Four Gospels

Chapter 1 2 3 4 The rite and celebration of the Apostles of the Lord 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 The interpretations of St. Ephraim the Syrian proposed below on the Four Gospels deserve the attention of the pious reader not only because it is the true creation of the great father and teacher of the Church, but also because of the important features of the Gospel text explained in it. According to the evidence of antiquity and the careful research of scientists, it turns out that in his presentation of the Gospel the holy father did not follow just one evangelist, but had in front of him a set of the Gospel text compiled from all four evangelists - and, moreover, the same set that was made by Tatian, a church apologist writer of the 2nd century, and which in the ancient Church, mainly in Syria, was widespread under the name Diatessaron, that is, the Gospel according to the four evangelists, or the Four Gospels. Therefore, for a better understanding of the following interpretation, we consider it useful to first give some brief information about Tatian himself and his Diatessaron, explained by Saint Ephraim the Syrian. 1. Antiquity has left us very scant information about the life and activities of Tatian. In his essay “Speech against the Hellenes” 1 (that is, pagans), written in defense of the Christian faith and earning him the name of apologist (defender) of the Church, Tatian himself calls himself “a native of the Assyrian land, who originally shared the pagan teaching” (chapter 42). The exact time of his birth is unknown; scientists believe that he saw the light at the end of the first or at the beginning of the second quarter of the 2nd century after the birth of Christ. From early youth, Tatian showed broad curiosity, studied a lot, absorbed all the pagan wisdom, and then, according to the customs of that time, traveled to different cities of the Roman Empire as a teacher of eloquence. He was drawn into these wanderings, however, not by vain calculations for acquiring fame, but by the desire to achieve true knowledge about God, the world and man and to gain for himself that spiritual peace that pagan science could not give him (chapter 29). Having become acquainted with the beliefs and rituals of various peoples of Asia and Europe and not finding in them the answer to his aspirations for higher knowledge, Tatian arrived in Rome around the middle of the 2nd century. Here the Christian books of the Holy Scripture fell into his hands, “...and I,” Tatian says about himself, “believed these books, because of the clarity of the explanation of all creation, the prediction of the future, the superiority of the rules and, finally, the teaching of the One Ruler over everything. Having been enlightened by the knowledge of them, I decided to reject pagan errors as childish nonsense... and recognized God and His creation” (chap. 29–30, 42). While in Rome, Tatian entered into a close relationship with Saint Justin the Philosopher, a martyr, among whose students and listeners Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons 2, counts him. In his above-mentioned appeal, Tatian speaks with deep respect of Justin as a man “worthy of great admiration” (chapter 18), and recalls that together with him he denounced the pagan philosophers “of voluptuousness and lies,” and from one of them, named Crescenta, he even suffered persecution (chapter 19). After the martyrdom of Saint Justin, which followed, according to scientists, in the year 166, Tatian retired from Rome to the East, to Syria, and here he fell into various errors, joining the sect of the Encratites (“abstinents”), who forbade the consumption of wine even in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. “While he was dealing with Justin,” writes Saint Irenaeus of Lyon about Tatian, “he did not say anything like that; After the death of this martyr, he fell away from the Church, became proud of the dignity of the teacher, and, blinded by the thought that he was better than other people, composed his own special teaching. Like the followers of Valentine, he talked fabulously about some invisible eons, called marriage corruption and fornication, and on his own invented evidence to refute the doctrine of the salvation of Adam” 3. He is believed to have died around the year 175. 2. The oldest evidence about the Diatessaron compiled by Tatian is given by Eusebius of Caesarea (IV century) in his “Ecclesiastical History”: “Tatian compiled some kind of agreement and set of Gospels, which he called the Diatessaron; this work is still in the possession of many” (vol. IV, p. 29). The words of the first church historian are confirmed by Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus in his “Essay on Heresies” (vol. 46, p. 1), adding that Tatian’s Diatessaron was called by some “the Gospel of the Jews.” More detailed information about this creation of Tatian is reported by Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus. “Tatian,” he announces in his “Abridgement of Heretical Fables” (vol. 1; p. 20), “composed the Gospel, which is called the Diatessaron, omitting the genealogies and all other places showing that the Lord in the flesh came from the seed of David. This Gospel was used not only by people who belonged to his sect, but also by those who followed the apostolic teaching, not realizing the deceit of this code, but simply using it as an abbreviated book. I myself found more than two hundred books of this kind, which were held in honor in our churches, I selected them all in one place and in their place I introduced the Gospels of the four evangelists.” Among the Syrian ecclesiastical writers, the first mention of Tatian's Diatessaron is found in Bar-Balud (10th century), who, in his dictionary published by Michelis (p. 192), says the following: “The Diatessaron is the name of the four Gospels written in Alexandria by Bishop Tatian, carefully preserved.” More