About the Geʽez Bible reader
This site lets you read the Geʽez Bible — the scripture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church — directly in your browser, with a literal English translation beside it. The text is transcribed from the original manuscripts, it is free to read and to copy, and it grows as the work proceeds. This page explains where the text comes from, how it is made, and how you can help make it better.
The manuscripts & sources
Every reading is taken from real manuscripts and public-domain scholarly editions you can see for yourself — nothing is invented, and nothing is copied from a copyrighted modern translation:
- Cambridge University Library — MS Add. 1570, a Geʽez manuscript of the Octateuch and the books of Samuel and Kings, read from the library’s high-resolution images.
- Patrologia Orientalis and other printed critical editions of the Geʽez text.
- The Geʽez Psalter in its traditional form — 151 psalms, following the ancient Septuagint numbering rather than the later Western one.
- Public-domain Geʽez editions of the apocryphal and deuterocanonical books.
Where a book survives in more than one manuscript, readings are compared witness by witness. The full source list for any book is on the progress page.
How it is made — The Method, in Full
Method matters with scripture, so here is exactly how the text is produced:
- Read from the images with AI assistance. The Geʽez is read off the high-resolution manuscript and printed-edition images with the help of Claude (Anthropic’s AI), then re-read and compared — so a letter misread in one pass is caught against another. (The AI helps read the old script; it does not invent the text.)
- Collated against a second witness where one exists. Where a book survives in more than one manuscript — as Samuel and Kings do — the witnesses are set side by side and compared, so the reading rests on more than a single copy.
- Calibrated, not harmonized. Readings are weighed against the scribe’s own habits and against the language itself before they are settled. The aim is to read what the manuscript actually says — real differences between witnesses, or between a manuscript and a printed edition, are kept and flagged, never quietly “corrected” toward a more familiar version.
- Reviewed, and corrected by readers. The result is checked, and every correction a reader sends (below) is reviewed and folded in.
The English on the facing side is produced the same careful way — a literal back-translation of the Geʽez as it actually reads, made and then checked again: a reading aid to help you follow the Geʽez, never a polished translation and never a replacement for the original. Verse numbers follow the Geʽez tradition, which sometimes differs from the divisions you may know.
In plain terms: this is an ongoing transcription made with the careful help of modern tools and open to correction — not a peer-reviewed critical edition. Reader corrections (below) are reviewed and folded in continually.
What you can read now
The reader only ever shows what has actually been transcribed — a book is clickable only where real text exists. Right now you can read, in Geʽez and English side by side:
- The Psalms — all 151, complete.
- 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel — complete.
- 1 Kings — the chapters transcribed so far.
More books are being transcribed, and the Amharic Bible follows after. Each time a chapter is finished it simply appears here — watch it fill in on the progress page.
Send a correction
If you read Geʽez or Amharic and you see a misread letter, a wrong word, or anything that should be corrected, please say so. This text is for the Church and for anyone who wants to read it, and it gets better every time someone who knows the language points something out.
Write to gringo.boggy@yhwhyaway.com with the book, chapter, and verse, and what it should say. Every correction is read, and credited sources are kept.
Free, and free to share
The text here is free to read and to copy — here is why this site lets you copy-paste. For the wider canon, see the 81 books of the Ethiopian Bible.