Diatessaron

i, Author and Date. ii. Title, Language, and later History. (a) Testimony of Greek writers. (6) Testimony of Syriac writers. iii. Non-Syriac versions of the Diatessaron. (a) The Armenian version of St. Ephraem’s come mentary on the Diatessaron. (6) Codex Fuldensis. (c) The Arabic version. iv. Relation of the Diatessaron to the Old Syriac. Literature. i. AUTHOR AND DATE.

—The Diatessaron, o1 Harmony of the four Gospels, was most probably compiled by Tatian, the disciple of Justin Martyr, towards the end of the 2nd cent. A.D., not long after the year 172 or 173, when Tatian returned from Rome to his native land of Mesopotamia.

The scanty information that we possess regarding the early history of the author of this famous work is mainly derived from his no less celebrated Oratio ad Grecos (Aéyos mpos “EAAnvas), a work which was probably composed soon after his conversion to Christianity. He is described by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iii. 81), Epiphanius (Her. 46. 1), and Theodoret (H@r. Fab. i.

20) as a Syrian ; and this statement as to his nationality agrees with his own mention of the fact that he was born ‘in the land of the Assyrians’ (Oratio, 42, yevvndels uev év Ty Tav Acouplwy yy). We may infer from his own writings that he was a man of good birth and posi- tion, and, as such, not without the temptation tc embark on a military or political career; but his mind was early attracted to that pursuit of learn- ing to which he devoted the greater part of his life.

He spent many years in visiting the various schools, and in studying the different tenets, of heathen philosophy, and finally settled down in Reme, where, presumably through the influence of Justin, he embraced Christianity. Like the latter, he suffered persecution at the hands of Crescens ; but it seems probable that he remained in Rome as a teacher some years after the martyr- dom of Justin, in A.D. 165, among his pupils being Rhodon of Asia Minor.

It was, no doubt, during this latter portion of his residence in Rome that Tatian developed that curious mixture of hetero- dox views with which his name is associated by later writers, and which, while causing him to be branded as a heretic, also necessitated his departure from Rome.

Thus he undoubtedly advocated, like the Encratites, a rigid asceticism, condemning mar- riage and the use of wine and animal food ; he also followed Marcion in distinguishing the Demiurge from the God of the New Testament, while he held a Gnostic theory of zons similar to that of Valentinus: his denial of the salvability of Adam alone marks a more original departure from the orthodox teach- ing of the Church.

In view of the statements as to Tatian’s heretical opinions made by Irenzus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, etc., his heterodoxy can hardly be disputed ; yet it is notice- able that Eusebius is the first to definitely associate him with any heretical party (see below, § ii. a). The date of Tatian’s dejarture from Rome for the 452 DIATESSARON East may be placed with tolerable certainty about A.D. 172-173.

* How long he survived after his return to Mesopotamia is unknown; but it was there, probably at Edessa, that he composed for the Syrian Church that Harmony of the four Gospels which has rendered his name so famous, Before leaving the personal history of Tatian we may note that no suspicion of heresy seems to have attached to his name in the Syrian Church —a fact which is most easily explicable on the sup- position that, amid the primitive conditions of his native Church, Tatian had neither the occasion nor the inclination to air those views which had pro- cured him so much disfavour at Rome.

After his bitter experiences in the latter city, it was only natural that he should turn his attention towards a new field of activity such as that afforded by the compilation of his Harmony, rather than to the disseminatim of his peculiar views.

The plan of reproduciny; the fourfold history of the Gospels in the form of one simple connected narrative was no doubt a bold one, but the underlying motive was prohably the desire to present his less cultivated ccantrymen with the story of the Gospel in a form which should at once preserve all that was essential in the narratives of the four Evangelists, while omitting all that might seem calculated to perplex and confuse. ii. TITLE, LANGUAGE, AND LATER HISTORY.

