EOTC Open Source Store

Open-access, standardized, machine-readable liturgical and prayer datasets of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC).

This repository serves as a canonical open data store for mobile developers, web apps, researchers, and content creators building modern software for the Church.

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Repository Structure

.
├── lectionary/
│   └── gitsawe/                      # መጽሐፈ ግጻዌ — The Annual Liturgical Lectionary
│       ├── months/                   # 13 month files (01-meskerem.json … 13-paguemen.json)
│       │                             # (366 days of appointed scripture readings)
│       ├── parts/                    # Non-month liturgical sections
│       │   ├── 02-movable-feasts.json # Great Fast, Pascha, and Movable Feasts (49 sections)
│       │   ├── 03-sunday-hymns.json   # Seasonal Sunday hymn sections (91 sections)
│       │   ├── 04-atnatewos.json      # Funeral & departure readings (25 sections)
│       │   └── 05-bahre-hasab.json    # Computus reference table (ባሕረ ሐሳብ)
│       ├── daily-gitsawe.json        # Compiled bundle of all 366 days keyed by dd-mm
│       ├── gitsawe-master.json       # Complete unified book (all 5 parts)
│       ├── gitsawe-structure.json    # Liturgical skeleton & page index
│       ├── SCHEMA.md                 # Lectionary JSON schema specification
│       └── README.md                 # Lectionary dataset documentation
│
└── prayers/
    └── wudasie-maryam/               # ውዳሴ ማርያም — Praises of St. Mary (Weekly Cycle)
        ├── geez/                     # Ge'ez text (01-monday.json … 07-sunday.json)
        ├── am/                       # Amharic text (01-monday.json … 07-sunday.json)
        ├── en/                       # English text (01-monday.json … 07-sunday.json)
        ├── index.json                # Language & day catalog
        └── wudasie maryam.md         # Prayer checklist & notes

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Core Datasets

1. መጽሐፈ ግጻዌ (Lectionary)

Appoints the scripture readings, psalm verses (ምስባክ), and anaphora (ቅዳሴ) for every day of the Ethiopian liturgical calendar:

• 366 Days across 13 months.
• 166 Liturgical Sections in movable feasts, seasonal Sunday hymns, and funerary lections.
• Services Covered: Matins (negh), Divine Liturgy (kidassie), and Vespers (serk).
• Liturgical Readings: Misbak chants (msbak), Gospels (gospel), Pauline epistles (pauline), Catholic epistles (catholic), Acts (acts), and Anaphoras (anaphora).

2. ውዳሴ ማርያም (Wudasie Maryam)

Daily praises of the Virgin Mary organized by day of the week (Monday through Sunday) with multilingual translations in Ge'ez, Amharic, and English.

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Design Principles & Data Standards

1. Unified Date Convention (dd-mm):
   • Dates are formatted as a single zero-padded string dd-mm (e.g. 01-01 for 1st Meskerem to 06-13 for 6th Paguemen), matching the calendar convention used in apps like Sinq.
2. Canonical Septuagint (LXX) Psalter:
   • Psalm citations follow canonical Septuagint (1–151) numbering as printed in the Ethiopic Psalter (መዝሙረ ዳዊት).
3. Array-Based Multi-Chant Support:
   • Readings that may occur multiple times within a single service (such as multiple misbaks or ዓዲ chants) are modeled as structured arrays.
4. Multilingual Architecture:
   • Text fields are structured under language keys (text: { "geez": "...", "amharic": "...", "english": "..." }) to allow community contributors to add translations without changing schema.
5. Canonical Ethiopic Punctuation:
   • Ge'ez texts use standard Ethiopic punctuation marks: word-separator colons (፡), sentence full stops (።), clause semicolons (፤), and preface colons (፦).

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Developer Quick Start

Loading Daily Readings (JavaScript / TypeScript)

import dailyGitsawe from './lectionary/gitsawe/daily-gitsawe.json';

// Query readings for Meskerem 1 (01-01)
const today = '01-01';
const readings = dailyGitsawe[today];

console.log('Commemoration:', readings.title);
console.log('Liturgy Psalm Verse:', readings.kidassie.msbak[0].text.geez);
console.log('Liturgy Gospel:', readings.kidassie.gospel[0].verse);

Loading Daily Readings (Python)

import json

with open("lectionary/gitsawe/daily-gitsawe.json", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    daily = json.load(f)

# Get today's liturgical readings (e.g. 1st Meskerem)
day = daily.get("01-01")
print(f"Title: {day['title']}")
print(f"Liturgy Misbak: {day['kidassie']['msbak'][0]['verse']}")

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Contributing

Contributions, text corrections, and additional translations (e.g., Afaan Oromoo, Tigrinya) are welcome!

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/my-feature).
3. Verify all validation suites pass (python3 lectionary/gitsawe/validate.py).
4. Submit a Pull Request.

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License

The underlying liturgical texts belong to the living heritage and tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The machine-readable transcriptions, JSON schemas, and accompanying tooling are open source under the MIT License.