Second Book of Dominos study guide: the Testamentum Domini in Galilee.

Second Dominos quick facts

Did the eleven apostles write the Epistle of the Apostles?

The embedded Epistula begins in the collective voice of eleven apostles and then expands into dialogue with the risen Jesus. Some witnesses and editorial descriptions count twelve instead. These voices make a literary claim to apostolic authority; they do not supply a verifiable group signature. The historical author, composite editor, translators, and redactors remain unknown.^{[9][10][12][13][14][15][16]}

The anonymous writer invokes named opponents, especially Simon and Cerinthus, to mark theological boundaries. Those ancient polemics must be explained historically rather than converted into insults for present people.

When were the two layers written?

The Epistula Apostolorum is usually placed in the second half of the second century, often around 160-170, but modern scholars continue to debate its date and location. Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria have all been proposed. The Galilee preface is much later, commonly assigned to the fourth or fifth century.^{[11][12][17][18][19][20][21][22]}

A prediction measured as “one hundred fifty years” has played a role in dating debates. It is not a reliable countdown for current events. Historical dating must compare the whole textual and manuscript record.

Why is the Ge'ez witness indispensable?

The Epistula was composed in Greek, but no complete Greek copy survives. Its full text is preserved only in Ge'ez. A fragmentary Coptic papyrus and a Latin palimpsest independently control portions of the work. Modern critical study therefore compares Ethiopic, Coptic, and Latin rather than treating any one old translation as self-sufficient.^{[12][13][14][17][18]}

Darrell Hannah argues that linguistic evidence favors an early direct translation from Greek into Ge'ez over a required Arabic stage. This is a serious reconstruction, not a claim preserved in a translator's colophon.^[23][24][25]

Catalogued manuscripts in Stuttgart, Paris, and London transmit the two Dominos works in adjacent or related units, with local differences in headings and segmentation.^{[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]}

How does the sixty-two-chapter composite unfold?

The precise chapter numbers follow the received Ethiopic composite; modern presentations of the Epistula alone begin their numbering at a different point.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

What should readers notice?

Recent studies place these themes within second-century Gospel textuality, catechesis, apostolic memory, and the formation of Christian boundaries.^{[26][27][28][29][30]}

Five claims to carry forward

• Second Dominos is the received sixty-two-chapter Testamentum Domini in Galilee.
• Its chapters 1-11 and 12-62 belong to different historical layers.
• The older Epistula Apostolorum is a second-century Greek work complete only in Ge'ez.
• The eleven-apostle voice is literary attribution, not demonstrated joint authorship.
• Its resurrection hope and mission can be studied without prophecy manipulation, polemical abuse, or coercion.

How does the Epistula relate to early Gospel traditions?

The work remembers Jesus through a distinctive combination of letter, Gospel-like narrative, and revelation dialogue. Its four-Gospel language, apostolic voice, anti-docetic emphasis, and anticipation of Paul intersect with second-century debates without making it a missing fifth canonical Gospel.^{[17][18][23][26][27][28][29][30]}

The later Galilee apocalypse reframes that older material. A public guide must preserve the received composite while still naming the historical seam.

What remains uncertain?

Why is Second Dominos called a New Testament book?

The EOTC official list places it among thirty-five New Testament books. Ethiopian scholarship also distinguishes that broader enumeration from the narrower twenty-seven-book printed New Testament. Canonical status here names Ethiopian ecclesial reception; it does not mean every Christian community received the work in the same way.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

The book is neither a modern discovery nor evidence that another church secretly removed it. Its survival is a major Ethiopic contribution to early Christian textual history.

Read the apocalypse and polemic without weaponizing them.

• Preserve the later chapters 1-11 and older chapters 12-62 boundary in every historical claim.
• Do not turn “one hundred fifty years” or another passage into a modern countdown, fundraising threat, or obedience test.
• Explain Simon and Cerinthus historically; do not use ancient opponents as labels for harassing present people.
• Reject antisemitism, collective blame, coerced conversion, religious harassment, and spiritual terror.
• Reject hell-threat manipulation, retaliation, coerced confession, and suppression of questions.
• Reject ableism and never replace qualified medical or mental-health care with prophecy, ritual, or discipline.
• Reject sexual coercion, forced marriage, gendered violence, and every use of authority that returns a survivor to danger.
• Honor bodily-resurrection hope without shaming bodies, disability, grief, doubt, or mental distress.

Second Dominos frequently asked questions