Edward Ullendorff

Ethiopia and the Bible

Traditionally Ethiopia has formed a bridge between civilizations, with Jerusalem as vital as Aksum in the national consciousness of the Ethiopians. In this volume, Professor Ullendorff investigates the relationship of Ethiopia to the Bible. He considers the historical background, translations of the Bible into Ethiopian languages, and the impact of the Old Testament, which goes beyond anything experienced in the other Oriental Christian Churches. The book concludes with an examination of the story of the Queen of Sheba, based on the Biblical account of the queens visit to King Solomon. It shows how this account has undergone extensive Arabian, Ethiopian, Jewish and other elaborations, to become the subject of one of the most ubiquitous and fertile cycles of legends in the Near East.

The Bawdy Bible

Although the Hebrew Bible is a literary document of relatively limited size, containing only a certain segment of what must have been a considerable body of literature, there is little doubt that even those remnants which have come down to us include some areas of the vocabulary of lewdness which have not always been recognized, either intentionally or unintentionally. While I do not hold the view that the Old Testament is either exclusively or even primarily a ‘religious’ text, it is unquestionably true that the criteria of admission into the canon were governed by considerations not entirely divorced from the element of likely divine approval. Yet even within those books of the Hebrew Bible whose orthodox propriety was never in any doubt there are embedded thoughts as well as expressions that fall within the field and broad range of the present paper. And this is, a fortiori , the case with regard to those compositions which had to struggle hard to gain admission into the canon of the Old Testament.

The 'Death of Moses' in the Literature of the Falashas

For a long time now the Falashas have, with questionable justification, been dubbed the ‘Jews of Abyssinia’. A good deal of legendary information about the Falashas appears already in such medieval writings as Sefer Eldad and in an account given by Benjamin of Tudela who gathered some news on the Falashas while on his way from the Yemen to Egypt. The great seventeenth-century scholar Job Ludolf included some notes and questions in his monumental work on Ethiopian history—based, to a large extent, on information supplied by Abba Gregory who thought that the Falashas dialecto Talmudica corrupta inter se utuntur (no doubt a reference to their Agaw vernacular which Gregory did not understand). Thus misled, Ludolf is understandably curious to know quando vel qua occasione Judaei isti primum in Aethiopiam venerint? Karraeorumne vel aliorum Judaeorum sectae sint addicti? James Bruce of Kinnaird provides a fairly detailed, though not necessarily accurate, picture of Falasha life which became the stimulus of subsequent interest in this peculiar form of ‘Judaism’.

The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia and their Contribution to General Semitic Studies

I Propose to examine in this short paper, in the very limited time at my disposal, some of the ways in which a study of the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, ancient as well as modern, can and should be of use to our understanding of general Semitic linguistic phenomena and to a clearer appreciation of inter-Semitic relationships. At present we shall be concerned with the aid extended by Ethiopics to other languages rather than with the Ethiopian tongues at the receiving end, so to speak; with their active rather than their passive capacity, though I should not wish to pretend that it is always possible, or even desirable, to disentangle the two. In a minority of cases only can we detect a direct ‘influence’ of Ethiopic on other Semitic languages, i.e. impact at a time when these tongues were already fully differentiated from each other. Generally, the value of Ethiopian languages lies in their having preserved a feature lost elsewhere, or a root that has otherwise disappeared, or in revealing a parallel that may be significant to an assessment of general Semitic affinities.

Semitic studies in honour of Edward Ullendorff

This is a Festschrift volume for the British Semitist Edward Ullendorff. It contains papers written by leading scholars in the fields of Semitic philology and Near Eastern history and literature. The contributions are wide-ranging, including linguistic studies of Ethiopian Semitic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic and Greek, also papers on ancient Near Eastern, biblical, Islamic and Ethiopian history and papers on Amharic and Modern Hebrew literature.

Two Ethiopic dirges on the deaths of Queen Anne (1714) and Queen Mary (1694)

In the summer of 1994 I received two communications from Mr Brad Sabin Hill, head of the Hebrew Section of the British Library. The first letter enclosed a copy of a Carmen Aethiopicum sive ‘әṭana mogar whose most remarkable feature is that it is printed in Hebrew characters (“ob defectum Typorum, Literis Hebraicis expressum”). This composition of eleven lines forms part of a volume entitled Carmina Funebria & Triutnphalia Mis Serenissimam ac Desideratissimam Reginam Annam Deflet , Cantabrigiae MDCCXIV.

An Ethiopic Inscription in Westminster Abbey

Early in the spring of 1990, Professor Josef van Ess of T?bingen University came to visit me at my home at Oxford. In the course of conversation he asked me about an Ethiopie memorial tablet he had seen in Westminster Abbey. To my chagrin I had to own that the existence of such an inscription was quite unknown to me. In the hope of removing (or at least of mitigating) this stain o? inexcusable ignorance, I hastened to the Abbey the following week - only to find it closed to visitors on account of a broadcast recording performance. I then wrote to the Assistant Librarian of Westminster Abbey (Mrs Enid Nixon) who proved to be immensely helpful and knowledgeable and was kind enough to answer my queries and to provide me with precious information.21 have since been able to inspect the monument in situ. The entire monument, in two parts, is situated in the south aisle of the nave and is the work of the sculptor William Stanton (1639-1705) whose name appears just below the tablet (cf. Rupert Gunniss Dictionary of British Sculptors, p. 368.) It was erected at the behest and commission of Sir Samuel Morland in memory of his second and third wives,

Fils d'Abraham. Les Falashas@@@The Two Zions. Reminiscences of Jerusalem and Ethiopia

Part 1 The first Zion: Jerusalem the university of Jerusalem Hebrew and its revival return to Jerusalem. Part 2 The second Zion: from Jerusalem to Eritrea Eritrea under British military administration back to Ethiopa Emperor Haile Sellassie. Epilogue. Index.

George Steiner's after Babel

In coming to talk about George Steiners extraordinary tour de force , a work that was clearly designed to be a masterpiece and so narrowly and peculiarly falls short of that aim, I feel rather like an inverted Balaam, for unlike Balaam I came to bless and not to curse, to appreciate and not to disparage. And now I stand here, not without awe before so monumental an achievement, yet full of doubts, questions, uncertainty, even some distrust.

Queen Victoria's phonograph message to the Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia

In BSOAS , xxxii, 2, 1969, my friend and colleague, Dr. Abraham Demoz of the Haile Sellassie I University, Addis Ababa, published the Amharic text of a phonograph message which the Emperor Menelik II (1889–1913) and the Empress Taitu sent to Queen Victoria.