IN SEARCH OF TATIAN'S DIATESSARON IN THE WEST

Abstract

Tatian's Diatessaron2 belongs to the most important texts of early Christian literature. As a Gospel Harmony from the second half of the second century it is a crucial witness to the history of the (fourfold) Gospel canon. As a compilation of early gospel texts it may well offer deep insights into the early transmission of the gospels. And as the product of a somewhat unorthodox Christian thinker, it might reveal the fingerprints of his theological mindset. However, high-reaching expectations are unwarranted, because the Diatessaron is lost. No copy of the original composition has been handed down to us. We do not even know the original language of the Diatessaron. On the other hand, some more-or-less distant echoes of this document have been preserved, especially in Syriac and Arabic. The most notable of these is a commentary on the Diatessaron by the Syrian church father Ephraem (d. 373 CE), as well as an Arabic version of the Diatessaron, perhaps as old as the eleventh century.3 This is not surprising given the well-known importance of the Diatessaron in the Syrian Churches and the dependence of large parts of Arabic-speaking Christianity on Syrian Christianity. As late as the fifth century Tatian's work was still in reverential use in Syriac-speaking parishes, as can be gathered from Theodoret of Cyrrhus' famous report that he himself ordered more than two hundred copies of the Diatessaron found in churches in his diocese