— The full title given by Tatian to his Harmony of the Gospels appears to have been ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ by means of the four [Gospels or Evangelists]’ ( SQ.o3) o| Op N99 = Hvayyéduov “Inco Xpiorod 7d dia Teo- cdpwv), but the work was generally known and cited by the shorter title Diatessaron (,0,0o.\4) ; the forms ormn.d Lay and ormld Le also occur).

In addition to this Greek title, however, the Har- mony also received the genuine Syriac name Lvan- gelion da- Mehallité (WNsnS02 col), or ‘Gospel of the Mixed,’ to distinguish it from the fourfold form of the Gospels, the Evangelion da, Mépharréshé (leza%o> < o|), or ‘Gospel of the Separated (ones).

’ The Greek title has been used, among others, as an argument in favour of the view that the Harmony was originally composed in that lan- ‘guage ; but no stress can be laid on this fact, since Greek titles, and especially Greek technical terms, were largely employed by Syriac writers.

More- over, the balance of evidence seems to support the view that the Diatessaron was an original Syriac work, though no final opinion on the subject can be expressed until we have determined the question of its relation to the Old Syriac version (see below, § iv.) There can, however, be no doubt that, whether originally composed in Greek or Syriac, the work was intended for use in the Syriac Church, and was widely circulated in a Syriac form at an early date.

Further, there is no direct evidence of the existence of a Greek original, and the scanty and indefinite nature of the information supplied by the Greek writers seems to show that the (Syriac) work was known to the Greek Church by name only. (a) Greek writers.—The first notice of the Dia- tessaron occurs in Eusebius (HZ iv. 36), who states * Zahn, Forschungen, i. p. 282 f. | Cf.

Xpouixdv, "Exxanowarrixy, Tirpasvayyinioy, etc, Baethgen objects that these were used also as titles in Greek, and, as such, were taken over into Syriac, while Diatessaron is a Greek musi- eal terminus technicus, and does not occur elsewhere in Syriac ede piutanas AB cates p- 89; cf. Zahn, Forsch. i. pp. 104f.

, DIATESSARON that Tatian, whom he wrongly describes as the former leader of the Encratites, ‘composed a sort of connexion and compilation, I know not how, of the Gospels, and called it the Diatessaron. This work is current in some quarters (with some per- sons) even to the present day.’* The work is also briefly mentioned by Epiphanius (H@r. 46. 1), whe says: ‘The Diatessaron Gospel is said to have been composed by him (Tatian). It is called by some the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

’+ Apart from these two writers no mention ¢ is made of the Diatessaron by either Greek or Latin writers until the 6th cent. (see below, § iii. 6) ; and the silence of such writers as Irenzeus, Clement of Alexandria, Jerome, or Augustine is explicable only on the supposition that the work was exclusively a Syriac one, and, as such, unknown to the Greek Church.

Before passing on to the evidence afforded by Syriac writers, we may note two 1 arising out of the above notices which tend to confirm the impression made by the silence of the Greek Fathers. The first is the omission of the clause ‘I know not how’ (ov« off érws) in the Syriac translation (4th cent.) of Eusebius’ History.§ The explanation of this fact given by Hjelt|| is no doubt correct, viz.

that the translator purposely suppressed the clause as irrelevant, since Tatian’s work was well known both to himself and to his Syriac readers. Equally interesting is the trans- lator’s insertion of the words ‘now this is the (Evangelion) da-Méhallétée’ (Gospel of the Mixed) after the word ‘ Diatessaron,’ which shows that the Syriac title of the Harmony was already cur- rent in the 4th century.

The second point is con- nected with the confusion that existed, accordin to Epiphanius, in the minds of some with regar to the Diatessaron and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. As Zahn (orsch. i. 25) has pointed out, the confusion admits of a tolerably easy solution on the supposition that the Diatessaron was a Syriac work. When the existence of another Gospel, written in the same or a nearly allied dialect, among the half-heretical Nazareans, 1.e.

in almost the same district, became known, it was not unnatural to suppose that the two were either closely allied or even identical. Such a mistake, however, could have arisen only amongst people who were either ignorant of Aramaic, or who possessed no knowledge of the works in question save at second hand. (6) Syriac writers.

