The Ethiopic Liturgy: Its Sources, Development, and Present Form

Samuel A. B. Mercer

Translated by Samuel A. B. Mercer

12 chapters · about 6 h

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The opening

LECTURE I INTRODUCTION, AND THE BACKGROUND OF THE CHRISTIAN LITURGY

INTRODUCTION, AND THE BACKGROUND OF THE CHRISTIAN LITURGY

1. INTRODUCTION

We may feel safe in saying that no movement known to humanity has been so persistently studied and so fully discussed as Christianity. Its birth in Palestine, and its spread to the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, to Central and Northern Europe, to Russia and to the Americas, have formed, during the past nineteen centuries, the study of many of the best minds, and have been the subject of myriads of volumes. Not only have the history and teaching of Christianity been carefully investigated and recorded, but also its methods and forms of worship, both public and private. There is one, and only one portion of the Christian Church which affords an exception to all this, one national Church about whose origin the world knows little, and about. whose development, teaching, and forms of worship, it knows even less, and that is the national Church of the African kingdom of Abyssinia, better known as the Ethiopic Church.

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About this edition

The words
Samuel A. B. Mercer's English translation, copied word for word.
Left out
  • Page numbers and running heads from the printed pages, in 8 places
  • Library marks, a presentation stamp and specks on the scanned copy's covers and fly-leaves (13 blocks)
  • Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 4 places
  • Series half-title (The Hale Lectures, Western Theological Seminary) and half-title (2 blocks)
  • The scanning library's notice (Internet Archive, Princeton Theological Seminary Library) (2 blocks)
  • The title page and opening pages before chapter 1, in 2 places
  • Copyright notice
  • Specks on a blank page (2 blocks)
  • The printed table of contents (the app makes its own)
  • Specks on the blank page after the part title (6 blocks)
  • Specks on the blank page after the Greek text (2 blocks)
  • End leaves and the library's date-due slip (6 blocks)
  • Line numbers printed in the margin of the text (386 blocks)
  • Speck or mark read as letters by the OCR (not text) (38 blocks)
  • Speck or mark read as letters by the OCR (not text), in the footnote zone
  • Accents of the Greek read as a separate block of marks by the OCR (7 blocks)