Tatian's Diatessaron Research Articles

Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception by James W. Barker (review)

Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception by James W. Barker (review)

Zacchaeus and the Unripe Figs: A New Argument for the Original Language of Tatian's Diatessaron

Did Tatian write his gospel in Greek or Syriac? Treatments of this most beleaguered crux in Diatessaronic studies have largely depended on a now defunct approach to the source material. The ‘New Perspective’ on Tatian's Diatessaron wants for a new study of this old question. A problematic arrangement of textual data at Luke 19.4 offers unrecognised evidence that Tatian composed in Greek – namely, contradictory testimonia to the Syriac word for Zacchaeus’ ‘sycamore’ in Tatian's gospel reflect different etymological translations of a distinctive, Greek textual variant.

The Narrative Chronology of Tatian's Diatessaron

The Synoptics narrate a single Passover during Jesus’ ministry, whereas John's Gospel spans three Passovers. The Diatessaron harmonised the Four Gospels, but previous scholarship has misapprehended Tatian's chronology of Jesus’ ministry. The Diatessaron included all the Johannine festivals, but Tatian rearranged the order of events. Distinctively resolving a significant disagreement between John and the Synoptics, Tatian innovated a narrative sequence wherein Jesus’ temple disruption occurs at the second of three Passovers.

The Diatessaron, Canonical or Non-canonical? Rereading the Dura Fragment

Among those texts that vied for a position as authoritative Scripture, but were eventually rejected by ecclesiastical authorities, was the so-called Diatessaron of Tatian. Having been compiled from the four canonical gospels, Tatian's work occupies a liminal position between the categories of ‘canonical’ and ‘apocryphal’, since the majority of its content was common to users of the fourfold gospel, though this content existed in a radically altered form and was tainted by association with an author widely accused of heresy. In order to demonstrate the originality of Tatian's gospel composition, this article gives a close reading of the only surviving Greek witness to it, a fragment of parchment found in excavations at Dura-Europos. Dura's very location as a borderland between Rome and Persia corresponds with the fact that in this outpost garrison city Christians were using a gospel text that would have appeared markedly strange to those in the mainstream of the Christian tradition. The wording that can be recovered from the Dura fragment shows how Tatian creatively and intelligently combined the text of the four gospels to produce a new narrative of the life of Jesus, choosing to leave out certain elements and to make deliberate emendations along the way. However, it was precisely such originality that made his gospel appear problematic, so in order to rescue his text from censure, later scribes had to domesticate it by making it conform throughout to the canonical versions. Comparison of the Dura fragment with the medieval Arabic gospel harmony and with the Latin version in Codex Fuldensis illustrates well this process whereby Tatian's gospel went from being a rival to the fourfold gospel to a designedly secondary, and therefore acceptable, work.

Ancient Compositional Practices and the Gospels: A Reassessment

Recent studies of ancient compositional practices and the Synoptic Problem have validated the Two-Source hypothesis and challenged the “Augustinian,” Farrer–Goulder, and Griesbach hypotheses. These studies conclude that, according to the Two-Source hypothesis, subsequent evangelists would have adhered to the Greco-Roman conventions of working with one source at a time and not working backward through a text. The present essay adduces counterexamples such as the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Naḥal Ḥever, which predates the Gospels, and Tatian's Diatessaron, which postdates the Gospels. Upon further examination, simultaneously accessing multiple sources and reordering those sources were established compositional practices in the first century. Moreover, every solution to the Synoptic Problem necessitates such scribal conventions. Therefore, the lesser extent of these ancient compositional practices does not privilege the Two-Source hypothesis over its rivals.

Alleged Syriac Catchwords in the Gospel of Thomas

AbstractNicholas Perrin in his 2002 monograph, Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron, and in a series of subsequent publications has proposed that, if one translates it back into Syriac, a series of 502 catchwords can be found to run through the Gospel of Thomas. According to Perrin this number is greater than the number of catchwords in Coptic (269) or in Greek (263) and demonstrates that the Gospel of Thomas was originally composed in Syriac, which in turn makes it likely that the Gospel of Thomas was written with a knowledge of Tatian's Diatessaron. Here, a sample of Perrin's alleged catchwords is investigated and is found implausible. Consequently his late dating of the Gospel of Thomas cannot be established.

The Four-Gospel 'Canon' in the Epistula Apostolorum

The four-gospel canon is first explicitly defended by Irenaeus in the decade of the 180s, but also assumed by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian's Diatessaron, and the Muratorian Fragment. Its origin, then, must lie prior to Irenaeus. The witness of the Epistula Apostolorum allows us to place the collection of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and no others, as early as the 140s. Use of the criterion of redaction demonstrates that the Epistula's author knew and highly valued the Gospel of John. He also knew and made use of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The criterion of redaction is less useful when applied to the Gospel of Mark. Nonetheless, it can be shown that the author of the Epistula alluded to the earliest gospel on at least one occasion. In addition, there is no compelling evidence that the Epistula's author knew or made use of a gospel other than the canonical four. Since, in all probability, this Christian apocryphon was composed prior to 150, we have in the Epistula evidence for a collection of the four Gospels decades before Irenaeus’ defence of the fourfold Gospel and even slightly before Marcion's attempt to restrict the Gospel to his edited version of Luke.

