Ethiopian woman (Hastings' Dictionary)

According to Nu 12' (JE), when the children of Israel were at Haze- roth, Miriam and Aaron ' spake against ' Moses on account of his marriage with an Ethiopian (RV 'Cushite') woman. In the sequel, however, Moses' conduct in this matter is neither impugned nor defended ; for the complaint brought by Sliriam and Aaron turns into a claim of equal inspiration with Moses (v.

^) — a claim which is refuted by J " in a theophany, while Miriam is punished with leprosy, from which she is immediately relieved through Moses' intercession made at Aaron's request, but has nevertheless to be confined for seven days (v.*"-). As the ' Ethiopian woman' is mentioned nowhere else, and the death of Moses' wife Zipporah is not recorded, some of the early interpreters thought the two must be identical ; and this view is favoured by the .

Jewish expositors, who assign reasons for Zipjiorah's being CAflcd Eth. that are either frivolous (as Rashi) or merely un- critical (as Ibn Ezra) ; Rashi's interpretation being as old as Targ. Onk. On the other hand, LXX has kWibinaaa., and Jos. (Ant. II. x. 2) makes her an Eth. princess. If the woman mentioned in Nu be identical with Zipporah, the word Kiishith must be used in the sense of non-Isr.aelite — a usage which ETHIOPIC VEKSIO.N ETHIOPIC VERSION 791 is found in late Kabliin.

writings {hevj, NHWB), and cannot be dissociated from the similar employ- ment of A'l/Mi (proi)erlj' Samaritan). But besides the improbability of this usage being found in the Bible, the text implies (though it does not expressly assert) that the marriage was of recent occurrence. It is therefore more likely that a black slave-girl Is meant, and that the fault found by Miriam and Aaron was with the indignity of such a union : and this accords with the statement (v.')

that Moses was the 'meekest' of mankind. The employment of Nubians as slaves dates back to t^ie early dynasties of Egypt (cf. Hrugsch, Gesch. A^gi/p. p. 266). Although no etym. of the name Hazerotli 18 given in the text, this word (from the Arab. hofara, 'confine') would seem to stand in some etymological connexion with the confinement of Miriam. Perhaps it is merely accidental that the word /yizir in .\rab. is employed in an idiom mean- ing to 'calumniate' (Maydani, c.

3); albeit this double etym. would contain implicitly a large portion of the narrative. D. S. Marooliouth. ETHIOPIC VERSION This subject wiU be treated under the following heads : — i. T)ie Ethiopic Canonical Booln. U. The Manu^cripto. 111. Printed Edilions. iv. Source of tlie Text. V. Critical Value. Ti. Date, 1. The Ethiopic Canonical Books.— (A) Old Testament. — The Eth.

OT embraces all the books included in the LXX (except the Books of the Mac- cabees), together with several others, such as the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, 4 Ezra, Rest of the Words of IJaruch, etc. Tlie Maccabees were either never translated or else were early lost. Since, however, tlie Eth. scliolars found the titles of these books in their Sin6d6s and Fctha Nagast, they proceeded to supply them from their own imagination. In this way these books came into circulation (l)illmann).

In later times, indeed, the Latin version of these books was translated into Ethiopic. (See Wright, Vat. Eth. MSS lirit. Mm. p. 14.) No distinction whatever appears to have been made between the canonical and the uncanonical books of OT. The number of books in OT is set down unanimously at 46, but hardlj' two lists of these books agree. As a rule, the apocryplial and pseudepigraphal books which appear in one list are replaced in another by quite different works of the same class of literature.

(See Walton's Poh/fjlut i., Proleg. p. 100 ; Dillmann in Ewald's Jahrhiicher d. bihl. Wissenschaft , v. 1853, pp. 144-151 ; Fell, Canones Apostulorum ./Ethiopire, p. 46.) (B) New Testament. — 35 books are reckoned in NT. This number is arrived at by including a book of Canon Law with the usual 27 books of NT. As this work, called the SinCdCs, is counted as 8 books, we thus get 35 in all. (See Zotenberg, Cat. d»s MSS Etninpirns de la BHiliothi^ipie NatiuniJe, p. 141 fl.

; Ludolf, Historiri JEtldopica, III. iv. 27 ; Vansleb, Histoire de I'Eglise (TAlex- andria, 23'Jff.) The Western divi.sion of the Bible into chapters made its way into Abyssinia tlirough the contact in later times of the latter with Western Christen- dom. The old-jr MSS exhibit quite a ditl'erent division of the books. ii. The MSS of the Ethiopic Version.

