The Ethiopic Manuscripts and Textual Criticism: The Case of Enzira Sebhat

Authors

  • Tesfu Asmare Molla Department of Ge„ez Language and Literature, Wollo University, Dessie-Ethiopia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20372/ajbs.2022.7.2.704

Abstract

This paper examines relevance of textual criticism in the reconstruction of Ethiopic manuscripts. Textual criticism also called the stemmatic method or Lachmann‟s method is convenient to build the stemma codicum that help to show the geneological line of the surviving Mss based on their shared errors. In fact, most of the Mss at hand are copies of copies which became far several phases to the original one. Thus, the method would help to reconstruct the lost (the original) ms as close as possible to its original form. For this task, the ancient hymnological text called the Enzira Sebḥat (E.S) is employed. E.S is a beautiful and imaginative poetic presentation and was composed based on the whole series of Ge'ez alphabets including labiovelars graphemes, and is a unique type of Ethiopian patristic work from the 14 th cent. For the Editorial task, six different version of the E.S which are collected from different sources are used. Among the whole witnesses of the E.S, several kinds of errors (shared innovations), archetype and sub-archetype errors are found that help to identify the family of the Mss. The evaluation of the shared errors helps to understand their genetic relationship, and therefore a stemma was established which is branched into two sub archetypes, a bipartite one. Finally, the study remarked that the Lachmann‟s reconstruction method would save editors to be free from a subjective emendation of the extant manuscripts.

Keywords:

manuscript, errors, emendation, textual criticism, stemma, archetype

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Published

2022-12-31

How to Cite

Molla, T. A. . (2022). The Ethiopic Manuscripts and Textual Criticism: The Case of Enzira Sebhat. Abyssinia Journal of Business and Social Sciences, 7(2), 43–51. https://doi.org/10.20372/ajbs.2022.7.2.704

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Section

Original Research Articles