—In contrast to the compara- tive ignorance displayed on this subject by Greek authorities, the statements made by Syriac writers ‘concerning the Diatessaron, and the evidence of its use in the Syrian Church, are both clear and decisive. The earliest testimony is contained in the Doctrine of Addai, a work which, in its present form, is variously dated by critics from the middle of the 3rd cent. (Zahn) to the begin- ning of the 5th cent. (von Dobschiitz, Christus- bilder, p. 158 f.)

But, though the form in which we now possess this text may not be earlier than A.D. 400, its contents are clearly based on very early tradition, and we may therefore safely follow Zahn (Forsch. i. 90f.) in regarding it as a trust- worthy witness to the practice of the Edessene Church during the 8rd century.

The crucial passage states that ‘much people gathered together day by day, and came to tlte prayer of the (Divine) service and to (the reading of) the Old Testament and the * 5 pe 5 ray a os 6 T as cUvepEcy tive wad ppbed we I teas 3) Goonies pie 7 Sasandud Tol To mporwvinecey, 6 xe) rape Ticw éloérs viv GépeT ol, t rbverns dé 76 Dice reook pay shayyérsov Ua’ cured yeyevnobas Omep wore ‘EBpaious tivis xeAouct. t On the obscure scholion to Mt 2748 contained in Cod. 72, see Zahn, Forschungen, i.

26f. § ed. Wright and M‘Lean, Cambridge, 1898, p. 243. , || Die alisyrische Hvangelieniibersetzung und Tattans Diates saron, p. 24 note. DIATESSARON New, (namely) the Diatessaron, and believed in the resurrection of the dead.

’* Of a similar nature is the command given to his presbyters in Addai’s parting speech ;: ¢ ‘The Law and the Prophets and the Gospel, wherein ye read every day before the poeple; and the Epistles ef Paul which Simon ephas sent us from the city of Rome; and thie Acts of the Twelve Apostles, which John the son of Zebedee sent us from Ephesus: these writings (or Scriptures) shall ye read in the churches of Christ, and besides them nothing else shall re read.

’ These two passages clearly show that the terms ‘ Diatessaron’ and ‘Gospel’ were interchange- able, and also that the version of the Syriac Gospels adopted by the Edessene Church for use in Divine service was that which had been com- posed by Tatian. Internal evidence, again, shows that Aphraates, the bishop of the convent of St. Matthew near Mosul, made use of the same version, though the Gospel quotations in his Homilies (written between 336 and 345 A.D.)

are not taken exclusively from Tatian’s work. The most striking proof, however, of the widespread use of the Diatessaron in the Syrian Church during the 4th cent., and of the high repute in which it stood, is the fact that it forms the basis of the commentary on the Gospels written by the famous Ephraem Syrus (d. 373 A.D.; see below, § ili. a). It is noteworthy also that the Gospel quotations which are to be found in his genuine works appear to be also taken from the Harmony.

t The beginning of the 5th cent. forms a decisive es in the history of the Syriac versions of the ew Testament, inasmuch as it marks the intro- duction of a new version, which was destined to supersede all its predecessors. It was during the episcopate of Rabbila, bishop of Edessa (A.D. 411- 435), and under his direction that a revision of the existing Syriac translation of the NT was set on foot, with a view to bringing it more into zonformity with the current Greek text.

Accord- ing to his biography § (written soon after his death) Rabbila ‘translated by the wisdom of God which was in him the New Testament from Greek into Syriac, because of its variations, exactly as it was. To quote Mr. Burkitt,|| ‘It is only the belief, the erroneous belief, that the Peshitta NT was proved to be older than Rabbila through the attestation given to it by St.

Ephraem, which has hitherto prevented scholars from recognizing in these words a description of the making and Sean of the Syriac Vulgate’ or the Peshitta. ut in order to establish the new revised version on a firm basis it was necessary to suppress all earlier translations. With a view, therefore, to securing this end, Rabbila commanded his priests and deacons ‘to take care that in all the churches there should be an Evangelion da-Mépharréshé, and that it should be read.

