Background
The ERC-funded BeInf project represents a systematic response to a long-standing debate in the field of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies on so-called Syriac influences on Ethiopic Christianity. This debate has its origins with two prominent Italian scholars from several generations ago: I. Guidi and especially C. Conti Rossini argued that Syriac Christians exerted a great deal of influence on Ethiopic Christianity during Late Antiquity as foreign missionaries, who fled the Chalcedonian Empire for Ethiopia, where, among other things, they introduced monasticism, translated the Bible into Ethiopic, and more broadly brought about a “second-christianisation” of Ethiopia. The association of these alleged foreign missionaries with Syriac-speaking areas was based on a series of arguments, all of which have been challenged in subsequent scholarship. While some scholars have been persuaded by these challenges, others have continued to maintain the traditional view that Syriac Christians played a significant role in the development of Christianity in Ethiopia and Eritrea during Late Antiquity. The BeInf project provides a new analysis of the question of alleged Syriac influences on Ethiopic Christianity that seeks to establish the type and extent of contact and connection between the two. In responding to this question, BeInf aims to develop a methodological and theoretical framework that moves beyond influence as an analytical category for interrogating the connected histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity.
Select Bibliography
For a readable but now dated overview, see:
Some of the major works on the topic are as follows:
Brita, A. 2010. I racconti tradizionali sulla seconda cristianizzazione dell’Etiopia. Il ciclo agiografico dei Nove Santi (Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”).
Butts, A. M. 2020. “From Syriac to Arabic to Ethiopic: Loci of Change in Transmission,” in R. B. Finazzi, F. Forte, C. Milani, and M. Moriggi (eds.), Circolazione di testi e superamento delle barriere linguistiche e culturali nelle tradizioni orientali (Orientalia Ambrosiana 7; Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana – Centro Ambrosiano), 21–57.
Heide, M. 2015. “Zur Vorlage und Bedeutung der äthiopischen Bibelübersetzung,” in M. Sigismund, M. Karrer, and U. Schmid (eds.), Studien zum Text der Apokalypse (Berlin: de Gruyter), 289–313.
Marrassini, P. 1990. “Some Considerations on the Problem of the ‘Syriac Influences’ on Aksumite Ethiopia,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 23: 35–46.
Marrassini, P. 1999. “Ancora sul problema degli influssi siriaci in età aksumita,” in L. Cagni (ed.), Biblica et semitica. Studi in memoria di Francesco Vattioni (Naples: Istituto universitario orientale), 325–337. (ET in Bausi 2012, no. 13)
Polotsky, H. J. 1964. “Aramaic, Syriac, and Geˁez,” JSS 9: 1–10. (reprinted in Bausi 2012, no. 11)
Witakowski, W. 1989–1990. “Syrian Influences in Ethiopian Culture,” Orientalia Suecana 38–39: 191–202. (reprinted in Bausi 2012, no. 12)
Several articles are helpfully reprinted in the following volume:
Bausi, A. 2012. Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Ethiopian (Surrey: Ashgate).
For the origins of the debate, see:
Conti Rossini, C. 1928. Storia d’Etiopia (Bergamo: Instituto Italiano D’Arti Grafiche), 155–165.
Guidi, I. 1888. Le traduzioni degli Evangeli in arabo e in etiopico (Rome: R. Accademia dei Lincei), 33–34 with fn. 1.
Guidi, I. 1932. Storia della letteratura etiopica (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente). 13–15.