The Catholic Epistles

[gbausc]

Shlama John,

The Eastern Church has a 22 book NT: Matthew through Hebrews. The five books not included are : 2 Peter,2John,3 John, Jude, Revelation.
All the Peshitta mss. exclude these books, going back to the fifth century.
There are other Aramaic mss. with the Catholic epistles and Revelation: Palestinian Syriac, Harklean Syriac, Philoxenian Syriac. Some believe the Palestinian may preserve the original Aramaic form of these epistles.

My account of the Peshitta is that it was a very early settled canon of the NT, before all the later epistles were written. It is testament (no pun intended) to the fact that the Peshitta is an early first century NT canon and probably
the original text thereof.

If it were a translation, probably all 27 books would have been translated, not just 22. 27 had been circulated by the end of the first century.

None of the 5 epistles purports to be written by any extra writers than those of the other books; none shows any signs of being unauthentic or discrepant from the others of the same purported authors.

The Eastern Church claims to have held the 22 book canon for 20 centuries. I believe the evidence we have compiled here on the web site strongly supports that claim, and the claim that they received those books from the apostles themselves in their present form.

I also believe the the 5 other books are inspired scripture, and that they have been preserved also in Aramaic. The major argument against that position is an argument from silence. Non - inclusion of a text is no real evidence that that text is not scripture , nor even that it was not considered scripture by the earliest Christians. It is simply testimony to the likelihood that the Eastern Church settled its canon early and perserved it intact to safeguard it from corruption, which corruption descended quickly enough upon the Greek mss. from the first century on.

Paul Younan is a member of The Church of The East. He holds a slightly different position, which I respect.
It certainly is a fascinating study. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.

Many blessings,


Dave