that has been written on the Aksumite School of Biblical Exegesis in English. I am aware of at least one scholar who has written, in Italian, about the Scroll of the Twelve Minor Prophets (specifically Hosea)–whom I met by coincidence, or providence (you decide), at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, when I was seeking and perusing the collections of journalist H.L. Mencken and poet Edgar Allen Poe.

3lem examines the oeuvres of: Getatchew Haile (and POAAS 84), Roger W. Cowley, Edward Ullendorff, August Dillman, Sister Kirsten Stoffregen Pederson, Miguel Angel Garcia, Mersha Alehegne, Gabriel Teshome Alemayehu, and Ralph Lee. The leading scholar he looks at is Roger Cowley. Like my favs C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, Richard Pankhurst, and Sebastian Brock, Cowley is a product of the Church of England. And like the latter two, the gravitational force of hymnographical, practical, and simple Semitic Christianity drew him into a lifelong study. His study of contemporary Amharic, lisane nigus (the king’s tongue), led to his study of Old Amharic which led to his study of the Aksumite School of biblical and patristic exegesis. Cowley’s work covers the relevant characters, comparative languages, and most importantly the received tradition of biblical texts themselves.

Early Church & Variants

11 million people + watched Marvel Studios’ Loki. 3lem is not one of them, but I am. And they hold the current cultural sway over the technical term variant, so, it is helpful to compare the two. In Loki, a variant is an alternate universe (or different timeline) version of you and everybody else. The same is true of Highlander (1986) and The One (2001), from my childhood, and from today: Doctor Who, Umbrella Academy, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

In manuscript studies, a variant is an alternate textual tradition of the Bible itself. For example, remember that time I looked at a variant in the Scroll of Jeremiah?

The Early Church had to deal with variants that are mostly the same but in some places differ greatly; across Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac (literary Aramaic). After examining the proto-exegete Origen of Alexandria, 3lem looks at that poet par excellence St. Efrem the Syrian:

“He clothed Himself in our language so that He might clothe us in His mode of life.” This expresses that the words of Scripture are intended to convey a revelation to humanity, which is meant to bring humanity into a spiritual modality. The intent of the phrases and wording within Scripture to him was not for purposes of hyper dogmatization; rather, the narratives of Scripture function to show how the creator is encountered by the created.

The Bible in The Ethiopian Church

we love us a stunna-shades rockin’ mogshé (nametwin).

Let’s look at one verse he does and the interpretation thereof:

ወነበረ ፡ ውስተ ፡ ገዳም ፤ ገዳመ ፡ ዘይት ፤ ዘማሴሬት ፡ ሲል ፡ ሰጐን ፡ የሚታደንበት

The relevant word studied here is “masayrayt”.

This is originally the Hebrew mashadot, whose meaning is, “mountain fastnesses, hunting places.”… the Ethiopian commentary says that this is the place where the ostrich is hunted, which may be insight derived from geographical knowledge of the Holy Land or it may simply be the recruitment of indigenous imagery from the Gonderine highlands employed by the Ethiopian masters to convey the landscape… the commentary section clarifies that the first mention of a wilderness is that of ‘masayrayt',’ a reading that is absent from the G'e’ez text which Cowley possesses, but it is present in the original LXX (Old Greek).

The End

3lem closes out with the life and times and commentary of Meherka Dengel; spiritual advisor to my direct-ancestor Emperor Susnyos, the Catholic king of kings of the Ethiopian Empire. Meherka Dengel wrote chronicles of the kings and biblical commentaries. He was into ironically saying PBUH centuries before it was cool. And he may have something to teach you about Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat, even if you, like me, have already seen the musical.