’ The object of this canon was clearly to establish the new version at the expense of the Diatessaron.1 How successful it was is shown by the fact that henceforth the Peshitta reigned alone as the accepted ecclesiastical text, while the Diatessaron almost entirely dis- appeared. An interesting notice of the thorough- ness with which the crusade against Tatian’s Haamony was carried out has been preserved in the writings of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus §A.D. 423-457).

In his treatise on heresies (Her. * ed. Phillips, p. 36, 1. 15. 7 vhillips, p. 46, 1. 8f. t Burkitt, Teats and Studies, vol. vii. p. 56. ANS ae S. Ephraemi Syri, Rabule, ete., opera selecia, p. 172. | Op. cit. p. 57. “[ Overbeck, op. cit. p. 220. The term Evangelion da- Meépharréshé must here denote, not the Old Syriac version pon was also so called), but rather any MS of the four pels, as opposed to the Evangelion da-Méhallété or Dia- tessaron, DIATESSARON 453 Fab. i.

20) he states that Tatian ‘composed the Gospel, which is called Diatessaron, cutting out all the genealogies and all such passages as show the Lord to have been born of the seed of David after the flesh. Now this work was used not only by those who belonged to his own sect, but also by those who follow the Apostolic doctrine, since they did not perceive the mischief of the composition, but used it in all simplicity on account of its brevity.

And I myself found more than 200 such copies held in honour in the churches in our parts, and, having collected them all, I put them away, substituting the Gospels of the four Evangelists.’ Nevertheless, the vigorous measures adopted by Rabbila and Theodoret failed to bring about the complete rejection of the Diatessaron.

For, though Tatian’s Harmony appears to have been effectu- ally excluded from public worship in the Syrian Church, the evidence of later writers shows that the work was still in existence as late as the Middle Ages.

Hjelt * suggests very plausibly that either the growing antagonism between the Mono- phlysites (or Jacobites) and the Nestorians reacted on Church praxis, and caused the latter to retain the Gospels in the form to which they had been accustomed, or else that, for the same cause, the ecclesiastical reforms of Rabbila met with no acceptance among the Syrians of the East.

This theory is certainly an attractive one, and explains many of the phenomena connected with the later history of the Diatessaron; but the evidence at our disposal, while amply proving that Tatian’s work was well known to and held in high esteem by the Nestorians down to the 14th cent., is scarcely suflicient to justify his further conten- tion that it was retained by them in the services of the Church till that period.

A more probable explanation of its continued existence is to be found in its connexion with the name of Ephraem.

Ephraem’s commentary on the Diatessaron was not only, as we shall see later, translated into Armenian, but also exercised a marked influence on the works of later (Syriac) NT commentators —an eloquent proof of the esteem in which that writer’s work was held; and it can hardly be doubted that its association with the name of the great Syriac Father contributed very largely to the preservation of Tatian’s work among the Syrians themselves.

Some confirmation of this view is aflorded by the way in which the later references to Tatian and his work, which are not confined to Nestorian writers but include several Jacobite authors, are closely connected with St. Ephraem’s commentary. Of the later Syriac writers who either refer to or quote from the Diatessaron (or Ephraem’s com- mentary upon it), the first and most important is Ishodad of Merv, the Nestorian bishop of Haditha (or Hedhatta), who flourished about A.D. 850.

¢ In his commentary on the NT we find the following statement in the Prologue to St. Mark: ‘Matthew and John belonged to the Twelve, but Mark and Luke to the Seventy ; but Tatianus the disciple of Justin, the philosopher and martyr, made a selec- tion from the four Evangelists and combined (or mixed ANou) and put together a Gospel and called it (the) Diatessaron, that is ‘‘ of the Mixed” (da, Méhallété); and concerning the divinity of Christ he did not write. And on this (Gospel) * Op. cit. p.

