The Book of 1 Meqabyan

1 Meqabyan (also known as 1 Ethiopian Maccabees and 1 Ethiopic Maccabees) is canonical scripture for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. While “Meqabyan” is the Ge’ez equivalent of “Maccabees,” the content is completely different from 1 Maccabees. The only complete copies of 1 Meqabyan are available in Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic), here used with permission by the Bible Society of Ethiopia.

The translation into English was provided by Haileyesus Woldemariam (UBS).

soldier

The Hebrew, Ge’ez, and Greek that is translated as “soldier” in English didn’t have a direct equivalent in Enlhet so it was translated with “those that bind us” (source: Jacob Loewen in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 24ff. ) and in Noongar it is mammarapa-bakadjiny or “men of fighting” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang).