A: Great question. And you’re right — there’s a lot of confusing information floating around online about this.

Let’s untangle a few things clearly from a Catholic standpoint.

First: when people say “the Ethiopian Bible is the oldest Bible,” that’s usually overstated. What is true is that the Ethiopian (more precisely, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church) has one of the oldest continuous Christian traditions in the world. Christianity reached Ethiopia very early (Acts 8 — the story of the Ethiopian eunuch), and they developed somewhat independently from the Latin West.

But keep in mind that “oldest tradition” does not automatically mean “most complete canon.”

Now, about the canon.

The Catholic Church recognizes 73 books in the Bible. The Old Testament includes the Deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1-2 Maccabees, plus additions to Daniel and Esther). Protestants removed those during the Reformation, which is why they accuse us of having “extra books.” Historically speaking, they removed books that had been in the Christian canon for over 1,000 years.

The Ethiopian Orthodox canon includes those Deuterocanonical books — but it also includes several additional texts, such as: 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 1-3 Meqabyan (different from Maccabees) and a few others.

So your question is exactly right: if we defend the Deuterocanon against Protestants, how do we respond to Ethiopia’s additional books?

Here’s the key principle: The canon of Scripture is not determined by age, isolation or local tradition. It is determined by the authority of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit.

From a Catholic perspective, the canon was definitively articulated in regional councils like Rome (382), Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and later dogmatically reaffirmed at the Council of Trent (1546). Those councils did not include the additional Ethiopian books.

So no — Catholics did not “remove” books that were universally accepted. Rather, different local churches historically used certain texts devotionally or liturgically without those texts ever being recognized as universally canonical by the whole Church.

This is actually an important apologetic point: without a teaching authority (magisterium), you cannot definitively settle the canon. The reason Protestants and Ethiopian Orthodox have different canons is precisely because there is no shared, binding authority to decide the matter universally.

As Catholics, we would say:

•  The Deuterocanonical books are inspired and belong in Scripture.

•  The additional Ethiopian books may be spiritually valuable and historically interesting.

•  But they are not part of the canon as definitively recognized by the universal Church.

And this isn’t about the Roman Empire. Ethiopia was indeed geographically and politically distinct. But apostolic authority and doctrinal unity were not dependent on being inside the Roman Empire. The canon question was resolved in communion with the broader Church.

So to your final underlying question: No, we don’t say the Ethiopian Church is maliciously wrong. We simply say that the fullness of doctrinal authority subsists in the Catholic Church, and the canon entrusted to her is the definitive one.