Thorough investigations in recent decades have brought to light a relatively large number of
ancient manuscripts of the various books of the Old and New Testaments from different parts of
Ethiopia. This has led to a renewed interest in up-to-date critical editions of all the books
of the Ethiopic Bible. For the Book of Jeremiah however there has never been a critical
edition. This collection of seven essays marks the beginning of a new endeavour to fill this
gap. Stefan Weninger introduces the reader medias in res providing a condensed overview of the
history of Ethiopic Jeremiah scholarship. Martin Heide's essay is a sample edition of the Book
of Jeremiah based on nearly sixty manuscripts. The data that became available through collation
allow to classify the manuscripts and provide first insights into the textual history of the
Jeremiah Cycle. Michael Knibb invites the reader to review his experience with the critical
edition of the Book of Ezekiel. Furthermore another essay by him deals with the very
intriguing manuscript Leiden Or. 14.692 being probably the earliest Ethiopic manuscript of
Ezekiel. Steve Delamarter and Garry Jost introduce the reader to the digital methodology of the
Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament project which they apply to a sample chapter of
Jeremiah coming to a similar conclusion - from a different perspective - as Martin Heide.
Alessandro Bausi addresses important methodological questions that is the status of a
reconstruction or whether critical editions of Ethiopic texts should be written in normalized
orthography. Finally Siegfried Kreuzer introduces the reader to an up-to-date view of the
textual history of the Septuagint. This enables (and challenges) scholars dealing with textual
criticism of Ethiopic Old Testament books to carefully consider the question of the Greek
Vorlage.
