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, from the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia. This book reproduces all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time, and presents 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. 316 colour illustrations.
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 the unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are explored.
Judith McKenzie was Professor of the Archaeology of Late Antique Egypt and the Holy Land at the University of Oxford. Her monographs include The Architecture of Petra (1990), The Art and Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt (2007), and Life in a Cave in Petra with the Bdoul (published posthumously in 2022). In 2012, she founded the Manar al-Athar Digital Archive (https://www.manar-al-athar.ox.ac.uk), based at the University of Oxford, where her photographs of Petra may be viewed and studied.
Francis Watson holds a Research Chair in Biblical Interpretation in the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University. His research interests are canonical and non-canonical gospels and their early reception; recent books include Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (2014) and The Fourfold Gospel (2016). He is editor of the journal New Testament Studies, and Principal Investigator on the ‘Fourfold Gospel and its Rivals’ project (2012–17).
Michael Gervers is professor of medieval history at the University of Toronto. He teaches a course on the history of Ethiopia and has recently introduced the study of Old Ethiopic (Ge‘ez) language to the curriculum. His maintains an extensive photographic repertory of Ethiopian art and culture http://ethiopia.deeds.utoronto.ca.