Ancient South Semitic language of the Ethiopian church: its liturgy, its enlarged biblical canon, and its manuscript tradition.
Ge'ez carries one of the world's great Christian literatures: the fullest biblical canon in Christendom, royal chronicles, and centuries of commentary. Spoken no longer, it is still the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches, and its script writes Amharic and Tigrinya today.
Prayers & Creeds in Its Traditions
- Jesus Prayer Orthodox — A short, repeated invocation of Jesus asking for mercy, central to the Orthodox hesychast tradition.
- Trisagion Prayers Orthodox — The opening prayers of Orthodox services and prayer rules, built around the thrice-holy hymn 'Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.'
Translation Traditions
- The Ancient Church Translations: Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic — The early versions of the daughter churches, which preserved texts lost elsewhere and made the Bible a literature in five more tongues.
Learning and Reference Resources
- Ethiopian manuscript collections (see the Libraries page) Free / open access
Provenance
Classification follows Ethnologue and standard Semitic linguistics; identifiers verified at build time.