The beginning of the 5th cent. forms a decisive point 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 Rabbula, 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 conformity 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 publication of the Syriac Vulgate’ or the Peshitta. But 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, Rabbtla 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 Harmony was carried out has been preserved in the writings of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus (A.D. 423-457). In his treatise on heresies (Har.
* ed. Phillips, p. 36, 1. 15f.
{+ Phillips, p. 46, 1. Sf.
t Burkitt, eats and Studies, vol. vii. p. 56.
§ Overbeck, S. Ephraemi Syri, Rabule, etc., opera selecta, p. 172. : i Op. cit. p. 57.
| Overbeck, op. cit. p. 220. The term Hvangelion da-
Mépharréshé must here denote, not the Old Syriac version (which was also so called), but rather any MS of the four Gospels, as opposed to the Hvangelion 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 Rabbiila 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- physites (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 sufficient 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 afforded 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