The Origin of the Western Five

[Paul Younan]

I have the greatest respect for Paul Younan and also for his belief in The 22 book Peshitta, which I also share. He allows that some or all of the Western 5 may be authentic writings of the Apostles, as I understand what he has written in the past.

Akhay,

The CoE takes no official position on any of the "western five." They simply never made it into the canon of our scripture.

Believe me, we are strongly encouraged to read these books for our personal edification. Many sermons are based on things within these books. Even our modern printed versions of the Peshitta in Swadaya script contain these five books, from the 1891 Mosul text.

The only thing is, they are not part of the "Khudra", which is the liturgical cycle of readings throughout the year.

They could have been written by the Apostles, they could have been written in Aramaic. We simply don't know as we didn't have any copies of them until very late, and those copies came to us from the western provinces with clear oral and written tradition of having been translated from Greek.

Now before that, maybe there were Aramaic originals. I can tell you that if they had reached us in the first century of the Church's founding, they would have had no problem in accepting them - but they came much later, so they played it safe.

We call these "Pious Books", which is a step below scripture in our tradition, but above Patristics, Liturgical works and Hymnals. We are strongly encouraged to work them into our personal faith and walk with God.

Hope that clears our position a little bit.