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The Narrative Chronology of Tatian's Diatessaron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2020

James W. Barker Open the ORCID record for James W. Barker [Opens in a new window]
James W. Barker*
Affiliation:
Western Kentucky University, Department of Philosophy and Religion, 1906 College Heights Blvd., Bowling GreenKY42101-1086, USA. Email: james.barker@wku.edu
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

TatianDiatessaronchronologyGospel harmoniesEphrem
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 288 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), (2020). Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Ciasca, A., Tatiani Evangeliorum harmoniae arabice (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1888)Google Scholar; Hogg, H. W., ‘The Diatessaron of Tatian’, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. ix (ed. Menzies, Alan; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896) 33–138Google Scholar; Marmardji, A.-S., Diatessaron de Tatien (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique Beyrouth, 1935)Google Scholar.

2 Leloir, L., Saint Éphrem: commentaire de l’Évangile concordant (Chester Beatty Monographs 8; Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co., 1963/Leuven: Peeters, 1990)Google Scholar; McCarthy, C., Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron (JSS Suppl. 2; Oxford: Oxford University Press/University of Manchester, 1993)Google Scholar; Lange, C., Ephraem der Syrer: Kommentar zum Diatessaron (2 vols.; Fontes Christiani 54; Turnhout: Brepols, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 Ranke, E., Codex Fuldensis (Marburg/Leipzig: N. G. Elwert, 1868)Google Scholar; Plooij, D., The Liège Diatessaron (8 vols.; Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1929–70)Google Scholar; de Bruin, C. C., Diatessaron Leodiense (CSSN 1.1; Leiden: Brill, 1970)Google Scholar. For the Stuttgart harmony, see Bergsma, J., De Levens van Jezus in het Middlenederlandsch (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1895)Google Scholar. For the Zurich harmony, see Gerhardt, C., Diatessaron Theodiscum (CSSN 1.4; Leiden: Brill, 1970)Google Scholar.

4 On reading the Diatessaron as ‘a gospel in its own right’, see Watson, F., ‘Towards a Redaction-Critical Reading of the Diatessaron Gospel’, Early Christianity 7 (2016) 95–112, at 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Petersen, W. L., Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (VC Suppl. 25; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 22–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Joosten, J., ‘Tatian's Sources and the Presentation of the Jewish Law in the Diatessaron’, The Gospel of Tatian: Exploring the Nature and Text of the Diatessaron (ed. Crawford, M. R. and Zola, N. J.; The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 3; London: T&T Clark, 2019) 55–66Google Scholar, at 62.

6 Schmid, U. B., ‘The Diatessaron of Tatian’, The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (ed. Ehrman, B. D. and Holmes, M. W.; NTTSD 42; Leiden: Brill, 2013) 115–42Google Scholar.

7 M. R. Crawford and N. J. Zola, ‘Introduction’, The Gospel of Tatian: Exploring the Nature and Text of the Diatessaron, 1–9, at 6. Elsewhere Crawford has profitably elucidated Tatian's division of Jesus’ one Synoptic sermon at Nazareth into two separate events: ‘Rejection at Nazareth in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke – and Tatian’, Connecting Gospels: Beyond the Canonical/Non-Canonical Divide (ed. F. Watson and S. Parkhouse; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) 97–124.

8 Crawford and Zola, ‘Introduction’, 7.

9 Burkitt, F. C., ‘Tatian's Diatessaron and the Dutch Harmonies’, JTS 25 (1924) 113–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 I.e. Comm. Diat. 16.33 ends with a quotation from John 10.8, and Ephrem transitions to Lazarus (John 11.1) in Comm. Diat. 17.1, thereby skipping John's Hanukkah scene (10.22–41).

11 von Harnack, A., ‘Tatian's Diatessaron und Marcion's Commentar zum Evangelium bei Ephraem Syrus’, ZKG 4 (1881) 471–505Google Scholar, at 487; albeit differently from Harnack, S. Hemphill (The Diatessaron of Tatian (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1888) xxx–xxxi n. 2) also claimed a one-year ministry, and I myself made this mistake in Barker, J. W., ‘Ancient Compositional Practices and the Gospels: A Reassessment’, JBL 135 (2016): 109–21Google Scholar, at 119.

12 Harnack, ‘Tatian's Diatessaron’, 487.

13 T. Zahn, Tatians Diatessaron (Erlangen: Andreas Deichert, 1881) 250; see 249–62 for his reconstruction of Tatian's chronology.

14 Zahn, Tatians Diatessaron, 251.

15 Zahn, Tatians Diatessaron, 250.

16 Zahn, Tatians Diatessaron, 256–9.

17 Hill, J. H., A Dissertation on the Gospel Commentary of S. Ephraem the Syrian (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896) 171–7Google Scholar; Petersen (Tatian's Diatessaron, 122) curiously claimed that ‘many connoisseurs regard [Zahn's] reconstruction as unsurpassed’.

18 Petersen, Tatian's Diatessaron, 135.

19 Matt 9.1–8 // Mark 2.1–12 // Luke 5.17–26.

20 Contra Connolly, R. H., ‘The Diatessaron in the Syriac Acts of John’, JTS 8 (1907) 571–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 574; cf. Hemphill, Diatessaron of Tatian, 24.

21 Luke 13.6–9; Arabic harmony 27.36–9; Fuldensis 103; Liège 141; Stuttgart/Zurich 130.

22 Crawford, M. R., ‘The Fourfold Gospel in the Writings of Ephrem the Syrian’, Hugoye 18 (2015) 9–51Google Scholar.

23 Shepardson, C., Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria (North American Patristics Society Patristics Monograph Series 20; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008) 62–7Google Scholar.

