Bible translations into Amharic

[1] In the opinion of Edward Ullendorff, "The hisouis Asselin de Cherville, possessed a manuscript containing a complete translation of the Bible into Amharic, created by the mutual efforts of the Consul and Abu Rumi."

As Ullendorff relates, for ten years "every Tuesday and Saturday his de Cherville's door was shut to all visitors when he read with 'my Abyssinian, slowly and with the utmost attention, every verse of the Sacred Volume, in the Arabic Version which we were able to translate.'

"[2] Where the Arabic words were "abstruse, difficult, or foreign", de Cherville then consulted "the Hebrew Original, the Syriac Version, or the Septuagint" for clarification.

William Jowett purchased de Cherville's manuscript, consisting of 9,539 pages written in "the fine hand" of Abu Rumi for £1,250, which he then presented for review to Professor Samuel Lee, and the final manuscript was printed by Thomas Pell Platt[3] in increasing portions: the four Gospels in 1824, the entire New Testament in 1829, and the complete Bible in 1840.

[4][5] A new translation was underway, under the Emperor Haile Selassie I's patronage, when the Italian army invaded.

These versions contain only the 66 books of the Protestant canon, and they have not been widely embraced by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

It was warmly welcomed by the Orthodox, but not by Protestants, both sides misunderstanding some points of history and the Biblical canon.