A Note on Tatian's Diatessaron, Luke, and the Arabic Harmony

Zusammenfassung Die Frage, ob für die Rekonstruktion von Tatians Diatessaron die sog. Arabische Harmonie benutzt werden kann, ist umstritten. Zugleich ist die Annahme verbreitet, daß die Reihenfolge der Arabischen Harmonie mit der Östlichen Harmonie weitgehend übereinstimmt. Das Lukasevangelium bietet das Material für den Erzählfluß der Arabischen Harmonie, gerade am Anfang und am Ende. Am Anfang und am Ende scheint auch das Johannesevangelium eine wesentliche Rolle zu spielen. Dieses Ergebnis stellt die weitverbreitete Annahme in Frage, daß das Matthäusevangelium die gesamte Harmonie Tatians geprägt hat.

Tatian and the Jewish Scriptures: A Textual and Philological Analysis of the Old Testament Citations in Tatian's Diatessaron (review)

Tatian and the Jewish Scriptures: A Textual and Philological Analysis of the Old Testament Citations in Tatian's Diatessaron (review)

THE DURA PARCHMENT AND THE DIATESSARON

In 1933 an archaeological team digging at Dura Europos on the Euphrates discovered a small fragment of parchment inscribed on one side with Greek gospel text. Classified as Dura Parchment 24, the find was published two years later by the palaeographer Carl Kraeling, with an extensive discussion.' The archaeology of the site made it practically certain that the parchment dated from before the year 256-257. Its text was found not to correspond to any one canonical gospel but to represent a harmony integrating elements of all four of the gospels. Kraeling, after patient discussion, concluded that the fragment was a witness of Tatian's famous Diatessaron. This conclusion was unanimously embraced by Diatessaronic specialists and New Testament textual critics of the day. The main point of discussion was not whether the new witness attested Tatian, but whether it proved anything regarding the original language of the Diatessaron. A few years ago, D. C. Parker, D. G. K. Taylor and M. S. Goodacre published a detailed study attempting to reopen the debate on the Dura parchment.2 New proposals are offered for the reading of the text and for its date (although the 256/7 date ante quem is recognised), and new solutions are sought for some problems of detail. More importantly, the authors come to a revolutionary conclusion: the Dura fragment is not part of Tatian's Diatessaron. Instead, the text was originally composed in Greek and represents an independent attempt to harmonise the four gospels:

Tatian and the Jewish Scriptures: A Textual and Philological Analysis of the Old Testament Citations in Tatian's Diatessaron

It has long been argued that Tatian, in the production of the Diatessaron, made regular reference to the Old Testament Peshitta when he came across Old Testament citations in the Gospels. This book argues on the contrary that Tatian made little or no use of the Old Testament Peshitta, but regularly took over the text of the Old Testament citations as he found them in the Gospel sources out of which he created his harmony. Where they differ from the form of these citations in the standard Greek text tradition of the Gospels, it is because, in the second century, Tatian had access to Gospel sources which may have varied significantly from the text of the later manuscripts on which our modern critical editions are based. Thus, Tatian's Diatessaron becomes a window into an early state of the Gospel texts and supports the idea that a significant amount of textual fluidity characterized the Gospel texts in the first two centuries of their transmission. This study will be of interest to those working in the fields of Diatessaronic studies, New Testament Textual Criticism, and the history of the Syriac Church.

Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron

The relationship between the Coptic Gospel of and the synoptic gospels has been a matter of long-standing debate. Some maintain that the sayings of Jesus in Thomas reflect a line of transmission independent of the synoptic tradition; others contend that the Coptic collection is finally a reworking of the Greek synoptic gospels. This book proposes a third possibility: namely, that the Gospel of depends on a second-century Syriac gospel harmony, Tatian's Diatessaron, written in 175 C.E. Following a linguistic analysis of Thomas, the author argues that the Coptic collection is actually a translation of a unified Syriac text which at places followed the wording and sequence of the Diatessaron, The book argues for a late second-century C.E. dating of Thomas, rules out Thomas as a meaningful source for Historical Jesus research, and suggests possible links between Thomas and other mystical literature of the ancient near east. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).

