Chapter XX — 1 ¶ The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it

1 ¶ The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre,

and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

Peter.

46 Pilate answered and said, I am pure from the blood of the Son of God: but ye determined this.

47 Then they all drew near and besought him and entreated him to command the centurion and the soldiers to say nothing of the things which they had seen: 48 For it is better, say they, for us to incur the greatest sin before God, and not to fall into the hands of the people of the Jews and to be stoned. 49 Pilate therefore commanded the centurion and the soldiers to say nothing.

50 And at dawn upon the Lord's day, Mary Magdalen, a disciple of the Lord, fearing because of the Jews, since they were burning with wrath, had not done at the Lord's sepulchre the things which the women are wont to do for those that die and for those that are beloved by them--

51 she took her friends with her and came to the sepulchre where he was laid.

52 And they feared lest the Jews should see them, and they said, Although on the day on which he was crucified we could not weep and lament, yet now let us do these things at his sepulchre.

53 But who shall roll away for us the stone that was laid at the door of the sepulchre, that we may enter in and sit by him and do the things that are due? 54 For the stone was great, and we fear lest some one see us. And if we cannot, yet if we but set at the door the things which we bring for a memorial of him, we will weep and lament, until we come unto our home.

55 And they went away and found the tomb opened,

and coming near they looked in there;

and they see there a certain young man sitting in the midst of the tomb, beautiful and clothed in a robe exceeding bright;

Matthew.

4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.

8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

Mark.

6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.

7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.

8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

[Levi, etc.; cf. Mk. ii. 14.]

Luke.

6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,

7 Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

8 And they remembered his words,

9 And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

John.

Peter.

who said unto them, 56 Wherefore are ye come? Whom seek ye? Him that was crucified? He is risen and gone. But if ye believe not, look in and see the place where he lay, that he is not [here]; for he is risen and gone away thither, whence he was sent.

57 Then the women feared and fled.

58 Now it was the last day of the unleavened bread, and many were going forth, returning to their homes, as the feast was ended. 59 But we, the twelve disciples of the Lord, mourned and were grieved: and each one, being grieved for that which was come to pass, departed to his home. 60 But I, Simon Peter and Andrew my brother, took our nets and went to the sea; and there was with us Levi the son of Alphæus, whom the Lord...

The Diatessaron of Tatian

By

Rev. Hope W. Hogg, B.D.

Introduction.

The aim of the following introductory paragraphs is neither to furnish a detailed restatement of facts already known, nor to offer an independent contribution to the discussion of the problems that arise, although in other circumstances such an attempt might be made with advantage. All that is needed and practicable here is to describe briefly, if possible, the nature of the connection between the English treatise forming the next part of this volume and the ancient work known as the Diatessaron of Tatian; and then to indicate in a few words some of the more important or interesting features of the work itself, and some of the historical and other problems that are in one way or another connected with it.

1 The Text Translated.--What is offered to the reader is a translation into English of an Arabic text, published at Rome in 1888, in a volume entitled in Arabic Diatessaron, which Titianus Compiled from the Four Gospels, with the alternative Latin title, Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniæ, Arabice. The Roman volume consists of two parts--the text, covering a little over 209 very clearly printed Arabic pages, and a Latin half, comprising a scholarly introduction (pp. v.-xv.), a Latin translation (pp. 1-99), and a table showing the order in which the passages taken from the gospels occur in the text. The editor is P. Agostino Ciasca, a well known Orientalist, "scriptor" at the Vatican Library.

2 Former Translations.--In his Introduction (p. xiv. f.) Ciasca explains that in his translation he aimed at preserving quantum, salva fidelitate, integrum fuit, indolem stylumque Clementinæ Vulgate. This Latin version was in its turn translated into English by the Rev. J. Hamlyn Hill, B.D., and published in 1894 in a volume entitled The Earliest Life of Christ, with an interesting introduction and a number of valuable appendices. The ms. of Mr. Hill's translation of the Latin of Ciasca was compared with the Arabic original by Mr. G. Buchanan Gray, M.A., lecturer in Hebrew and the Old Testament in Mansfield College, Oxford.

3 The Present Translation.--The translation offered here is quite independent of either of these two. Ciasca's Latin was seldom consulted, except when it was thought the Arabic might perhaps be obscured by a misprint. After the translation was completed, Hill's English was compared with it to transfer Mr. Hill's valuable system of references to the margin of this work, and to lessen the risk of oversights passing the last revision unnoticed. In two or three cases this process led to the adoption of a different construction, and in a few of the more awkward passages a word was borrowed as being less harsh than that which had originally been written. Speaking generally, the present version appears to differ from Mr. Hill's in adhering more closely to the original.