— The chief MSS of OT, the Apocrypha and I'siudepi- prapha, and of NT will be found in tlie following catalogues : — Wright, Ethiopic MSS of the Briti.ih MiLirum, OT and Apocr. pp. 1-2-J, >«Jpp. 23-29, 1878 ; Zotenberg, Cntnlmpie di-~i MSS Etfiiopiens de la Bihliuthique Natiimale, OT and Apocr. Nos. 1-31,49-51, NT Nos. 32-48; D'Abbadie, Catalogue Raisonn( de MSS &thiopiens, Paris, 1859, OT and Aiiocr. Nos. 16, 21, 22, 30, 35, 55, 99, 105, 117, 137, 141, 149, 19.5, 197, 203, 204, 205.

Some of these MSS contain only single books. MSS of Enoch are found in 16, 30, 99, 197 ; Gospels, Nos. 2, 9, 47, 82, 95, 112, 173; Pauline Epp. 9, 119, 164; Cath. Epp., Apoc. and Acts, 9, 119, 164. Dillmann, Cataloqus MSS /Ethiop. in Bibliotheea Bodleiana, 1848, OT and Apocr. 1-9, NT 10-15. There are small collections of MSS also in Berlin. See Dill- mann, Abcssini.'sche Handsehriften der Koniglirhen Bihliothck zu Berlin ; OT and Apocr. Nos. 1-6, of the Psalms 7-19 ; NT 20, 21. Of these, No.

1 is a MS of Enoch. For the MSS in Vienna, see ZDMG xvi. p. 554 ; in St. Petersburg, see Bulletin scientijiqrie puhlii par VAcadhnie iin- pi'rinlc drs Sciences, ii. 302, iii. 14511'. ; in Tubingen, see XDMG v. 164 II'. There are also a few MSS in Frankfort of some value, and in private libraries in England.* iii. Printed Editions.— We shall mention only a few of these. For further information the reader may consult Le Long, Biblivtheca Sacra, 1878, ii.

140-157 ; Fell, Literarische Rundschau fiir das Kathol. Dcut.^rhland, Feb. 1, 1896. (A) Old Testament. — Of OT Dillmann has edited vol. i. Gn-Ruth, 1853 (some of the best MSS were inaccessible when this volume was edited); vol. ii. Samuel and Kings, 1861-1871; Joel (in Merx, Die Prophefie des Joels). The Psalms were edited liy Ludolf in 1701, and in the various Polyglots and by the Bible Society. Bach- niann published texts of Isaiah, Lamentations, and M.alacfii.

The text of the last two books neither adecjuately nor accurately represents the best Ethiopic SiSS in Europe. (B) Apocrijpha. — The honour of publishing the fir.st Apocrvjihal texts belongs to Oxford. Thus Laurence edited the Ascension of Isaiah in 1819, the Apocaly|)se of Ezra in 1820, and the Book of Enoch in 1838. These are valuable now only from an historical point of view.

Dillmann has given us a splendid edition of the Apocryphal books, Baruch, Epistola Jeremite, Tobit, Judith, Kcclesiasticus, S;i|)ientia, Esdroe Apocalypsis, F.sdras Gra?cus (1894). He edited texts also of Enoch (1851), Jubilees (18.59), and the Ascension of Isaiah (1877). In 1893 Charles published an edition of Enoch, in which there is a continuous correc- tion of Dillmann's text from 10 hitherto uncoUated MSS, and in 1894 the Ethiopic text of Jubilees from 4 MSS. (C) New Testament.

— The NT was first printed at Rome in 1548-49 by the Abyssini.an Tasfft-Sion, with the omission, however, of the 13 Pauline Epistles. As the translator possessed only a fragmentary MS of the Acts, he sujiplied an Eth. version of the missinfj chapters from tlie Greek and Latin. This edition, which is disHgured by countless errors, was reprinted in Walton's Poly- glot. Another edition, Nov. Te^tnmentum . Aitldopice, ad eodicum nuinuscriptoruin fdctn, was issued by T. P.

Piatt for the Brit, and For. Bible Society, 1826-1830. A reprint of this edition appeared at B.isle in 1874. These editions are of no critical value. iv. Source of the Text.— (A) Old Testament.— The Ethiopic or Geez version, which from the earliest times was universally used in all branches of the Abj'.

ssinian Church as well as amongst the Jewish Falashas, was, according to some of the poets of the country, derived from the Arabic, its authors being variously said to be the Abba SalAmft ( = Frumentius, the Apostle of the Abys- sinians, according to Ludolf, see Zotenberg, Cat. dcs MSS Eth. pp. 3, 4, or a later Abba SalAmft, • See alHo Margoliouth's art. on the Kth. V.S in Miller's editioB of Scrivenor'i hitroductivn to th« Criticutn n/ tht NT.

