Remarks on the Test of the Falasha ‘Death if Moses’

Extract

Professor E. ULLENDORFF is entitled to the grateful appreciation of all students of Ethiopic letters for having published anew the Falasha story of the ‘Death of Moses’. The first edition published by the late Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch in 1906 has, indeed, become very rare. Moreover, his editio princeps was based on a single manuscript, while Ullendorff's recension is the result of a painstaking comparison of Faitlovitch's text with a manuscript extant inthe National Library of Addis Ababa. Some variants of this manuscript were already knownfrom the notes appended to Professor Wolf Leslau's translation of the ‘Death of Moses’ in his Falasha anthology, New Haven, 1951. Now we have them all before us in the apparatus criticus of Ullendorff's edition. The collation of the Addis Ababa manuscript has yielded an improved text. Itso happens, however, that this is not yet the last stage in the research on this interesting opuscle.