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Back Breaker
#2
Shlama,

Now what's my point to citing that source?

My point is that the Gospels (handpicked at Nicea) were not double-checked by the Disciples of Jesus.

My point is that the Peshitta, like the Greek, was developed under its own little Council of Ephesus. It was most likely edited to fit the Church's formulations (Peshitta supports Qnoma while Greek supports Persons). A good example would be Peshitto or Old Scratch. Please, take a pick. Also, it is nice to mention that the oldest exisiting Peshitta comes down to us from that late period. Fishy.

"This represents for the New Testament an accomodation of the canon of the Syrians with that of the Greeks. Third Corinthians was rejected, and, in addition to the fourteen Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews, following Philemon), three longer Catholic Epistles (James, 1 Peter, and 1 John) were included. The four shorter Catholic Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude) and the Apocalypse are absent from the Peshitta Syriac version, and thus the Syriac canon of the New Testament contained but twenty-two writings. For a large part of the Syrian Church this constituted the closing of the canon, for after the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) the East Syrians separated themselves as Nestorians from the Great Church.Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development, Op.Cit, pp. 227-228.)"

The Patriarch said that "with reference to....the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision."

However, scholars say:

"The original copies of the NT books have, of course, long since disappeared. This fact should not cause surprise. In the first place, they were written on papyrus, a very fragile and persihable material. In the second place, and probably of even more importance, the original copies of the NT books were not looked upon as scripture by those of the early Christian communitiesGeorge Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, 1962 (1996 Print), Abingdon Press, Nashville, pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT).""

The Church of the East is not the only Church that claims to be founded by Apostles. Consider also the Ethiopic Church and the Coptic Church (both having different canons).

"The Ethiopic church has the largest Bible of all, and distinguishes different canons, the "narrower" and the "broader," according to the extent of the New Testament. The Ethiopic Old Testament comprises the books of the Hebrew Bible as well as all of the deuterocanonical books listed above, along with Jubilees, I Enoch, and Joseph ben Gorion's (Josippon's) medieval history of the Jews and other nations. The New Testament in what is referred to as the "broader" canon is made up of thirty-five books, joining to the usual twenty-seven books eight additional texts, namely four sections of church order from a compilation called Sinodos, two sections from the Ethiopic Book of the Covenant, Ethiopic Clement, and Ethiopic Didascalia. When the "narrower" New Testament canon is followed, it is made up of only the familiar twenty-seven books, but then the Old Testament books are divided differently so that they make up 54 books instead of 46. In both the narrower and broader canon, the total number of books comes to 81. Metzger, Oxford Companion To The Bible, Op.Cit, p. 79.."

....and the Coptic Church

"Athanasius issued his Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle not only in the Greek but also in Coptic, in a slightly different form - though the list of the twenty seven books of the New Testament is the same in both languages. How far, however the list remained authoritative for the Copts is problematical. The Coptic (Bohairic) translation of the collection knowns as the Eighty-Five Apostlic Canons concludes with a different sequence of the books of the New Testament and is enlarged by the addition of two others: the four Gospels; the Acts of the Apostles; the fourteen Epistles of Paul (not mentioned individually); two Epistles of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; the Apocalypse of John; the two Epistles of Clement.Bruce M Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development, 1997, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 225."

So did the Apostles sent out to different lands sanction different books or did the Churches sanction them to color their own shade of theology?

Ah yes---

"Many thousands of these different readings are variants in orthography or grammar or style and however effect upon the meaning of the text. But there are many thousands which have a definite effect upon the meaning of the text. It is true that not one of these variant readings affects the substance of Christian dogma. It is equally true that many of them do have theological significance and were introduced into the text intentionally. It may not, e.g., affect the substance of Christian dogma to accept the reading "Jacob the father of Joseph, and Joseph (to whom the virgin Mary was betrothed) the father of Jesus who is called 'Christ'" (Matt. 1:16), as does the Sinaitic Syriac; but it gives rise to a theological problem.

It has been said that the great majority of the variant readings in the text of the NT arose before the books of the NT were canonized and that after those books were canonized, they were very carefully copied because they were scripture. This, however, is far from being the case.

It is true, of course, that many variants arose in the very earliest period. There is no reason to suppose, e.g., that the first person who ever made a copy of the autograph of thc Gospel of Luke did not change his copy to conform to the particular tradition with which he was familiar. But he was under no compulsion to do so. Once the Gospel of Luke had become scripture, however, the picture was changed completely. Then the copyist was under compulsion to change his copy, to correct it. Because it was scripture, it had to be right. George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, 1962 (1996 Print), Abingdon Press, Nashville, pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT)."

Damn, I'm good.
???Do not give up, for that is ignorance and not according to the rules of this art... Like the lover, you cannot hope to achieve success without infinite perseverance.???
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Messages In This Thread
Back Breaker - by bar_khela - 11-02-2004, 11:08 PM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-03-2004, 05:44 PM
[No subject] - by ograabe - 11-03-2004, 11:58 PM
Early mss of Peshitta - by gbausc - 11-04-2004, 04:03 PM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 11-04-2004, 08:27 PM
Re: Early mss of Peshitta - by bar_khela - 11-04-2004, 09:16 PM
Re: Early mss of Peshitta - by Paul Younan - 11-04-2004, 09:44 PM
The Figure-Four - by bar_khela - 11-04-2004, 11:50 PM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 11-05-2004, 12:05 AM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-05-2004, 02:43 AM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 11-05-2004, 04:34 AM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-09-2004, 12:30 AM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-10-2004, 12:07 AM
Koran Contradiction? - by Keith - 11-10-2004, 03:46 AM
[No subject] - by metal1633 - 11-10-2004, 04:13 AM
[No subject] - by peshitta_enthusiast - 11-10-2004, 05:15 AM
[No subject] - by peshitta_enthusiast - 11-10-2004, 05:18 AM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 11-10-2004, 03:57 PM
Plucking feathers - by bar_khela - 11-10-2004, 07:53 PM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-11-2004, 03:20 PM
Deathblow - by bar_khela - 11-11-2004, 04:35 PM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-11-2004, 07:17 PM
Re: Deathblow - by Keith - 11-12-2004, 02:17 AM
Re: Deathblow - by bar_khela - 11-16-2004, 01:16 AM
[No subject] - by Keith - 11-16-2004, 04:45 AM
[No subject] - by bar_khela - 11-16-2004, 08:27 PM
[No subject] - by Keith - 11-16-2004, 10:59 PM

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