4 The Arabic Text.--Only two Arabic mss. are known to exist. Ciasca tells us (p. xiv.) that he took as the basis of his text that ms. which is more careful in its orthography, the Cod. Vat. Arab. No. 14. He, however, printed at the foot of the page the variants of the other ms., and supplied from it two lacunæ in the Cod. Vat., substituted its readings for those of the Cod. Vat. where he thought them preferable, and followed its testimony in omitting two important passages. Here and there Ciasca has emended the text, but he does not profess to have produced a critical edition.

5 The Arabic mss.--Unfortunately, the present writer has not had an opportunity of examining these two mss.; but they have been described at some length by Ciasca; Codex XIV. in Pitra's Analecta Sacra, iv., 465 ff., and the other codex in the volume with which we are dealing, p. vi. ff. I. The former, which we shall call the Vatican ms. (in Ciasca's footnotes it is called A), was brought to the Vatican from the East by Joseph S. Assemani about a.d. 1719. It was described by Stephen E. Assemani, Rosenmüller, and Akerblad, and then at length by Ciasca, to whose account the reader must be referred for the details. It consists of 123 folios, of which the first seven are somewhat spoiled, and of which two are missing, and is supposed by Ciasca, from the character of the writing, and from the presence of certain Coptic letters by the first hand, to have been written in Egypt. S. Assemani assigned it to the twelfth century, and Ciasca accepts his verdict, while Akerblad says the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The text of the ms. is pretty fully vocalised, but there are few diacritical points. There are marginal notes, some of them by a later hand, which Ciasca classifies as (1) emendations, (2) restorations, (3) explanations. II. The second ms., which we shall call the Borgian (in Ciasca's footnotes it is called B), was brought to the Borgian Museum from Egypt in August, 1886. It has at the end the following inscription in Arabic: "A present from Halim Dos Ghali, the Copt, the Catholic, to the Apostolic See, in the year of Christ 1886." Antonius Morcos, Visitor Apostolic of the Catholic Copts, when, in the beginning of 1886, he was shown and informed about the Vatican ms., told of this other one and was the means of its being sent to Rome. The Borgian ms., which Ciasca refers to the fourteenth century, consists of 355 folios. Folios 1-85 contain an anonymous preface on the gospels, briefly described by Ciasca, who, however, does not say whether it appears to have been originally written in Arabic or to have been translated into that language. With folios 96b, 97a, which are reproduced in phototype in Ciasca's edition, begins the Introductory Note given in full at the beginning of the present translation. The text of the Diatessaron ends on folio 353a, but is followed by certain appendices, for which see below, §55, 17, note. This ms. is complete, and has, as we shall see, in some respects a better text, though it is worse in its orthography than the Vatican ms.

6 Condition of the Arabic Text.--Ciasca's text does not profess to be critically determined, for which purpose a more careful study of each of the mss. and an estimate of their respective texts would be indispensable. Although the Borgian ms. is supposed by Ciasca to be a century or two later than the Vatican ms. it is clearly not a copy of the latter, for not only does it sometimes offer more original readings, but, as we shall see, its text in some points coincides more exactly in scope with the original work. The list of various readings supplied by Ciasca, which is equal to about a fifth or a quarter of the text itself, ought to yield, on being analysed, some canons of criticism. The footnotes of the present edition are enough to show that a number of the peculiar features of Ciasca's text do not belong to the original Arabic ms.; and further study would dispose of still more. On the other hand, there are unfortunately some indications that the common ancestor of both mss., though perhaps less than two centuries removed from the original, was not the original itself, and therefore emendation may be necessary even where both mss. agree. From first to last it has to be borne in mind that a great deal of work was done at Arabic versions of the gospels, and the text of the copy from which our two mss. are descended may already have suffered from contact with other versions; while the special activity of the thirteenth century may have left its mark in some places on the text of the Borgian ms., supposing it to be chronologically the later.

7 Origin of the Arabic Text.--If some of the uncouthness of the Arabic text is due to corruption in the course of transmission, much is also due to its being not an original work, but a translation. That it is, in the main, a translation from Syriac is too obvious to need proof. The Introductory Notice and Subscription to the Borgian ms., moreover, expressly state that the work was translated by one Abu'l Faraj Abdulla ibn-at-Tayyib, an "excellent and learned priest," and the inferiority of parts of the translation, and entire absence of any confirmatory evidence, hardly suffice to refute this assertion. Still, the Borgian ms. is a late witness, and although it most probably preserves a genuine tradition as to the author of our work, its statement need not therefore necessarily be correct in every point.

8 The Arabic Editor and his Method.--Ibn-at-Tayyib (d. 1043) is a well known man, a Nestorian monk and scholar, secretary to Elias I., Patriarch of Nisibis (for references to sources see, e.g., Ciasca's Introduction, p. xi. f. and Steinschneider's long note in his Polemische und apologetische Lit. in Arabische Sprache, pp. 52-55). As we are here concerned with him simply as a link in the chain connecting our present work with its original source, the only point of interest for us is the method he followed in producing it. Did he prepare an independent translation or did he make use of existing Arabic versions, his own or others'? Until this question which space forbids us to discuss here, has been more thoroughly investigated, it must suffice to say that in view of the features in the present text that have not yet been shown to exist in any other Arabic version, it is still at least a tenable hypothesis that Ibn-at-Tayyib's ms. constituted to a considerable extent a real translation rather than a sort of Arabic parallel to the Codex Fuldensis (see below, 12).

