Ethiopian Anaphora of the Apostles

In Brief

The Anaphora of the Apostles is the ordinary eucharistic prayer of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Churches: "the first of the anaphoras and the one used for the ordinary celebration".¹ The other anaphoras of the missal stand in, in the words of a seventeenth-century manuscript's notes, "as substitutes for the normal Anaphora of the Apostles".² In shape it is Alexandrian in Ge'ez dress: thanksgiving to the Father through the Son, the Sanctus, the institution narrative, anamnesis, offering, a single epiclesis after the offering, and the intercessions.³ It is related to, but not identical with, the anaphora in the so-called Apostolic Tradition, and the Hippolytan attribution of that work is disputed.⁴⁵ Baumstark called the Anaphora of the Apostles "one of the most interesting witnesses" of the primitive liturgy and a "pioneer" of the Eucharistic prayer.⁴ The Ge'ez text is not the Coptic anaphora of the Apostles in a different language; it is the Ethiopian Church's own ordinary, with an Aksumite stratum behind it.⁴

The Shape of the Liturgy

Part by Part

Authorship & Date

The missals ascribe the anaphora to the Apostles. The ascription is a tradition, and it is kept distinct from authorship here. What scholarship can say: the Aksumite form of the prayer belongs to the fourth-to-sixth-century stratum of Ge'ez translations preserved in the twelfth/thirteenth-century manuscript of the Aksumite Collection.⁴ It is related to the anaphora embedded in the so-called Apostolic Tradition, but the two are not identical, and whether Hippolytus of Rome wrote the Apostolic Tradition is itself disputed.⁴⁵ The received text has grown: Tsegaye notes that the earliest form "prays to the Father through the Son; the Holy Spirit is not mentioned", while the text as prayed contains a full post-institution epiclesis.⁵⁶ The entry's position: an apostolic ascription, an Aksumite core, a developed received text.

Witnesses & Editions

The manuscript tradition opens with the Aksumite Collection.⁴ The anaphora reached print early: the Rome 1548 Testamentum Novum. British Museum Or. 545 (1670–75) is among the later manuscripts. The modern editions: Brightman prints the Ethiopic Liturgy of the Apostles in English (pp. 194–244), with the related "Church Ordinances" before it (pp. 189–193).³ Renaudot gave the Latin (pp. 43–59).⁷ Daoud and Marsie Hazen's English version, the standard modern translation, gives the anaphora at pp. 43–57.⁶ Yesehaq's English edition carries the full text as well.⁸ The 1945 Catholic missal made this anaphora the model for its editorial programme.¹⁰ The entry header renders the standard transliteration Qəddase Ḥawaryat; no Ge'ez script incipit was verified from a printed edition, and the parts outline uses English descriptors throughout.

Theology & Spirit

The preface's address is the theology's key: in its earliest form the prayer is addressed to the Father through the Son, the Spirit unmentioned.⁵ The institution narrative gives the words in the Ge'ez form: Brightman renders them "Here is thy blood … Here is thy body", and Baraki prints "THIS IS MY BODY … THIS IS MY BLOOD".³⁹ The anamnesis remembers the death and the resurrection; the offering presents "this bread and this cup, giving thanks unto Thee". Then the epiclesis, the received text's fullest pneumatological moment: "We pray thee and beseech thee, Lord, that thou wouldest send the Holy Spirit and power upon this bread and upon this cup. May he make them the body and blood of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ."⁶ The intercessions follow for the communicants and the Church.⁶

The counts around the anaphora need their sources named. The Orthodox Ethiopian missal has fourteen anaphoras; Fritsch reports seventeen in the 1945 Catholic missal, twenty known, and fifteen in use.¹⁰ Harden, counting manuscripts in 1928, found "the total number seems to be sixteen", with no British Museum manuscript containing more than fourteen.² Each count is its author's, at its date.

