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Confusion on historical information...
#1
I read that the 22 book Peshitta was handed by Keepha to Toma in Babylon.

But other historical information (e.g. Wikipedia) says (1) that only the four Gospels were circulating amongst Syriac christians, and then the other books were translated and adopted. Other information says (2) that the new testament was circulating except general epistles...that the peshitta later included the general ones (James, 1 Peter, 1 John)

I am so confused. Was there a 22 book Bible given to Mar Toma back in 1st century? And if so, any patristic writings or other evidence to support that? And is the West twisting infomration about the Aramaic NT?

(And Paul Younan, if you are reading, and happened to miss my post at technical forum, please check, for that one is for you.)
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#2
DrawCloser Wrote:And is the West twisting infomration about the Aramaic NT?
If "the west" admits that the eastern chritians had an aramaic version of not just the gospels but many epistles, at an early date, then it means people will start asking "how early?"
If the peshitta is early then it becomes reasonable to ask which came first the greek or the Aramaic.
Hardly anyone in the west studies aramaic, millions study NT greek. All the NT experts are experts in NT greek. Are they likely to be inclined to admit they have spent years studying the wrong language?
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#3
Hi forum users,

I have some questions, especially for Paul Younan

[1] Does the Church of the East tradition teach that they received only twenty-two "certified / handsigned" books from apostles and / or their associates?

[2] Is it true that the West Syriac churches only had the only 4 Gospels + Acts circulating and then got copies of the rest of the Aramaic NT from the East?

[3] Are there 'textual families' for the Peshitta text?

[4] In any given Eastern manuscript, are there any deliberate modifications?
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#4
DrawCloser Wrote:Hi forum users,

I have some questions, especially for Paul Younan

[1] Does the Church of the East tradition teach that they received only twenty-two "certified / handsigned" books from apostles and / or their associates?

[2] Is it true that the West Syriac churches only had the only 4 Gospels + Acts circulating and then got copies of the rest of the Aramaic NT from the East?

[3] Are there 'textual families' for the Peshitta text?

[4] In any given Eastern manuscript, are there any deliberate modifications?

Hi DC

1- I don't know that there ever were hand certified or signed copies of any of these books. We do know that the liturgy was set early, and that it includes readings set for specific days from these 22 books. Also we do know that the early manuscripts had only 22 books. And that patristic sources only quoted from the 22 books. It's based on these things that the church has a 22 book bible, and not so much that it has any sort of tradition on which ones were authentic or not.

2- I'm not sure of the history of the Syriac people or Church. Aside from language, it's a very different group with a very different history in a different empire.

3- There are two families, western and eastern. Scholarly consensus is that the western text has undergone revision and is less reliable then the eastern, due primarily to the geographical isolation of the eastern text.

4- I'm not aware of any deliberate modifications. There are minor scribal errors, but that's everywhere and increases with each manuscript that's copied. Depends on how many iterations a manuscript has been through. Most eastern manuscripts are two to three iterations through, so they are in very high agreement with one another.

+Shamasha Paul
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#5
Paul, number 3, I honestly messed up in that question, I wasn't thinking clearly. I already knew of Peshitta and Peshitto variations. What I should have asked, is there evidence of standardization among the Aramaic manuscripts (examples: like the Alexandrian and Western differences, but then later manuscripts more in agreement)

Last question, with the scribal errors present, is it possible to compile a critical text from Peshitta to get exactly what the original autographs had, (or is the scribal mess [unfortunately] in that bad of a situation)?
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#6
Hi DC,

DrawCloser Wrote:Paul, number 3, I honestly messed up in that question, I wasn't thinking clearly. I already knew of Peshitta and Peshitto variations. What I should have asked, is there evidence of standardization among the Aramaic manuscripts (examples: like the Alexandrian and Western differences, but then later manuscripts more in agreement)

Among the western copies (Peshitto) yes, not among the eastern copies.

DrawCloser Wrote:Last question, with the scribal errors present, is it possible to compile a critical text from Peshitta to get exactly what the original autographs had, (or is the scribal mess [unfortunately] in that bad of a situation)?

99% of the ones I've seen are simple spelling changes, word omission (error) or contractions like "isn't" instead of "is not" or "there's" instead of "there is" ... (specifically, "Bar-Nasha" (son-of-man) instead of "Breh d'Anasha" (son-of-man)). It's not a bad situation at all.

It's not often clear in the case of a contraction which reading was original. As in English, both "isn't" and "is not" are valid.

The critical text is not really going to be helpful when studying the eastern copies, because there isn't much variation to speak of (certainly none where the meaning is altered.) You can get an idea of the nature of the differences between the Khabouris text and that of the critical edition of 1905 by looking at the notes Stephen Silver had compiled on dukhrana.com.

+Shamasha
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