24 Similarly, ‘The Lord ate the Passover with his disciples; in himself, the bread that he broke, he abolished the unleavened bread’ (Ephrem, Azym. 6.4). My translations of Ephrem's Paschal hymns are based on the Syriac text edited by Beck, E., Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Paschahymnen (CSCO 248; Leuven: CSCO, 1964)Google Scholar.

25 Christians were participating in Jewish rituals in the late fourth and early fifth centuries (see Boyarin, D., Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religions; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) 202–25Google Scholar), and Ephrem's admonishments resemble ones by John Chyrsostom (Adversus Judaeos) as well as Jerome and Augustine (Augustine, Ep. 40, 75, 82). So even if, as Christian Lange argues (Kommentar zum Diatessaron, i.53–5, 81–106), the Diatessaron commentary comes from a school associated with Ephrem rather than Ephrem himself, the same fourth-century Syrian concerns contextualise the text preserved in Chester Beatty MS 709.

26 My translations of Ephrem's commentary are based on Leloir's edition of the Syriac text.

27 For many of Ephrem's quotations, see Leloir, L., Le témoignage d’Éphrem sur le Diatessaron (CSCO 227; Leuven: CSCO, 1962)Google Scholar.

28 Nevertheless, as argues, P. Joosse (‘An Introduction to the Arabic Diatessaron’, OrChr 83 (1999) 72–129, at 127)Google Scholar, even when the Arabic harmony diverges from Ephrem's commentary due to the Peshitta's influence, the Arabic may still attest Tatian's text, so variants must be weighed case by case.

29 Burkitt, ‘Tatian's Diatessaron’, 115. In all likelihood, the adulteress pericope was nowhere incorporated into the Gospel of John when Tatian composed the Diatessaron.

30 Arabic harmony 14.45–15.11; Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 10.8; cf. Luke 7.36–50.

31 Arabic harmony 39.1–17; Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 17.11–13.

32 Fuldensis 138–9; Liège 186; Stuttgart/Zurich 183; Burkitt, ‘Tatian's Diatessaron’, 116.

33 Burkitt, ‘Tatian's Diatessaron’, 114–15.

34 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 12.6; Arabic harmony 18.25.

35 Fuldensis 81; Liège 100; Stuttgart/Zurich 96.

36 Contra Zahn, Tatians Diatessaron, 251–2.

37 Arabic harmony 28.1–32; Fuldensis 105; Liège 142–3; Stuttgart/Zurich 132–3.

38 Arabic harmony 28.33–41; Fuldensis 106; Liège 144; Stuttgart/Zurich 134.

39 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 15.1–11; Arabic harmony 28.42–29.11; Fuldensis 107; Liège 145–6; Stuttgart/Zurich 135–6.

40 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 15.12–13; Arabic harmony 29.12–26; Fuldensis 108; Liège 147; Stuttgart/Zurich 137. At this point the western witnesses include Jesus’ parable of the shrewd steward (Fuldensis 109; Liège 148–9; Zurich 138–9; cf. Luke 16.1–12), which occurs elsewhere in the Arabic harmony (26.34–45).

41 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 15.14–17; Arabic harmony 29.27–42; Fuldensis 110; Liège 150; Stuttgart/Zurich 140.

42 Arabic harmony 30.31; Fuldensis 112; Liège 153; Stuttgart/Zurich 143.

43 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 15.23; Arabic harmony 32; Fuldensis 118; Liège 159; Stuttgart/Zurich 150; cf. Matt 21.12–13 // Mark 11.15–17 // Luke 19.45–6 // John 2.13–17.

44 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 16.11–15; Arabic harmony 32.27–47; Fuldensis 120; Liège 163; Stuttgart/Zurich 154–5.

45 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 16.21–2; Arabic harmony 34.1–24; Fuldensis 127–8; Liège 171–2; Stuttgart/Zurich 163–4; cf. Matt 22.15–33 // Mark 12.13–27 // Luke 20.20–40.

46 Ephrem, Comm. Diat. 16.23–4; Arabic harmony 34.25–45; Fuldensis 129; Liège 173; Stuttgart/Zurich 165; cf. Matt 22.34–40 // Mark 12.28–34 // Luke 10.25–37.

47 Arabic harmony 34.45; Fuldensis 129; Liège 173; Stuttgart/Zurich 165.

48 Arabic harmony 34.46–7; Fuldensis 130; Liège 174; Stuttgart/Zurich 166.

49 Arabic harmony 34.49–50; Fuldensis 130; Liège 174; Stuttgart/Zurich 167.

50 Zola, N. J. (‘Evangelizing Tatian: The Diatessaron’s Place in the Emergence of the Fourfold Gospel Canon’, PRSt 43 (2016) 399–414, at 408)Google Scholar mistakenly claims that Tatian placed ‘Jesus's clearing of the temple … not at the Passover but at the Feast of Tabernacles (from John 7), in a sequence that exists in exactly none of the four Gospels’. On the contrary, the upcoming Passover (Arabic harmony 30.31; Fuldensis 112; Liège 153; Stuttgart/Zurich 143) was the antecedent for ‘the last day of the great festival’ (Arabic harmony 35.1; Fuldensis 130; Liège 173; Stuttgart/Zurich 167; cf. John 7.37). For Tatian's creation of new meanings by juxtaposing material from different sources, see Watson, ‘Towards a Redaction-Critical Reading’, 111.