So I'm putting together a thread of observations from our reading of 'The Tradition of the Syrian Church of Antioch,' part by part, so that we can keep track roughly and have a public record.
Firstly, this first tradition shows that there is no potestas/authoritas distinction in the syriac references. Uh oh. 
Second. We see here this 'godlike' power/authority or shultono is gifted to Peter specifically as 'head of the disciples'. We have to see what this means by further context later in the book.
Third. Tradition + footnotes. What's taught here is in common with our EO and OO brothers, this demonstrates the petrine primacy with an emphasis on each of the other apostles being a 'talio' or 'young male child' (max age 12) and Peter being an elder.
Fourth. This is the end of ch 1. Here we see demonstrated the greatness of the Syriac language in understanding scripture, as a semitic language. Only the Syriac fathers note this 'men, women and children' meaning, which means 'all of, whole of them', which appears in the OT.
First part of ch 2, the 'only foundation stone'. This serves as a refutation of the protestant idea of each apostle as foundation stone. The first traditions are all taken from the Syriac liturgies. The last here is from a Church of the East synod.
Note that the CotE synod states explicitly that this refers to Peter *alone*, not the other apostles.
Second. This is a tradition from Mar James of Serugh. Note the beauty of the play on words where 'palace' and 'daughter' are similar words, and the Church is described as essentially both a palace *and* a daughter. Note also that Peter is the security-assurance/rumiono of Her.
That's it for last sunday. I'll return to this next week. I hope this interests more people in joining up with our readings.