9 The Syriac Text Translated--The eleventh century ms. of Ibn-at-Tayyib, could we reach it, would bring us face to face with the more interesting question of the nature of his Syriac original. The Subscription to the Borgian ms. states, probably copying the statement from its exemplar, that this was a. Syriac ms. in the handwriting of Isa ibn-Ali al Motatabbib, pupil of Honain ibn Ishak. This Honain was a famous Arabic physician and medical writer of Bagdad (d. 873), whose school produced quite a number of translations and translators, among whom Ibn-Ali, supposed to be identical with the Syriac lexicographer of the same name, is known to have had a high place. The Syriac ms., therefore, that Ibn-at-Tayyib translated takes us back to about the year 900. But the Subscription to each of our mss. states that the work ended is the gospel called Diatessaron, compiled from the four gospels by Titianus; while the Introductory Note to the Borgian ms. adds that this Titianus was a Greek. The next step, therefore, is to inquire whether any traces exist of such a Syriac work, or any statements by which we can check the account just given of it.

10 Other Traces of a Syriac Text.--No copy of a Syriac Diatessaron has yet been shown to have survived. A number of quotations from such a work have, however, been found in a Syriac commentary on the New Testament by Ishodad of Merv (circ. 852), a contemporary of Honain, Ibn-Ali's teacher. The value of these extracts is apparent, for they take us back one generation earlier than Ibn-at-Tayyib's Syriac exemplar. More important still, they do not entirely agree with the text of our Arabic version. To solve the problem thus raised, we must examine some of the statements about the Diatessaron to be found in ecclesiastical writers.

11 Statements about the Diatessaron.--One of the most widely known is that of Ishodad himself, who, in his Preface to the Gospel of Mark, says: "Tatian, disciple of Justin, the philosopher and martyr, selected from the four gospels, and combined and composed a gospel, and called it Diatessaron, i.e., the Combined,...and upon this gospel Mar Ephraem commented." Dionysius Bar Salibi (twelfth century) repeats each of these phrases, adding, "Its commencement was, In the beginning was the Word.'" These statements identify the author of the Diatessaron with a man otherwise known, and tell us that the great Syrian father Ephraem (d. 373) wrote a commentary on it. Unfortunately, no Syriac ms. of Ephraem's work is known to have survived; but quotations from it, or allusions to it, are being found in other Syriac writers. One further reference will suffice for the present. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, four hundred years before Ishodad, wrote thus in his book on Heresies (written in 453): "Tatian the Syrian....This [writer] also composed the gospel which is called Diatessaron, cutting out the genealogies and whatever other passages show that the Lord was born of the seed of David according to the flesh." Before examining the testimonials we have now adduced, we must notice certain more remote sources of information.

12 Non-Syriac Texts of the Diatessaron.--Although Ephraem's Syriac commentary on the Diatessaron is for the present lost, there is an Armenian version of it extant in two mss. dating from about the time of Bar Salibi and our Vat. ms. A Latin translation of this work, published in 1876 by Moesinger, formed the main basis of Zahn's attempt to reconstruct the Diatessaron. Appendix X in Hill's Diatessaron (pp. 334-377) contains an English translation of the texts commented on by Ephraem, made from Moesinger's Latin, but collated with the Armenian by Professor J. Armitage Robinson, of Cambridge. A comparison of this document with our Arabic text shows a remarkable agreement in the order and contents, but just as remarkable a lack of agreement in the kind of text presented. The same phenomenon is met with when we compare our Arabic text with a document that carries us back three hundred years before the time of Ishodad, and therefore more than six hundred years before the Armenian mss.--the Codex Fuldensis of the Vulgate. This ms. contains an arrangement of the gospel matter that its discoverer and publisher, Bishop Victor of Capua (d. 554), rightly concluded must represent the Diatessaron of Tatian, but for the text of which was apparently substituted that of the Vulgate. We are now ready to weigh the testimony we have gathered.

13 Accretions to the Diatessaron.--The statements we are to consider are: (1) Bar Salibi's, that Tatian's Diatessaron began with "In the beginning was the Word"; (2) Theodoret's, that Tatian cut out the genealogies; and (3) the same writer's, that Tatian also cut out "whatever other passages show that the Lord was born of the seed of David according to the flesh." Of these statements 1 conflicts with the Arabic text, which begins with Mark, and the Codex Fuldensis, which begins with Luke, but agrees with the Ephraem source; the same is true of 2; while 3 conflicts with all three texts. Our limits do not admit of our discussing these points in detail. It must suffice to say (1) that, although a more careful examination at firsthand of the