29. + For a full discussion of his commentary on the NT as con- tained in the Cambridge MS, Add. 1973, and of the passages bearing on Ephraem’s commentary and the Diatessaron, see R. Harris, Mraginents of the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus upon the Diatessaron, London, 1895, p. 10f. Attention was first called to the importance of Isho'dad’s work in this connexion by the American scholars, Dr. Hall and Professor Gottheil, Journal of Biblical Literature, vols. xi. and xii.

454 DIATESSARON Mar Ephraem commented.’ Hijelt (op. ett., 30 f.) argues with some force that the position of Tatian immediately after the four Evangelists, and the manner in which he is mentioned, seem to show that Isho'dad regarded his testimony as of equal value with that of the Evangelists; and this im- pression is confirmed by an examination of those passages in his commentary in which the Diates- saron is definitely cited, viz.

Mt 12> 34 18 9]1 Ac 1, It is noteworthy that Ishodad avoids the error into which so many of his successors have fallen, and draws a clear distinction between the Diatessaron of Tatian and that of Ammonius. Thus, in discussing the words ‘as it is written in the prophet Isaiah’ (Mk 1%), he says,* ‘others (say): in the book of the Diatessaron which was composed in Alexandria, he (Mark) says ‘‘in the prophets” instead of ‘‘ as it is written in Isaiah.”’ The Jacobite bishop Moses bar-Kepha (d. A.D.

903), who was almost a contemporary of Ishodad, also wrote a commentary on the NT in which there are clear traces of acquaintance with Eph- raem’s commentary, and apparently with an even earlier work (Harris, pp. 10, 18, 24, 85). He further makes direct mention of the Diatessaron in two passages in which he is discussing the canons of Eusebius. The whole passage runs as follows: ‘Which shows who collected the four books of the Evangelists and set them in order in one book.

And some people, indeed, say that Eusebius ef Caesarea, when he saw that Julianus (ste! for Ammonius) of Alexandria made the Gospel of the Diatessaron, i.e. ‘‘by means of Four,” and changed the sequence of things [Hjelt : of the verses] in the Gospels, and that Tatian also the Greek, the heretic leader, made a Gospel which is called Tasaron (sic!)

, and he too changed the sequence of things; he, Eusebius, took care and collected the four books of the four Evangelists and set them in order and placed them in one book, and preserved the body of their compositions [Hjelt : the integrity of the text of the narratives of the Evangelists] as it was without taking any- thing from them or adding anything to them, and made certain Canons on account of their harmon one with another.

’+ Here we see that Bar-Kepha distinguishes the two Diatessarons, though appa- rently he only knew Tatian’s work through the medium of Ephraem’s commentary. The absence of any direct quotations from the Diatessaron as well as the epithets which he applies to Tatian may be due, as Hjelt suggests, to strong anti- Nestorian feeling. The two lexicographers Isho bar- Ali (d. 873) and Bar-Bahlul (who flourished about the middle of the 10th cent.) both refer to the Diatessaron.

The former defines the word ‘ Diatessaron’ (for which he gives a variant Diagutrun) as ‘the Gospel of the Diatessaron, which Tatian made, the Mixed,’ and adds that the author omitted both the human and the Divine genealogies of our Lord, and is on this account accursed, namely, Tatian: the latter statement is, however, not found in all MSS, and may be regarded as a later gloss. In Bar-Bahlul’s lexicon the Diatessaron is defined (Hjelt, p.

48) as ‘the collective Gospel which (was composed) from the four Evangelists’: to this is added, ‘This was composed in Alexandria, which the bishop Tatianus has written.’ The latter sentence is, however, wanting in other MSS, and by its very form betrays its secondary character. It is interesting to find that Bar-Bahlul quotes the Diatessaron by its Syriac name Evangelion da-Méhallété, while he * We have here followed the text of the Berlin MS as given by Hjelt (p. 35 note).

