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At a glance
- Traditional author
- Apostolic Sinodos tradition
- Traditional date
- Early church canons preserved in Ethiopic Sinodos corpus
- Traditional audience
- EOTC broader NT (official item 31)
Listed in: Ethiopian 81.
Meaning of Abtilis
Sinodos book Abtilis in the EOTC broader New Testament.
Traditional understanding
The fourth of the four Sinodos books in the Ethiopian Orthodox New Testament (Abtelis): the apostolic canons handed down through Clement.
Historical context
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo broader canon (46 OT + 35 NT) as published at ethiopianorthodox.org.
Setting of the writing
Apostolic church-order tradition in Ethiopic reception.
Literary shape
Church-order or historical book in the EOTC broader-canon enumeration, received as Scripture in that list rather than in the Western 66.
Themes
- apostolic canons
- church order
Abtilis chapter by chapter
Abtilis
Abtilis 1 — Abtelis
Abtelis, eighty-one canons, is the fullest Ethiopic redaction of the Statutes of the Apostles, close to the later liturgical and hierarchical material of Apostolic Constitutions book eight and related Arabic and Coptic lines. It treats ordination, the offering, initiation, and the complete ministry of the church, and in some witnesses ends by listing sacred books. Manuscripts of Sinodos often carry still more, but this is the last of the four parts counted as apostolic Scripture.
Meaning: Abtelis closes the fourfold Sinodos by gathering a whole church’s public work under apostolic title. Liturgy, office, and even the bounds of the canon are treated as one inheritance the Ethiopian church is to keep.