Somehow, Academia.edu and/or Charles Stang's publishers are allowing Invitation to Syriac Christianity on their site... the whole thing. Believe me, I am not complaining. Read it whilst you can. Michael Philip Penn is involved so you know it's good.
Presently I'm intrigued by the Teaching (or: Doctrine, maybe Didascalia) of Addai, which may be had from the public domain. After the main of it tells how Addai made Palut a presbyter, we get this appendix:
Because [Addai’s successor Aggai] died speedily and rapidly at the breaking of his legs he was unable to lay his hand upon Palut. Palut himself went to Antioch and received ordination to the priesthood from Serapion, the bishop of Antioch. Serapion himself, the bishop of Antioch, had also received ordination from Zephyrinus, the bishop of the city of Rome, from the succession of ordination to the priesthood of Simon Peter, who received it from our Lord, and who had been bishop there in Rome twenty-five years in the days of Caesar, who reigned there thirteen years.
We've met Palut, of Edessa Callirrhoë. In Ephrem's day, rival Christians were calling Ephrem a "Palutian". Ephrem wrote enough that we may assuredly talk of an Ephremian theology; Ephrem's enemies, however, did not use that term, insisting on Palut's school.
The core "Teaching of Addai" is properly Palutian. This, the coda corrects... sort of. By the coda's time, Addai remained a hero in this town. But Palut was now a problem. Palut would then have been too-associated with Ephrem, Aphrahat and other protoNestorians even quasiArians. Some would cut him from the Apostolic Succession, at least here.
This "Teaching" meanwhile was interpolated with a "protonike" legend, probably by that awful Rabbûla AD 412-36.
Proposal: As long as people were adding to the text, this coda was added as well. By association with Antioch and Rome (both!), Palut could be tarred with Diodore of Tarsus and all the dyophysite enemies of Rabbula. Not like us, my dear boy...
But to add mine own coda: if propagandic, this coda might not be a lie. The rest of this text was the lie. Here Rabbula may have insisted on the truth, or at least on some contrary lore as might be useful.