792 ETHIOPIC VERSION ETHIOPIC VERSION «ee Zotenberg, 194 ; Dillm. Zur Gesch. des axum. Reichs, p. 20) or tlie holy Nine (Guidi, Le traduziuni degli evangelii in arabo e in efiopico, p. 33, note). But Ludolf saw reason for doubting this view later (Historia iHhiopica, pp. 295, 296) when he came to recognize that the Ethiopic version was closely dependent on the text of the LXX. Subsequent investigation has tended to substantiate tlie later view of Ludolf.

Hence the view of Kenaudot, that the version was made from the Egyptian, must be sumniiirily rejected ; likewise the preposterous theory of Lagarde, that it was derived either from the Egyp. or Arab, in tlie 14th cent. It is unquestionable that our version was made in the mam from the Greek, — in the main, for there are certain phenomena in the MSS which cannot be e.xplained from this hypotliesis alone.

These we will touch upon presently, and in the meantime give Dillmann's account of the various te.\ts attested by the MSS. In his V.T. ^thiopici, Tom. i. apparat. crit. p. 8 (1853), he draws atten- tion to a large number of readings which agree with the Hebrew against the LXX, and suggests that these are due to the use of the Hexajda of Origen. Later he revises this theory and replaces it by another ; thus in Herzog's RE, 1877, i. 205, he writes that there are three distinct types of text. i.

The original translation more or less corrupted but seldom represented in the MSS. (See also Zotenberg, op. cit. 3, 5, 7, 8.) ii. A text revised and completed from the Greek, and found most frequently in the MSS. This is the Eth. Koin) or Text us receptus. iii. A text corrected from the Hebrew, younger in age. See also V.T. ^thiopici, Tom. ii. Fasc. i. apparat. crit. pp. 3-6. This tneory has been accepted by Zotenberg, and lately by Pra'torius, Herzog's RE ' iii. p. 87 tt'.

It is possible, however, to interpret the evi- dence otherwise. Thus Dillmann may be wrong (n) in his later rejection of his Krst theory that the Hexapla of Origen was used by the Eth. trans- lators, and (6) in attributing all Eth. translitera- tions of Heb. words and many Eth. readings which agree with the Heb. against the LXX to tlie work of later scholars correcting from the Heb. text. Some evidence will now be cited which points in this direction.

This evidence will be drawn from Lamentations and Malachi. First as regards (a), we tind that in La 2" the Eth. AstamAsUiki agrees exactly with the version of Symmachus i^njuiaw at again.st the Heb., LXX, and all other Gr. VS.S. Likewise in 3" and 5" our text again agrees with Syram. against the LXX, but this time it is in harmony with the Hebrew.

As some other diver- gences from the LXX can be explained by tliis version and that of Aquila, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Hexapla was used by the Eth. translators. These divergences, however, may have been derived directly from the Heb. text. In many passages in all the biblical books the Eth. version is independent of and attests a purer form of text than the LXX. Next aa regards (/;), it is just as likely that many of the transliterations of Heb.

words which are found in certain Eth. MSS,* but not in the LXX, may be survivals of the earliest form of the text made directly in many cases from the Hebrew. If they are all to be ascriued to the corrections of later scholars, how are we to account for their appearance in all MSS of La 3" and Job 16"?

What we usually find in the history of a version is that the unintelligible or foreign words are by degrees displaced either by their antive equivalents or by emendations, or * Such u the MS E (or the books o( the Kings. See Dill- mann, op. eit. ii. apparat. crit. p. 5 ; Bee also Zotenberg, Cat. pp. 9, 10, 11 on Ytreion corrift^e d'apr^ le texte ybreu. Dom •ailed attention as earlv as IBJ') to the use of the Heb.

text in hu Introduction to Luaolfs edition of the Psalter, else they are simply omitted. The theory that the primitive Eth. version contained a large number of words transliterated from the Hel).

receives some confirmation from the fact that the Abyssinians first received Christianity through Aranifean missionaries, and that very many Aram, words were actually naturalized in order to ex- press the new doctrines of the Christian faith, riie Levitical character of Ethiopic Christianity points in the same direction, i.e. its acceptance of the rite of circumcision, and the Levitical lawi regurdiii" the purification of women.

Until, liowever, we have a complete and critical edition of the Eth. version, it will not be possible to settle finally the above questions. Even iJill- maiin's edition (vols. i. ii. v.) is inadequate for this purpose, as vols. i. and ii. were completed before the best MSS were accessible.* (B) New Testament. — Zotenberg (Cat. des MSS tth. de la bibliot. Nat. pp. 24, 25, 30, 1877) showed that there were two forms of text present in the