The PeshittA has been curated and cared for by the Assyrian Church of the East since the time of the apostles. But it is not clear if the current church adopts the postion of Aramaic Primacy for the New Testament. Here is a http://www.peshitta.org/initial/peshitta.html>quote from a previous Patriarch from Paul Younan's website:
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." April 5, 1957 http://www.peshitta.org/initial/mareshai.html>Mar Eshai Shimun
Yet here is a contrasting quote from Deacon Paul Younan on the defacto http://peshitta.org/for/showthread.php?tid=2104&pid=11387#pid11387> Church of the East position:
Most people in the ACoE (clergy and laymen) I've met and spoken to are Aramaic primacists, but not all. Both Qashe I've served with at St. John (Qasha Charles Klutz, and Qasha Antwan Latchin) are Aramaic primacists. But they never mention these topics in their sermons, other than an occasional "The Aramaic text says this" kind of statement.I've found that it's usually the younger clergy here in the West, particularly those who have studied in Western institutions like the Vatican, who are Greek primacists. There is no debate on this topic within the ACoE, simply because it's not really something the Church places emphasis on. We as a body are like any other branch of the Church - primarily interested in preaching the Gospel of our Lord, ministering to the faithful and sick, and feeding the poor. The Great Commission has nothing to do with what language the scriptures were penned in, right? =) Within the ACoE, especially since after the Patriarch Mar Eshai was assassinated, there really has been no emphasis whatsoever on this topic. Personally I have never heard anything from the pulpit, in a sermon, epistle or any other communication about it.
Paul Younan met with Mar Awa Royel (now Patriarch) about a plan to http://peshitta.org/for/showthread.php?tid=2829&pid=15919#pid15919>support the Peshitta translation when he was bishop in Chicago on 06-09-2012:
It went great, thanks for asking. I spent 2 hours with His Grace Mar Awa, along with two other bishops (the newly ordained bishop for Chicago/Eastern US, His Grace Mar Paulus, and also His Grace Mar Narsai of Tehran, Iran.) We spoke at length about the project and the next steps. In the short term, we are interviewing people with various abilities who would like to participate in some capacity.There will be three main teams: (a) the collators/proofreaders of the primary Aramaic text, (b) the translators and (c) the English editors. Longer term, after the teams are set, we will be producing an English-only translation with study notes and CoE-specific patristics for reference. We may include the Aramaic or an Interlinear as an addendum or a different volume perhaps. His Grace Mar Awa's goal is to provide the English reader with a study bible akin to the Orthodox Study Bible, but of course drawn from the Aramaic sources rather than the Greek. While our initial goal is to translate the New Testament, we will in the future also work on the Old Testament from the important Peshitta translation. We hope to use the existing interlinear on this site as a basis for the ongoing work. That means there will likely be revisions and/or corrections to this interlinear as they are discovered or suggested.
Yet nothing ever came of this meeting - no resources, no involvement in the peshitta.org website, no work done. In 10 years since the spin-off of http://peshitta.org from http://www.atour.com/forums/peshitta, no other deacon, priest or bishop as far as we know contributed any work to peshitta.org: 2,089 Members, 3,338 threads, 18,670 posts on the sacred scripture of the ACOE and not one post from any ACoE clergy other than Paul. We find that odd. So over 2 weeks ago we emailed 4 bishops of the ACoE across 4 continents asking them 4 questions:
- Does the *ACoE currently hold the position of the primacy of the PeshittA in Aramaic over the Greek Textus Receptus?
- Exactly what version does the *ACoE advise to your parishioners who want to read the New Testament in modern Syriac?
- Exactly what version does the *ACoE advise to your parishioners who want to read the New Testament in English?
We feel that there are currently two good translation efforts of the PeshittA into English - https://www.peshitta.org (RIP) and the https://theholyaramaicscriptures.com/ - Is the *ACoE actively supporting either of the current translation efforts that we feel are good?
To date, none of the bishops have even replied.
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