The Garima Gospels

The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, in the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia as well as in the Christian East. As this work shows, their artwork is closely related to Syriac, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian gospel books and to the art of late antique (Coptic) Egypt, Nubia, and Himyar (Yemen). Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of the different versions of the same material in the gospels. Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames, portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are elucidated. The Garima texts and decoration demonstrate how a distinctive Christian culture developed in Aksumite Ethiopia, while also belonging to the mainstream late antique Mediterranean world. Lavishly illustrated in colour, this volume presents all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time and extensive comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated books.

• By (author) Judith S. McKenzie
• By (author) Francis Watson
• Photographs by Michael Gervers
• Preface by Michael Gervers

"The group of early Christian illuminated manuscripts known as the Garima Gospels -- written in an old Ethiopic translation of the Bible -- are among the very earliest and most important illustrated Christian books. They have never been published in a properly illustrated edition before, nor with a sound scholarly introduction and discussion such as presented here. Judith McKenzie and Francis Watson's remarkable publication of Michael Gervers' photographs is not only the first fundamental presentation of this immensely important set of visual and textual materials, but it is also a record of the state of the manuscript at the moment of its discovery by contemporary scholarship. The volume is a landmark in early Christian studies and in late antique art history." --Jas Elsner, University of Oxford "How many movable objects have been in use ever since late Antiquity, in the same place they were produced? The battered and well-thumbed Garima Gospels may never have left the sequestered Ethiopian monastery where they still reside -- and which no woman may enter. The English artist Beatrice Playne first noticed them in 1948 (they were carried out for her to inspect). She perceptively compared them with the Syriac Rabbula Gospels of 586 in Florence. Now Judith McKenzie has taken the lead in publishing and discussing all the illustrated folios for the first time, while Francis Watson's analysis of the canon tables drives home the point that images should not be studied in isolation from the texts they adorn. This attractive and learned book will at last ignite informed debate about one of the most important manuscripts to have survived from Antiquity." --Garth Fowden, University of Cambridge "A magnificent study." --Christopher Howse, The Telegraph 10 December 2016 "We owe McKenzie, Watson, and their team a great debt for making these codices accessible to the general public. Their fine volume will hopefully serve as a stimulus for further research on ancient Ethiopia more broadly, a great crossroads of culture whose significance to world history we are only just beginning to appreciate." --Christian C. Sahner, Marginalia Review of Books "These gospels had been overlooked by scholars, who took them for medieval copies. Carbon14 analysis seems to suggest that they belong to the late fifth or sixth century. ... We are looking at a specimen of late classical art at its most hauntingly exuberant. Along with the portraits of holy figures, a set of written tables of the canon grip the eye ... in a doorway of sumptuous majesty. ... Judith McKenzie (with her colleagues) takes the reader through this scholarly feast with a sure touch and with justified enthusiasm. Here is the evidence for a spread of late classical art with deep roots in the great Hellenistic cities of the East-most notably Alexandria ... But the main excitement of this discovery is that the great gospel book may well have been produced in Ethiopia itself." --Peter Brown, New York Review of Books May 11, 2017 "The Garima Gospels will revolutionize the history of this version of the Bible, by arguing for a date as early as c.330-650 for two of the codices. [...]The meticulous scholarship in evidence throughout The Garima Gospels is worthy of the series in which it appears (Manar Al-Athar Monographs no. 3.) This lavishly illustrated volume, with its 268 colour pictures and fifty-two full-page plates, may also serve as a handsome coffee table book." --J.K. Elliott, The Times Literary Supplement June 2, 2017 "When the Roman emperor Constantius II (r.AD 337-62) wrote to the rulers of Aksum, Ezana and his brother Sazana, he asked them to send their bishop back to Alexandria to confer with its archbishop. Such evidence illustrates the interconnectedness of the late antique world (c.200-800) and also the rulers' shared devotion to Christianity, a new religion to which the leaders of both the Roman empire and the kingdom of Aksum had only recently converted. This is the international context for the production and use of the manuscripts known today as Abba Garima I, II and III, as expertly introduced by the authors of this lavishly illustrated book." --Elisabeth R. O'Connell, British Museum Magazine 89 (Winter 2017): 60.
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