Novum Testamentum Aethiopice: Die Katholischen Briefe.

• Author: Dombrowski, Franz Amadeus

This volume (hereafter, KathBr) was published posthumously for its author, Josef Hofmann, by Siegbert Uhlig. In the course of his work on the traditions of the Ethiopic versions of the New Testament (see the items listed on p. 20), Hofmann, in the latter years of his life, had concentrated more and more on the so-called "Catholic Epistles." Notwithstanding his frailty, he had been able to procure from major European libraries for his perusal fifteen Ethiopian manuscripts and several others in Arabic. Uhlig, who took charge in 1987 on Ernst Hammerschmidt's suggestion, "dass die Arbeit moglichst bald zum Druck gebracht werden sollte, dass abet auch.... neue Erkenntnisse, besonders durch Veranderungen im Bestand der verfugbaren Handschriften, eingearbeitet werden mussten" (p. 9), added what had been gained from the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana of Milan and the Ethiopian Microfilm Library, altogether approximately one-third of the materials (pp. 9-10). Due to the additions and the necessity of adjustments and alterations, Uhlig became chiefly responsible for the completion of Hofmann's book and its editorial work (p. 12).

Hofmann had aimed to investigate the variations of the Ethiopian texts from the Greek original to find out whether the Ethiopian translation had used a Greek Vorlage or was rendered from a translation thereof in another language, i.e., a Syrian, Coptic, or Arabic text. Uhlig continued in this vein and discussed this matter in part one of his Einleitung to the annotated Ethiopian text, taking into consideration the possibility of either a direct Greek Vorlage or one in a Syrian or Coptic medium in the Bohairic or Sa??idic dialects. Uhlig concluded that the Ethiopic version represents a rendition from a Greek text. He then asks where the Greek Vorlage came from, Alexandria or Antiochia (pp. 29-49). He opts for Alexandria (pp. 41-49).

In part two of his introduction (pp. 49-91), Uhlig turns to the method of the translator(s) and the results. He feels that the rendition is, on the one hand, clumsy, slavishly following its Vorlage, and is, on the other, often too liberal, lacking precision and clarity, and is even mistaken or misleading, or omits words or passages of the text. Some of the shortcomings he traces to later copyists. Uhlig notes revisions of the Ethiopian version to be dated to the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.(1) He attributes this revision to the desire to improve the Ethiopian text by drawing on the materials...