For the text of the Cambridge MS, which seems Jess original, see Harris (p. 15); the latter refers the pore ‘(as) it is written im Isaiah’ to Tatian’s reading at t Harris, op. cit. p. 21. DIATESSARON —— cites the reading ‘ Jesus Barabbas’ (Mt 27"), which is found in the Sinaitic palimpsest, as occurring in the Evangelion da-Mépharréshé. The evidence of our next witness, Jacob bar- Salibi, the Jacobite bishop of Amida (d. 1171 A.D.) is largely based upon that of his predecessors.

Thus in his NT Commentary he reproduces with but slight variations the statement of Ishodad ja con- nexion with the opening verses of St. Mark. He omits, however, the sentence ‘and concerning the divinity of Christ he has not written,’ but adds the remark ‘now the commencement of the same was: In the beginning was the Word.’ In like manner he follows Bar-Kepba in his statement voncerning Eusebius and his canons (see above), though in another passage in his prologue to the Gospels (Harris, p.

28) he makes the extraordinary state- ment that Tatian and Ammonius were unable to bring the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection into harmony, and therefore desisted from the attempt.

* Probably Zahn + is right in supposing that Bar- Salibi has here confused Ammonius with Eusebius, and has assigned to the latter the réle of Elias of Salamia (of whom he speaks elsewhere): for the fact that the canons of Eusebius stopped at Mk 168 was apparently treated by him as excluding the narrative of the Resurrection, while he ascribes the correction of this supposed error to Eusebius instead of to Elias.

In any case it seems tolerably certain that Bar-Salibi can hardly be treated as an independent witness to the existence of the Diates- saron, even though we reject the statement with regard to the Diatessaron which occurs in his com- mentary at Mk 1°. The statements of Bar-Hebreeus (d. 1286 A.D.) in like manner appear to be mainly borrowed from the works of earlier writers, especially Bar-Salibi.

He’ follows the latter in reproducing Ishodad’s notice concerning Tatian with the same omission and insertion, but by a strange misunderstanding of his author applies the language of Eusebius with regard to the Diatessaron of Ammonius tv Tatian’s work. Even at the end of the 13th cent. we still find striking evidence of the continued existence of the Diatessaron, The NT commentary of the cele- brated ‘Abd-isho (Ebedjesu) bar-Berika (d.

1318), metropolitan of Nisibis and Armenia, has not been preserved, but in the preface to his Nomocanon§ he describes Tatian’s Harmony as the example of completeness and trustworthiness which he has endeavoured to imitate. The description is as follows: ‘Tatian the philosopher having compre- hended the meaning of the words of the Evan- gelists and grasped the plan of their Divine narrative, composed one admirable Gospel out of the Four.

This is what he called the Diatessaron, in which he preserved with all care the accurate order of the sayings and deeds of the Saviour with- out having added a single word of hisown.’ From this notice it seems clear that ‘Abd-isho was well acquainted with the Diatessaron and its contents, even though he elsewhere || confuses its author with Ammonius.

The evidence of these later Syriac * The passage runs as follows: ‘Eusebius of Omsarea took pains to compose the canons of the Gospel—and this, indeed, is known from his letter to Carpianus—and pointed out by their means the agreement of the Evangelists. Ammonius and Tatian had written a Gospel, the Diatessaron, t.e. of the Four, as we have said above, and when they came to the history of the resurrection, and saw that it varied, they gave up their works.

But Eusebius took pains to make these canons and to point out in the same the agreement of the Evangelists’ (Hjelt, . 48), » t Theol. Littbl. 1896. t ‘Others (say): in the book of the Diatessaron, which was composed in Alexandria, which the bishop Tatianus ha@ written,’ t.e. the same gloss that appears in the lexiccn of Ear Bahiul. § Mai, Seript. Vet. Nova Coll. x, 191. || Assemani, Bibl. Or. iii. 12. } DIATESSARON DIATESSARON 455 writers, at least from the 12th cent.

onwards, is no doubt somewhat discounted by the fact that they appear to have mainly derived their information from the works of their predecessors; but the secondary nature of their evidence is more than outweighed by the additional testimony furnished by the following translations of the Diatessaron. iii, NON-SyRIAC VERSIONS OF THE DIATES-