The "True Story" of The Abba Gärima Gospels

The “True Story” of the Abba Gärima Gospels
The writer of this article has made an intensive work about the true story of the Abba Gerima
Gospels which is known as “Garima I” and “Garima II”, believed to be “the most ancient
Christian manuscript and the oldest surviving Ethiopian manuscript of any kind”. The writer has
quoted the works of Jules Leroy a historian and specialist in oriental Christian as the main source
for his article. According to Jules Leroy, It is believed to have a strong hypothesis of direct links
between Ethiopian and Syrian Christianity, vigorously extending its significance and momentum
in art history. The works of Jules Leroy has been considered to be the first scholarly published in
1960s before that noting was made so far.
Christianized already in the middle of the fourth century, penetrated and permeated by the new
faith in the early sixth century at the latest, the Kingdom of Aksum left a deep imprint on the
region where its civilization originated and developed since the first century A.D. It lastingly
shaped the highlands and the Red Sea Coast of the present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea with its
culture and its faith as accepted by the Egyptian Church of Alexandria, from which the Ethiopian
Church depended until the second half of the twentieth century. Exotic at first glance, this remote
area of the Christianity has preserved surprising cultural archaisms, as it often happens for
lateral, peripheral, and provincial areas, less prompt to accept innovations from the distant
metropolitan centres. This culture is therefore an interesting and familiar witness to the early and
late antique Christian cultural background.
Within this context it might be worthwhile to comment on the news of a purported discovery in
Ethiopia “of the most ancient illuminated Bible”, announced and spread in June and July 2010 by
numerous press agencies and authoritative newspapers (The Art Newspaper, The Independent,
The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, etc.), and subsequently resumed and emphasized by
newsgroups, mailing-lists, etc. Periodical (re)discoveries of Palaces of Queen of Sheba, Arks of
the Covenant, Tablets of the Law, and Lost Tribes of Israel are so frequent in Ethiopia that they
have been commonly featuring in popularizing historical and archaeological magazines,
occasionally also in international best-sellers. But the news of the discovery of an ancient – the
most ancient! – illuminated Bible is less trivial, making it necessary to ask, what is in fact new,
and what is true.
In 1960 the art historian Jules Leroy – a specialist in Christian Oriental illuminated manuscripts
– published the first images of a codex, already known from a few scanty notices of a few
travelers. The age and the importance of the codex, preserved in the monastery of Ǝnda Abba Gärima,
near Adwa, in Tǝgray, the cradle of Christian Ethiopia, were immediately evident, and Leroy promptly took sides –
as it appears from the title of his publication: L’Évangéliaire éthiopien du Couvent d’Abba Garima et ses attaches
avec l’ancien art chrétien de Syrie. According to him, the illuminations strongly corroborated the hypothesis of
direct links between Ethiopianand Syrian Christianity, vigorously extending its significance and momentum in art
history.
The paintings on parchment of the Ethiopic codex do not illustrate Biblical episodes, and include only two
iconographic typologies. The ‘Evangelists’, portrayed as standing haloed figures, either en face or in profile, in both
cases with a book, either closed and held in their hands, with the sign of the cross in evidence, or on a bookstand.
The second typology comprises the series of decorative arcades framing the ‘Letter of Eusebius to Carpianus’
followed by the ‘Canons of Eusebius’, texts which often followed the Gospel in late antique and medieval codices.
The canons, whose invention is attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea, determine the concordance between the parallel
passages of the Gospels (synoptic and John) according to numbered sections (so-called ‘Ammonian sections’)
distributed in ten parallel columns. These occupy a variable number of pages according to the cultural and linguistic
areas (canon I: parallels in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; II, Matthew, Mark and Luke; and so on). The series is
completed with a full-page aedicula representing the ‘Fountain of life’ or a templet, the precise interpretation of
which has long challenged, and still challenges, art historians. Leroy established the Syro- Ethiopian affinities only
on the base of the
number of pages of the canons – without any consideration of philological and textual data.
When in 1968 Leroy published new illuminations from another very ancient manuscript from Ǝnda Abba Gärima, it
became apparent that the matter was much more complex: the two manuscripts of Ǝnda
Abba Gärima contained two distinct ancient
Gospel books, the respective illuminations
of which had been mixed up.
When correctly reconstructed, the first
manuscript had two pages for the ‘Letter
of Eusebius’ plus eight pages for the
‘Canons’, and the second manuscript
three pages for the ‘Letter’ plus seven
pages for the Canons. (To be precise, the
second manuscript was bound together
with a third Gospel book, still ancient, but
with certainly more recent canons). The
new discovery, from which Leroy did not
draw all the necessary consequences,
nullifies the apparent iconographic affinity
of Ethiopian and Syrian canons, the latter
displaying them in a much longer series
of pages (e.g., 19 pages in the famous
Rabbulâ Gospel Book of the Biblioteca
Medicea of Florence, Plut. I, 56), and demonstrates
instead that the Ethiopic typology depends upon
Greek prototypes.
The second series of the canons presents one
more surprise. At the end of the series and after the
aedicula a building appears, which is actually a unicum
with no parallels in other traditions: a quadrangular
building with two deer at the sides, which has
been variously reconnected to the iconography of
the Sasanian garden or to other late antique motifs.
What is more important, the aedicula and second
building could go back to the most ancient iconography
of the canons, as it would appear from possible
comparisons with western models (e.g., with the
Carolingian Gospel Book of Saint-Médard de Soissons,
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, ms.
Lat. 8850), where aedicula, quadrangular building
and deer emerge.
We owe to Donald Davies – an enthusiast for Ethiopic
manuscripts who was the first to take a full
set of pictures of the Ǝnda Abba Gärima manuscripts
(besides many others) – the documentation

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