“The first printed Ethiopic text (not by accident the psalter, the most commonly read Christian Ethiopic book) dates from 1513, with a second four-language edition in 1518, both edited by Potken in Rome (1513) and Cologne (1518). A few Ethiopic texts were also printed in the seventeenth century, but it was only with Hiob Ludolf (1624–1704) that text editing was carried out in such a way that it can be methodologically evaluated. Ludolf’s edition of the psalter [The present] still stands out as an advanced example of method in some respects: Ludolf based his edition on three manuscripts and the two available prints, and was well aware of questions of normalisation and standardisation. He did not hesitate to reintegrate ex nihilo missing verses or hemistichs when they were attested by the Greek and Hebrew text and missing in the Ethiopic version, where he explained their absence as due to the inaccuracy of the copyist, so that, ultimately, he fundamentally based his edition on his own iudicium (Ludolf 1701, 2v–3v).
Nonetheless, this edition of the psalter, also furnished with a commentary, is still of great importance because of the critical comparison with the Greek and Hebrew texts on which it is based. Ludolf’s works represent the high point in Ethiopian studies within the context of oriental studies in the modern age”. (Roelli, Handbook of Stemmatology)

Hiob Ludolf Hiob Ludolf (1624–1704), also known as Job Leutholf, was a German orientalist, born at Erfurt often referred to as "the most illustrious name in Ethiopic scholarship". While searching in Rome for some documents at the request of the Swedish Court, he became friends with Abba Gorgoryos, a monk from the Ethiopian province of Amhara and acquired from him an intimate knowledge of the Ethiopian language of Amhara. In 1690 he was appointed president of the Collegium Imperiale Historicum.

Darlow & Moule 3571.
Brunet IV 921.