HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS.
I. Harmonies as Interwoven Gospels. No Harmonies before Tatian (§ 1). Tatian's Diatessaron and its History (§ 2). The Diatessaron Originally Greek (§ 3). Reconstruction of the Diatessaron through the Versions (§4). Modern Works of the Kind (§ 5). II. Harmonies in Parallel Arrangement. Ammonius and Augustine (§1). Clericus and the Griesbach School (§2). Rushbrooke and Later Harmonists (§ 3).
[Under the name of "harmony of the Gospels" as commonly applied in English are embraced two classes of works: (1) those which combine into a continuous narrative more or less completely the accounts of the four Evangelists or of the Synoptists, the different accounts being interwoven (to these is sometimes given the name " Diatessaron "); (2) those in which the text of the Gospels is arranged in parallel columns, the sections which deal with the same episodes being placed together. In the usage of German and some other scholars a distinction is made between " harmony " and " synopsis," the former name being used for the interwoven narrative, the latter for the parallel arrangement. A few works unite the two forms. See Gospel and the Gospels.]
Harmony of the Gospels
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
I. Harmonies as Interwoven Gospels: From the early Church the only work of this character known is the celebrated Diatessaron of Tatian. i. No Har- The chance remark of Jerome that monies Theophilus of Antioch had collected before the words of the four Gospels in one Tatian. work refers to a commentary by Theophilus which embraced all four without sharp distinctions between them. The remark of Ambrose, which may be derived from Origen, to the effect that many heretical teachers collected out of the four Gospels that which suited their form of teaching, hardly proves the existence of a number of old harmonies, but rather refers to the Apocryphal Gospels, which got some of their material from the canonical Gospels, such as the Gospel of Marcion, based on Luke and containing excerpts from Matthew and John. And to this class of composition the work of Ammonius, known only from the letter of Eusebius to Carpianus, does not belong, in which he is said to have taken Matthew as a basis and added the parallels from the other Gospels. While the descriptions do not permit dogmatizing upon the character of this work, it can hardly have been anything other than a handbook for exegetes and especially for harmonists, and it belongs to the class of books called by the Germans synopses.
The oldest trustworthy report of the Diatessaron of Tatian is contained in Eusebius (Hist eccl., IV., xxix. 6), but the character of the description implies that its use was limited to certain circles and that it was not studied by Eusebius. This limitation in circulation is confirmed by Epiphanius, and still more definitely by Jerome when he says that out of all the productions of Tatian, only the Contra gentes remained, and omits mention of the Diatessaron. In Palestine during the fourth century even to the most learned authors the Diatessaron was but the title of an unknown book. If Hegesippus can be held to have referred to the Diates- 2. Tatian's saron under the term " the Syriac Diatessaron (Gospel)," according to Eusebius (Hist. and Its eccl., TV., xxii. 7) this is the earliest History, testimony to the existence of that work, and it involves the conclusion that the language was Syriac; but that Hegesippus, writing in Greek, should have cited the Syriac translation of a Gospel harmony which must have followed its Greek original is highly improbable. But the testimonies in the Syrian region to the existence of the Diatessaron are abundant, and from direct knowledge, as when Theodoret, bishop of Kyros (or Kyrrhos), removed about 200 copies of the work from the orthodox churches and substituted the canonical Gospels. Completer knowledge has been recently gained through the discovery of the Armenian translation of the commentary of Ephraem Syrus, made accessible to larger circles by the Latin translation of J. Aucher (ed. G. Mosinger, Venice, 1876; cf. J. H. Hill, Dissertation on the Gospel Commentary oj S. Ephraem, Edinburgh, 1896). The legends of the Christianizing of Edessa, older than Eusebius, mention the Diatessaron as the chief sacred book alongside the Old Testament. Aphraates calls it
" the Gospel of our Savior." In the Syriac translation of the Hist. eccl. of Eusebius, known to have existed as early as Ephraem Syrus' time, the " Diatessaron " of IV., xxix. 6 is translated by " the mingled (Gospel)," showing that in its home that was the name by which it was known, while in distinction from this the other Gospels were known as " the separated (Gospels)," as a canon of Rabbula of Edessa (412-435) makes clear. In the fifth century there was a definite rejection of the Diatessaron and exclusion of it from use in service, and that without distinction of party affiliations of the bishops who directed the movement. But from near Mosul to the bishopric of Kyros the Diatessaron must have been for the churches long the service-book in the Gospels, while the translations of the separate Gospels were used in the studies of the theologians, a condition which prevailed at least till about 370 a.d., when Ephraem Syrus lectured upon the Diatessaron with only occasional references to the canonical Gospels. Similar evidence comes from other writers. Mar Abba, a disciple of Ephraem, had an " Exposition of the Gospel " the fragments of which appear to show that it was based on Tatian's work. From the fifth century the relations of the two forms of the Gospels were reversed; the separated Gospels were in use in the churches, the Diatessaron was referred to only by the learned.
Apart from the two translations already mentioned, the history of the Diatessaron seems to have run its course entirely in the region of Syria. And it is to be noted that in its original form it was Greek, and was translated into the Syriac. The lack of any testimony for its existence among the Greek churches and the way in which Greek writers refer to it confirm the conclusion already reached. That Tatian, the writer of an apology in Greek, if he was in any event the author of the Diatessaron, could have written it only in Greek is
3. The an opinion founded upon ignorance of
Diatessaron historical facts. Tatian, " born in the
Originally land of the Assyrians," had the Syriac
Greek. as his mother tongue. After long years of travel in the West he returned to the East and settled down and gave his countrymen the Gospel, not in the form of four books, but, as he himself called his volume, in the form " The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God through four." That the Greek apologete Tatian gave the Diatessaron in Syriac is an improbable supposition, and against it is the discrimination he makes between Matt. x. 10 and Luke ix. 3 on the one hand and Mark vi. 8 on the other, " a rod and not a staff." But the Diatessaron became a household book in the Syrian Church. Whether it was the oldest Gospel, which was later displaced by a translation of the four Gospels, is a question for further examination.
A reconstruction of the Diatessaron from the translations in other languages can not be dispensed with, for no sure traces exist of the Greek. From a sermon wrongly attributed to Gregory of Nyssa and to Severus, but really by a certain Hesychius, probably the presbyter of Jerusalem (c. 43S), a man interested in the matter of harmony of the Gospels,