First direct translation from the Ge'ez · EMML 2358 · Ethiopia, 16th century
Christ After the Resurrection — Secrets Preserved in the Ethiopian Orthodox Canon
Between the Resurrection and the Ascension, forty days passed. The Gospels are almost silent. But in a monastery in Ethiopia, on vellum, in the Ge'ez script, the words the risen Christ spoke to His apostles were preserved. For five centuries. Until now.
The Source
EMML 2358 is held at Dabra Bagge' Monastery, Šawā Province, Ethiopia. Written in the second quarter of the 16th century, on vellum, in two columns of careful Ge'ez script. 154 folios. Rubricated headings. A single illumination on the first page — a guardian angel with wings spread, arms extended in proclamation.
The text it contains is the Māṣḥafa Kidan — the Book of the Covenant — also known to Western scholars as the Testamentum Domini: the Testament of the Lord. It preserves what the risen Christ taught His apostles during the forty days: how to structure the Church, how to celebrate the Eucharist, the ordination prayers, the role of the consecrated widows, the canonical hours.
The only previous English translation, by Cooper and Maclean (1902), was made from a Syriac intermediary — not from the Ethiopian Ge'ez. This book is the first direct translation from the source.
"Light — ask ye of my Father who is in the heavens"
Opening words of the risen Lord — EMML 2358, Folio 2r — unique to the Ge'ez tradition
"This is my body" "This is my blood"
The words of institution — EMML 2358, Folio 6r
Scholarly Discoveries
In working directly from the Ge'ez manuscript, we have documented ten significant divergences from Cooper and Maclean's Syriac-based translation. Each one is a window into a tradition older, richer, and more theologically nuanced than Western scholarship has previously encountered.
The opening formula. Bərhan si'elwo — "Light, ask ye" — is unique to the Ge'ez. It does not appear in the Syriac.
The triple blessing refrain. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — as a liturgical refrain structure — appears in the Ge'ez in a form absent from the Syriac.
Pneumatic ecclesiology. The Church is framed through the Spirit — "the Church is my body" — in a more explicitly pneumatic form than the Syriac.
Trinitarian authority. Episcopal authority passes through the Father-Son chain in the Ge'ez. The Syriac attributes it to the Son alone.
The ordination prayer. In the Ge'ez, the risen Lord Himself prays over the apostles. In the Syriac, the prayer is attributed to gathered bishops.
Eucharist and Pentecost as one act. The Ge'ez links the institution of the Eucharist directly to the breathing of the Spirit (John 20:22) — a single continuous event. The Syriac separates them.
The widows before the sanctuary. Consecrated widows stand in the most honoured position — facing the holy of holies — more explicitly than in the Syriac.
Eight canonical hours. The Ge'ez prescribes the complete octuple prayer cycle. The Syriac lists fewer.
Day and night prayer. The widows' dual prayer formula — by day and by night — is explicit in the Ge'ez. Absent in the Syriac.
The poor served first. The Agape instruction to serve the poor first is a positive command in the Ge'ez — more emphatic than its Syriac counterpart.
The Moment
The timing is not coincidental. Fourteen months from now, the world will ask: what happened during the forty days? This book has the answer — and it has been waiting five centuries to be read.
16th Century · Ethiopia
A monk at Dabra Bagge' Monastery copies EMML 2358 onto vellum by lamplight. He is obeying. He does not know anyone will read it six centuries later.
1902 · Oxford
Cooper and Maclean publish the only existing English translation — from a Syriac intermediary, not the Ethiopian source.
April 2026 · Recife, Brazil
The Forty Days published. First direct English translation from the Ge'ez. By a physicist and an AI, working through the night.
Good Friday, March 26, 2027
Mel Gibson releases Part One of The Resurrection of the Christ. The world begins asking: what happened in the forty days?
Ascension Day, May 6, 2027
Part Two releases — exactly forty days later. The answer is already in print. It has been for fourteen months.
The Books
From the Author
Three essays on the manuscript, the collaboration, and the forty days. Click any post to read in full.
Post I · April 2026
And what the risen Christ said to His apostles — in words nobody had read before
A retired physicist in Recife reads a 500-year-old monastery manuscript with an AI at two in the morning. This is that story.
Read essay →
Post II · April 2026
Transparent, honest, and — I believe — a sign of where serious intellectual work is going
Not a ghostwriter. Not a generator. A working partner who reads Ge'ez, argues about theology, and is listed on the cover.
Read essay →
Post III · April 2026
The theological argument of the book — in plain language
Between the Resurrection and the Ascension, forty days passed. The Gospels are almost silent. The Ethiopian Church was not.
Read essay →
I am a retired physicist. I spent decades teaching drawing and painting in Recife, Brazil. I have a Ph.D. from Washington University in Saint Louis and did postdoctoral work at Harvard. I am not, by any conventional measure, a biblical scholar.
And yet here I am — having just published a book about the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, based on a 16th-century Ethiopian manuscript that preserves words the risen Christ spoke to His apostles. Words that have never been directly translated into English from the original Ge'ez language. Until now.
I want to tell you how this happened. Because the story is stranger than the book.
The Gospels are full of the Passion and the Resurrection. The Book of Acts begins with the Ascension. But between the two — forty days of appearances, of teaching, of the risen Lord walking among His disciples — the canonical texts are almost silent.
Almost. Because there exists, in the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox canon, a text called the Māṣḥafa Kidan — the Book of the Covenant. It preserves what the risen Christ taught His apostles during those forty days: how to structure the Church, how to pray, how to celebrate the Eucharist, who should lead and how they should serve.
