[Got a rant or confession to get off your chest? Submit it to “I, Anonymous” here.—eds]
I bought a book last week. A translation of the Ethiopian canon. Eighty-one books. The one the West decided was too big. I wanted to see what they left out. I found Enoch. The whole book. Jude quotes it in the New Testament. Angels fell. They taught humans weapons and sorcery and cosmetics. I was never told there was a whole book of that. I found Jubilees. Twenty-two works of creation. Twenty-two generations. A calendar of forty-nine-year cycles. I was never told the Bible had a calendar. I found a line about the serpent being sent to India. Not a metaphor. A place. I was never told that either. I sat there with this book. And I thought: who decided what to keep? Not God. Just people. People who did not like Enoch because it made angels look bad. People who did not like Jubilees because the numbers did not match. Why did Ethiopia keep them? Because Ethiopia was never colonized. Italy tried in 1896. Ethiopia won. No one came to burn their manuscripts. So the books survived. Not because they were hidden. Because the country was never conquered. I am not saying this canon is the “real” Bible. I am saying: someone edited yours. And Ethiopia kept the receipts. Now I have both on my nightstand. The one they gave me. And the one they could not burn.—Anonymous