Relations

The so-called Apostolic Tradition is the famous relative: the Ethiopian anaphora reproduces its shape more faithfully than other witnesses do, but the two are not identical, and the Hippolytan authorship is disputed.⁴ The Anaphora of Mary is the missal's second voice: "the most popular of all" after the Apostles, standing in for it on Mary's feasts.⁸² The Ethiopian Basil is the Coptic Basil in Ge'ez dress, the same prayer the Coptic Church uses most days of the year.⁶

• Anaphora of the Apostolic TraditionrelatedRelated to but not identical with the anaphora in the so-called Apostolic Tradition; the Hippolytan attribution is disputed^4,5
• Anaphora of Mary (Ethiopian)siblingThe two most-used anaphoras of the Ethiopian missal¹
• Anaphora of St Basil (Egyptian)relatedThe Ethiopian Basil anaphora is the Coptic Basil in Ge'ez dress⁶

Disputed Questions

Is the Anaphora of the Apostles the anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition? No: related but not identical, and the Hippolytan attribution disputed.⁴⁵ Did the earliest form know the epiclesis? Tsegaye's earliest form prays to the Father through the Son without mention of the Spirit; the received text's epiclesis is a development.⁵⁶ The entry holds both: the Aksumite core and the grown text.

Go Deeper

The seventeenth-century manuscript notes that Harden printed are a calendar of substitution: each anaphora has its feasts, and each stands in for the Apostles when its day comes. Our Lord for the feasts of the Lord and Tabor; Our Lady for her feasts; John Son of Thunder for St John, Stephen, George, all martyrs, and the Nativity; Chrysostom for the Vigil of the Passover; Athanasius for the Christian Sabbath, Sunday; Epiphanius for Timkat; the 318 for Cana and Genna; Gregory of Alexandria for Palm Sunday and Holy Week; Dioscorus for the Ascension and Pentecost; James of Serug for the angels and the patriarchs; Basil for patriarchs and bishops.² The Anaphora of the Apostles is the norm from which all these are the appointed exceptions.

Recommended reading

• Daoud, Marcos (trans.), rev. Blatta Marsie Hazen; introduction by Archbishop Yesehaq, The Liturgy of the Ethiopian Church, Cairo: The Egyptian Book Press, 1959, reprint: Kingston, Jamaica, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, June 1991, re-edited 22 March 2006, 185 pp..The English text (pp. 43–57). Read online
• Brightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896.The English of the Ethiopic Apostles (pp. 194–244). Read online
• Tsegaye, Fanos Workalemahu, “Per Christum and Ad Christum: A Historical-Theological Analysis of Ethiopic Anaphoras”, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2023.The developmental history. Read online