Tatian's Diatessaron and the Old Testament Peshitta

Did Tatian consult the Syriac version of the OT when drawing up his Gospel harmony? This question, first raised almost a century ago,1 has not become irrelevant since then, in spite of much progress in research on both the Diatessaron and the OT Peshitta.2 In a study of OT quotations contained in the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels, the present writer, following in the footsteps of F C. Burkitt and S. P. Brock, undertook to show that Tatian did make use of the OT Peshitta.3 I concluded that Tatian, in his Diatessaron, frequently inserted OT Peshitta readings as a rendering of OT quotations instead of translating the Greek text as read in the Gospels.4 This position has recently been challenged by R. Shedinger on methodological grounds: since no Western witnesses of the Diatessaron were used to show dependence on the OT Peshitta, and since Shedinger's own analysis of quotations in the Western harmonies produced no traces of such dependence, the hypothesis became, in his view, untenable.5 The present article offers a renewed survey of relevant readings. In the first section, the Eastern evidence is briefly reevaluated. As will be seen, this evidence cannot be brushed aside as easily as has been done by Shedinger. The second and third sections introduce new material from Western sources that is supportive of the hypothesis. Although the thesis of Tatianic dependence on the OT Peshitta cannot, in the absence of the original text of the Diatessaron, be proven absolutely, the conclusion must be that what textual evidence we have is strongly supportive of it. I. Traces of the Old Testament Peshitta in Eastern Witnesses of the Diatessaron Historical research shows that Tatian's harmony was probably from the start a Syriac writing.6 The impact of the work is felt primarily in the Syriac-- speaking area, while the Greek church appears to have had no firsthand knowledge of it. To prove Syriac origin on a textual basis is hard, since no complete original text of the Diatessaron has been preserved.7 It may fairly be stated, however, that the textual evidence is generally supportive of the hypothesis,8 and that no textual facts oppose it, not even the Greek fragment of the Diatessaron found in Dura Europos.9 If the Diatessaron was written in Syriac, precedence must be conceded to the Eastern sources. Although even the earliest Syriac witnesses show clear signs of having been modified later in the direction of Greek manuscripts of the Gospels, they nevertheless offer the possibility of retracing part of the wording of the Diatessaron itself. 10 The Arabic and Persian harmonies are more problematic, both because these texts are of a later date and because they are translations. But at least they depend directly on a Syriac text, whereas Western harmonies are mostly translations twice or thrice removed from the original. It is good method, therefore, to build a hypothesis regarding Tatian's sources first and foremost on the basis of the Eastern evidence. Ephrem's Commentary on the Diatessaron On the supposition of a Syriac original, the only direct witness to the text of the Diatessaron is to be found in Gospel quotations in early Syriac texts. Early Syriac authors, particularly Aphrahat and Ephrem, quote the Gospel primarily, or even exclusively, according to the Diatessaron.11 Even these quotations show us a text adapted to that of the Greek Gospels,12 but they are generally, and rightly, considered to be our best source. When Burkitt first addressed the question of the possible influence of the OT Peshitta on the Diatessaron, it is to these quotations that he turned for a solution.13 The results were disappointing. Ephrem's Commentary on the Diatessaron was then available only in an Armenian translation, which did not permit a clear conclusion; as to Aphrahat, the evidence seemed to indicate a positive answer, but it was hard to be certain.14 Returning to the problem three-quarters of a century later, Brock found himself in a much more favorable position. …

Tatian's Diatessaron. Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship. By William L. Petersen. Leiden, New York and Köln, E. J. Brill, 1994. Pp. xx + 555. No price.

Tatian's Diatessaron. Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship. By William L. Petersen. Leiden, New York and Köln, E. J. Brill, 1994. Pp. xx + 555. No price. - Volume 52 Issue 3

The State of the New Testament Canon in the Second Century: Putting Tatian's "Diatessaron" in Perspective

Abstract In contemporary discussions of the NT canon, focus has been on its polemical aspects, that is, when it was closed. By so doing the idea of a canonical process suffers. In attempting to understand Tatian's Diatessaron in this process it is argued here that the very existence of the harmony testifies against a closed fourfold Gospel canon in the mid–second century. A proper distinction between canon and scripture is foundational in this understanding. Discussions about the closed NT canon belong to a day far removed from Tatian's. By placing Tatian's Diatessaron in the perspective of process we are less tempted to view his use of the four Gospels as proving their canonicity, a view which is anachronistic and inaccurate.

The State of the New Testament Canon in the Second Century: Putting Tatian's "Diatessaron" in Perspective

AbstractIn contemporary discussions of the NT canon, focus has been on its polemical aspects, that is, when it was closed. By so doing the idea of a canonical process suffers. In attempting to understand Tatian's Diatessaron in this process it is argued here that the very existence of the harmony testifies against a closed fourfold Gospel canon in the mid–second century. A proper distinction between canon and scripture is foundational in this understanding. Discussions about the closed NT canon belong to a day far removed from Tatian's. By placing Tatian's Diatessaron in the perspective of process we are less tempted to view his use of the four Gospels as proving their canonicity, a view which is anachronistic and inaccurate.

Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, & History in Scholarship (review)

Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, & History in Scholarship (review)

Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes. By Carmel McCarthy. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Behalf of the University of Manchester, 1993. viii + 381 pp. $52.00.

Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes. By Carmel McCarthy. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Behalf of the University of Manchester, 1993. viii + 381 pp. $52.00. - Volume 65 Issue 3

Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron (review)

Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron (review)

Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron

Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron