Case Studies

The ERC-funded BeInf project adopts a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together methods that are traditionally categorized as distinct and disconnected, including especially art history, linguistics, manuscript studies, philology, textual studies, and history. This multi-disciplinary approach is implemented through a series of five discrete, but complementary case studies addressing: 1. Aramaic loanwords in Ethiopic; 2. the so-called Nagran Episode, in which the sixth-century Aksumite ruler Kaleb intervened on behalf of Syriac Christians who were being persecuted in the Arabian peninsula; 3. the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels, including especially their illumination programs; 4. the hagiography of the Nine Saints, who are alleged to have brought about a “second christianisation” of Ethiopia in the late fifth and early sixth centuries; 5. the Ethiopic reception of Syriac literature. Through these case studies, BeInf advocates for a re-alignment of the field of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies that breaks down artificial discipline boundaries of old while also rethinking what Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies might look like if it aimed to make more probing and meaningful connections to other disciplines and fields, from the history of the Pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula to wholistic approaches to manuscripts, from Comparative Semitics and contact linguistics to a more-expansive vision for a field of Eastern Christianity.