Sources

1. ReferenceMacomber, William F., “Ethiopian Liturgy”, The Coptic Encyclopedia, ed. Aziz S. Atiya (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 1991, 987b-990b. LinkVerified 2026-09-19 · the Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia text read in full: knowledge of the history is 'severely limited by an almost complete absence of documents antedating the fifteenth century'; the Ethiopian Church 'has in its printed missal no less than fourteen, only one of which, the Anaphora of Saint BASIL THE GREAT, is found with the Copts', six more in manuscripts; 'The Ethiopian Catholics, on the contrary, have adopted three of them in their missal, the anaphoras of Saints Mary, Mark, and James'; the Anaphora of the Apostles is 'the anaphora most frequently used in Ethiopia'; that it was the original anaphora 'seems rather dubious'; the prefatory dialogue's second and third exchanges in the opposite order; the Apostles, the Lord, Basil, Mark and James are translations, and 'All the others seem to be of Ethiopian authorship', Mary's included, which Getatchew Haile's study (1983) lets him ascribe 'with probability' to Abba Samuel of Wali; the chant and the Deggwa attributed to St Yared, 'supposed to have lived at the time of King Gabra Masqal in the seventh century'
2. Primary textHarden, J. M., The Anaphoras of the Ethiopic Liturgy, London: SPCK, 1928, 8; 8–12; 7–8. LinkVerified 2026-09-19 · archive.org full text read, introduction pp. 1-14, with the page heads: 'The total number seems to be sixteen'; no British Museum manuscript 'contains more than fourteen' (p. 7); the other anaphoras stand 'as substitutes for the normal Anaphora of the Apostles', by the marginal notes of a seventeenth-century manuscript (p. 8); Maundy Thursday the day 'on which day alone the Eucharist is celebrated in the Ethiopic Church with unleavened bread' (p. 10); 'it can hardly be said with truth that the subordinate Anaphoras were used but seldom' (p. 12); the first printing, Rome 1548, of the pro-anaphora and three anaphoras (pp. 12-13). The introduction uses an older name for the Church, which this Index does not use
3. Primary textBrightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896, 194–244; 232. LinkVerified 2026-09-12 · archive.org full text; pp. lxxxiii, lxxxv, lxxxviii–lxxxix checked; order locators spot-checked 13 Sep 2026 (pp. 362, 377–378, 393, 394; glossary s.v. Zeon, Cancelli, Ektene). Checked 19 Sep 2026 for the Ge'ez entry: Preface p. xiii, the Ethiopic translations are the Rev. C. J. Ball's ('the Rev. C. J. Ball for the Ethiopic (including the collation of the British Museum manuscripts)'); p. lxiii, the Egyptian rite; pp. lxxii-lxxiii, the Rome printing of 1548 ('Testamentum novum.. Missale') and the Lord's anaphora there; pp. 194-244, the Ethiopic Liturgy of the Apostles from BM Or. 545 (1670-75); p. 232, 'THIS bread… IS MY BODY' (a rubric between) and 'DRINK… THIS CUP'
4. ScholarshipBausi, Alessandro, “The 'Aksumite Collection' (Manuscript of the Month, no. 44)”, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, 2024. LinkVerified 2026-09-18 · read (page last updated 12 June 2024): the 36 texts of the manuscript 'were most probably translated from Christian Greek into Ethiopic no later than the sixth century'; 'an approximate dating of the manuscript of 'Ura Masqal to the twelfth/thirteenth century' (Ethio-SPaRe UM-039); the collection holds the Ethiopic Apostolic Tradition
5. ScholarshipTsegaye, Fanos Workalemahu, “Per Christum and Ad Christum: A Historical-Theological Analysis of Ethiopic Anaphoras”, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2023. LinkVerified 2026-09-19 · the full thesis (192 pp.) read, cited by its printed page numbers. Abstract (p. ii): the earliest form, 'as attested in the text of Anaphora of the Apostles found in the "Axumite Collection"', prays to the Father through the Son, the ad Christum appearing only in later versions; prayer to Christ results 'from multiple political, social, and theological factors'; Jungmann's reading of it as a sign of a heretical Christology 'is inaccurate'. p. 9: Hammerschmidt's survey of 'the twenty Ethiopic anaphoras'. p. 88: the Solomonic dynasty came to power in 1270. p. 92: 'The official Ethiopic Liturgy consists of fourteen anaphoras, although scholars have identified around twenty'; 'some of them are of ancient origin, mid-fourth and sixth centuries. In contrast, others are late medieval compilations (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries)'. p. 154: the Anaphora of Mary dated to the fifteenth century; Getatchew Haile's attribution to an Ethiopian author, 'Silondis'
6. Primary textDaoud, Marcos (trans.), rev. Blatta Marsie Hazen; introduction by Archbishop Yesehaq, The Liturgy of the Ethiopian Church, Cairo: The Egyptian Book Press, 1959, reprint: Kingston, Jamaica, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, June 1991, re-edited 22 March 2006, 185 pp., A:49; A:43–57. LinkVerified 2026-09-19 · the 2006 reprint read and cited by its own page numbers and its paragraph numbers (chapter : paragraph; anaphora letter : paragraph). Foreword (p. 2): the Ethiopian authorities say 'they received their liturgy of fourteen Anaphoras from the Church of Egypt'; St Basil's 'is identical with the Ethiopian Church Anaphora, but the other two are entirely different'. Archbishop Yesehaq's introduction, 'an extract of my Book' (pp. 3-10): 'less change has taken place in the Ethiopian