Earliest Illustrated Bible Found In Ethiopian Orthodox Monastery

A page from the Garima GospelsThe Orthodox blog Byztex recently posted a UK-based Daily Mail article reporting an amazing discovery. The preservationists of the Ethiopian Heritage Fund have located the earliest known illustrated Bible at the remote Ethiopian Orthodox Garima Monastery, near Adwa in the northern Tigray region at 7,000 feet above sea level. The Garima Gospels are named after a fifth century monk and have survived virtually intact, despite enemy invasions and a fire in the 1930's, thanks to the diligence of the Orthodox monks.

Explains the Daily Mail article, "They were written on goat skin in the early Ethiopian language of Ge'ez.

 There are two volumes which date from the same time, but the second is written in a different hand from the first. Both contain illustrations and the four Gospels.

 Though the texts had been mentioned by the occasional traveller since the 1950s, it had been thought they dated from the 11th century at the earliest."

Read the complete story here.