The textual transmission of the earliest Ethiopic biblical canon

Aside from textual evidence of documentary character, like inventory lists attested as early as from the thirteenth century, that have recently attracted more attentively the interest of scholars as possible evidence for the canonicity of biblical and parabiblical writings, Ethiopic literary texts have transmitted a certain number of ‘biblical canons’. These ‘biblical canons’ are attested in canon-law prescriptive works and have received attention since the nineteenth century in a series of contributions by August Dillmann, Ignazio Guidi, Anton Baumstark, Marius Chaîne, just to quote a few, and more recently several other scholars as well. This evidence, however, was rarely considered from the essential point of view of the dynamics of (1) origin and context of production, (2) provenance in relation to the Ethiopian context, and (3) within the actual state of the Ethiopian literary tradition and manuscript transmission. In this paper I intend to deal with the earliest retrievable evidence for a literary ‘biblical canon’ and provide some details on the context of its textual transmission and reception.