He also says that the Apocalypse of
John is much doubted by the Orientals. In the third list _i.e._, books of
no authority added by some (quidam) to the canonical, are put Wisdom and
Canticles.(339) The catalogue is confused, and erroneous at least in one
respect, that Jerome is referred to, as sanctioning the division given of
the Old Testament books; for neither he nor the Jews agree with it.
The canon of the Abyssinian church seems to have had at first all the
books in the Septuagint, canonical and apocryphal together, little
distinction being made between them. Along with the contents of the Greek
Bible there were Enoch, 4 Esdras, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Jubilees,
Asseneth, &c. That of the New Testament agrees with the present Greek one.
At a later period in the Arabic age a list was made and constituted the
legal one for the use of the church, having been derived from the Jacobite
canons of the apostles. This gives, in the Old Testament, the Pentateuch,
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Judith, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah,
Esther, Tobit, two books of Maccabees, Job, Psalms, five books of Solomon,
minor and greater prophets. The Wisdom of Sirach (for teaching children)
and the book of Joseph ben Gorion, _i.e._, that of the Maccabees, are
external. The New Testament has four gospels, Acts, seven apostolic
epistles, fourteen of Paul, and the Revelation of John. Later catalogues
vary much, and are often enlarged with the book of Enoch, 4 Esdras, the
Apocalypse of Isaiah, &c. The canon of the Ethiopic church was
fluctuating.(340)
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