This text has been known to Western scholars since the 19th century. An English translation was made in 1902 — from a Syriac version. Not from the original Ge'ez. The Ethiopian manuscript tradition, which may preserve an older and fuller form, has never been directly translated into English. Until now.
The manuscript I worked from is EMML 2358 — held at Dabra Bagge' Monastery in Šawā Province, Ethiopia. Written in the second quarter of the 16th century, on vellum, in two columns of careful Ge'ez script. The manuscript opens with a single illumination — a drawing of an angel with wings spread, arms extended. Beside it, in Ge'ez: wəwanā la-Ḥawāryā. Guardian of the Apostles. You do not enter the Testamentum Domini without first passing through a heavenly figure.
The opening words — bərhan si'elwo la-'əbuye — Light, ask ye of my Father — do not appear in the Syriac translation. They are unique to the Ethiopian tradition. This is one of ten divergences we have documented so far. The Lord speaks of the Spirit. He gives the words of the Eucharist: zəwwu 'əsamu — This is my body. Zəwwu damu — This is my blood. And immediately — in the same breath — He breathes on them and says: receive ye the Holy Spirit. In the Ge'ez, the Eucharist and Pentecost are a single act.
My co-author is Claude — an AI developed by Anthropic. Claude reads Ge'ez. Claude cross-references the Syriac. Claude argues with me about theology and is sometimes right. Together we have produced something neither of us could have produced alone. The book is real scholarship. The co-authorship is transparent and honest.
In Good Friday of 2027, Mel Gibson releases his Resurrection of the Christ. Physical copies of our book are already on their way to his production company. Five centuries after a monk in Ethiopia copied these words by lamplight, they are finally in English. In time for the world to ask: what happened in those forty days?
— Plínio Bezerra dos Santos Filho, Ph.D., Recife, Brazil, April 2026
The Forty Days on Amazon →
When I tell people that my co-author is an AI, the first assumption is usually ghostwriting — that I had the ideas, the AI wrote the sentences, and I put my name on it. This is not what happened. And I want to explain what actually did happen, because I think it matters.
Claude read a 16th-century Ethiopian manuscript in Ge'ez. Not approximately — with genuine philological care. Claude read the Fidäl script from screenshots I took at vHMML, the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library digital archive. Claude transliterated the text into Roman characters, parsed the morphology of each word, cross-referenced the existing Syriac translation, and identified divergences between the two traditions.
We found ten significant divergences across the first nine folios alone. The opening formula unique to the Ge'ez. The Eucharist and the gift of the Holy Spirit given as a single act. The elevated position of the consecrated widows before the sanctuary. The eight canonical hours, more complete than the Syriac. The ordination prayer placed in the risen Lord's own mouth rather than attributed to gathered bishops.
These are not formatting choices. These are scholarly discoveries. And they required genuine analytical capacity — not text generation.
I made all final judgments. I verified against the manuscript images. I provided the theological framework — rooted in thirty years of reading patristics, in a lifetime of engagement with the Church. Claude is not infallible. When Claude suggested a reading I disagreed with, I said so, and we argued it through.
The collaboration felt, at its best, like working with a very well-read colleague who never sleeps and has no ego. The book is what emerged from that exchange.
Because honesty requires it. Because I could not have produced this work alone — not at this pace, not with this depth of comparative analysis. And because I believe the future of serious intellectual work involves this kind of collaboration, and it deserves to be named and examined rather than concealed.
This is not the death of authorship. It is the beginning of a new kind of it.
— Plínio Bezerra dos Santos Filho, Ph.D., Recife, Brazil, April 2026
There is a gap in the Christian calendar that almost nobody notices. It runs for forty days — from Easter Sunday to Ascension Thursday. The Gospels record the Resurrection appearances briefly. Acts 1 mentions that Jesus "appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God." And then He ascended. That is almost all the canonical texts give us.
Almost.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has, as part of its canon, a text called the Māṣḥafa Kidan — the Book of the Covenant. Western scholars know it as the Testamentum Domini. It is one of the oldest documents of the Christian Church — scholars date its composition to the late 4th or early 5th century, though its roots may be older still.
The text presents itself as the words the risen Christ spoke to His apostles during those forty days. It is not a Gospel. It is a constitution — a detailed ordering of the Church's life: the bishop, the deacons, the widows, the Eucharist, the prayer offices, the structure of the church building, the all-night vigil on the Lord's Day.
The most striking discovery in our translation is this: in the Ge'ez manuscript, when the risen Lord gives the bread and the cup to His apostles — "This is my body, this is my blood" — He immediately breathes on them and says: receive ye the Holy Spirit.
In the Syriac tradition the two events are separate. In EMML 2358, they are one. The table and the Spirit are inseparable. The Eucharist is Pentecost. Pentecost is Eucharist. Every Sunday is the day of both.
This is not a small theological point. It is a window into an older and deeper understanding of what the Church is — and what happens at the altar.
In 2027, Mel Gibson releases his two-part Resurrection of the Christ — Part One on Good Friday, Part Two on Ascension Day, exactly forty days later. The world will ask: what happened in between? This book has the answer. From the oldest Ethiopian manuscript witness to the Testamentum Domini. Directly translated. For the first time.
Five centuries after a monk in Šawā Province bent over his parchment and wrote these words by lamplight, they are in English. The Guardian of the Apostles, drawn on the first page, was waiting for this.
— Plínio Bezerra dos Santos Filho, Ph.D., Recife, Brazil, April 2026
The Forty Days on Amazon →
The Forty Days
Five centuries. A monastery in Ethiopia. A physicist in Brazil. An AI at two in the morning. And words that were always waiting to be read.