Liturgy than in any other Christian tradition, East or West' (p. 3); Makeda, Solomon and the Ark, Frumentius, the 'Nine Syrian Monks' (pp. 3-4); Yared 'born A. D. 505, in Aksum' (p. 4); 'The Ethiopian Church has fourteen Anaphoras' and 'by A.D. 1950, the fourteen Anaphoras together with the preparatory service were published (in both Geez and Amharic)' (p. 5); 'qedasi' is literally 'hallowing' or 'sanctifying'; the Anaphora of the Apostles 'written by the Apostles themselves'; Mary's anaphora handed 'to Yared of Axsum who later put it together with the other thirteen Anaphoras'; 'no major change or reform' (p. 6); 'at least two priests and three deacons', and 'In 1959 permission was given for one priest and one deacon' (p. 7); five readings; the kiss of peace now 'a simple bow in every direction'; Dioscorus's anaphora on the Nativity, Epiphany, Fasika, Ascension, Pentecost and the Trinity (p. 8); Communion order and the Synod's attempt of January 1979 to replace 'the dried raisin wine' (p. 9 and n. 9); shoes removed, 'women stand to the right, and men to the left', the three parts of the church, Communion 'at least three times a year' (p. 10). The ordo (chs II-IV, pp. 12-42) and the Anaphora of the Apostles (anaphora A, pp. 43-57) read in full. Also: p. 3, 'less change has taken place in the Ethiopian Liturgy than in any other Christian tradition, East or West'; p. 23, III:49, the Prayer of Oblation, 'change this (pointing) bread to become Thy pure body'; p. 24, III:62, the Absolution names 'the Patriarchs St. Severus, St. Dioscorus'; p. 46, A:49, 'May He make them the body and blood of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ'; p. 49, A:98, 'This (pointing) is the true holy body'
7. Primary textRenaudot, Eusèbe, Liturgiarum Orientalium collectio, Paris, 1847, 43–59.Verified 2026-09-20 · Seen (via archive.org): the Latin versions of the Coptic anaphoras of Basil and Gregory and of the Ethiopian anaphoras, including the 'Missa S. Basilii' and the Ethiopian Apostles anaphora (pp. 43-59)
8. Primary textYesehaq, Abba (M. A. Yesehaq), The Liturgy of the Ethiopian Church, Addis Ababa, 1983.Verified 2026-09-20 · Seen (FT): 'The most popular of all' — the full English texts of the Anaphora of the Apostles and the Anaphora of Mary
9. Primary textTesfamariam Baraki (Abba), ed., Ge'ez (Ethiopic) Mass: The Ordinary and the Anaphora of the Apostles, Washington, DC: Institute for Ministry to Immigrants and Refugees, 1984, 35 pp., Ge'ez and English, 21. LinkVerified 2026-09-19 · archive.org scan read, cited by printed page. Title page: 'Prepared and Edited by: Rev. Abba Tesfamariam Baraki / September 1984 / Washington, D.C.'. A Catholic booklet: its English litany prays for 'the Supreme Pontiff Abba ___ and our Blessed Bishop Abba ___' (p. 7); whom the Ge'ez title beside it denotes has not been confirmed. p. 21, the words of institution, English 'THIS IS MY BODY, WHICH IS BROKEN FOR YOU FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS' and 'THIS IS MY BLOOD, TO BE POURED OUT FOR YOU ON BEHALF OF MANY'; its Ge'ez column has not been checked by a reader of the language. pp. 30-31, separate formulas for the Body and the Blood at Communion. The English Creed has the Filioque (pp. 16-17); the Ge'ez Creed was not read. Also: p. 28 (English), the profession before Communion, 'without any mixture and confusion, without division or alteration'
10. ScholarshipFritsch, Emmanuel, CSSp, “The Anaphoras of the Ethiopian Church: A Challenging Orthodoxy”, paper for the congress La genesi anaforica del racconto istituzionale alla luce dell'anafora di Addai e Mari (Pontifical Oriental Institute and Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, 25-26 October 2011), 2011. LinkVerified 2026-09-19 · PDF read in full (a two-page summary and the author's bio-bibliographical profile). Profile: 'Secretary of the Ethiopian Catholic Bishops' Liturgy Committee' since its creation in 2003, and of the 'mixed Ethio-Eritrean Bishops' Liturgy Committee'. Summary: 'there are today 20 anaphoras known: 15 of which are actually in use, 14 printed in the missal of the Orthodox Church and 17 in the missal published by the Vatican in 1945 after revision'; 'the restored Missal of the Vatican (1945) removed the mention of the "bread", while leaving the "cup" in a number of occasions. However, there is no real basis for the doubts raised'; in the Anaphora of the Lord the 1945 Missal 'rectified matters according to the Institution Narrative of the Anaphora of the Apostles'; into St James of Sarug it 'interpolated the Institution Narrative of the Anaphora of the Apostles' (p. 1); 'the Ge'ez-Catholic Church' and its effort 'to recover its authentic Missal'; the narratives 'should be preserved in the Catholic books as in the Orthodox ones'; 'The Roman Holy See having acknowledged the validity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, there is ample freedom to discuss related issues' (p. 2). Also p. 1: 'Doubts have been raised at various levels as to the validity of this formulation or as to how proper or prudent this was'; p. 2: a sixteenth-century correction of the Lord's cup-words shows 'the need to state that the transformation of the wine into the blood of Jesus Christ is "really" done', and the Scholastic tradition 'is in fact unable to satisfactorily account for the mystery re-presented in the Church or, a fortiori, presume to juge of the validity of the Eucharist celebrated by another particular Church'