correctly, Bar-Baluda writes Bar-Salibi (†1171), the Jacobite bishop of the city of Amida in Mesopotamia, in the preface to the commentaries on the Gospel of Mark. According to him, 4 Tatian, a student of Justin the Philosopher, a martyr, chose, combined and composed one Gospel from the four Gospels, which he called Diatessaron, that is, mixed. This Gospel was explained by Saint Ephraim. It began with the words: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). The next witness, Bar-Gebreus, Bishop of Tagrit and Jacobite Metropolitan (†1286), speaks of the Diatessaron 5: “Eusebius of Caesarea, seeing the damage that Ammonius of Alexandria made in the Gospel called Diatessaron, whose beginning was: “In the beginning was the Word,” and which Saint Ephraim the Syrian explained - the four Gospels, as they are in text, left it completely intact, and designated the similar words in them as a common canon.” In the above words, Bar-Gebray falls into a double error, for, firstly, he confuses Ammonius of Alexandria, the author of another Gospel code, with Tatian, to whom the Diatessaron explained by Saint Ephrem belongs, and, secondly, he erroneously asserts that this Tatianian Diatessaron was corrected by Eusebius, whereas, according to the testimony of Eusebius himself, he appended his canons to the work Ammonium. Finally, Gebed-Iesu, the Nestorian Bishop of Sobensky (†1318), in his catalog of all church works after the Holy Books of the Old and New Testaments, mentions the Gospel, which was collected by the Alexandrian man Ammonius, who is also Tatian, and called it Diatessaron. Obviously, Gebed-Iesu repeats the mistake of Bar-Balud and Bar-Gebray, confusing Tatian with Ammonius of Alexandria. Here are the most important 6 pieces of evidence from antiquity regarding Tatian’s Diatessaron. Comparing them with each other, one can see that Tatian compiled a set of the Gospel text, which he himself called the Diatessaron, which included the original words of the evangelists, omitting, however, the genealogy of Christ and all those places in which the origin of our Lord according to the flesh from the seed of David was revealed. This Tatian code was especially widespread in Syria and Mesopotamia, and not only among followers of the sect of the compiler of the code, but also among Orthodox Christians who treated him with respect. 3. That in the interpretations of St. Ephraim the Syrian that have survived to our time on the Four Gospels, we have the text of the Diatessaron compiled by Tatian, first of all, the above testimonies of Bar-Salibi and Bar-Gebray directly testify, certifying that St. Ephraim the Syrian explained the set of four Gospels compiled by Tatian. In addition to these testimonies, we are convinced of the same thing by both the authentic inscription of his interpretations on the Four Gospels, and the order in which the Gospel text is presented here. The work in question by Ephraim the Syrian, translated from the original text, is entitled: “Exposition of the agreed (or consolidated) Gospel, compiled by Saint Ephraim, the teacher of Syria.” After a brief introduction, it begins with the words of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word,” and is completely in agreement with the news of antiquity about Tatian’s Diatessaron; then moves on to passages from the Gospels: Luke 1:5, John 1:14, 17, Luke 1:6–77, Matthew 1:18–25, etc., omitting the genealogy of Christ. Finally, it should be noted that the ancient writers do not mention any other Gospel code or agreement that was famous in eastern countries, except for the Diatessaron of Tatian and the Diatessaron of Ammonius of Alexandria. But the Diatessaron of Ammonius of Alexandria, as evidenced by Eusebius of Caesarea in a letter to Carpian, was nothing more than the Gospel of Matthew, to the individual chapters of which the corresponding chapters of the other three evangelists were attached to the side. From here it is clear that the body of the Gospel text explained by Saint Ephraim can only be Tatian’s Diatessaron. According to the research of scientists, the text of the Diatessaron, presented in the interpretations of St. Ephraim the Syrian, in some places deviates not only from the Gospel text now accepted in the Church, which an attentive reader will easily notice, but also from the ancient Syriac translation, called Peshito, and coincides with the ancient Syriac Gospel published by Cureton. Thus, in the interpretations of Saint Ephraim, the words of the Gospel of John (John 1:3–4) are read as follows: “without Him nothing was created. In what was created there was life through Him, and life was the light of men”; the words of the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 1:25) are conveyed as follows: “He lived with Her in holiness until She finally gave birth to... her firstborn.” Both of these passages equally deviate from the Greek text and from the Pescito and agree with Cureton's ancient Syriac Gospel. Despite these deviations in particulars, the Four Gospels presented by Saint Ephraim make it possible to clearly see that Tatian’s Diatessaron, compiled back in the 2nd century, generally contained the same Gospel text as is read today, only in a different order and with some arbitrary omissions. Therefore, may every Orthodox Christian honor the memory of Saint Ephraim, who in his Commentaries on the Diatessaron left us such clear, convincing and irrefutable evidence of the extreme antiquity and integrity of the Holy Gospels hitherto accepted by the Church of Christ. In Russian translation, this work was published by priest P. Preobrazhensky in “Monuments of Ancient Christian Writing”. Moscow. 1857, volume IV. Against heresies. T. 1, p. 28. That is, all of humanity, right there. Assemani. Bibl. Orient. 1, p. 57.et. II, p. 159. Other, less important, news about the Diatessaron are collected and examined in Semisch's monograph “De Tatiani Diatessaron”. You might be interested in: