Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception

Description

In the late-second century, Tatian the Assyrian constructed a new Gospel by intricately harmonizing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Tatian's work became known as the Diatessaron, since it was derived 'out of the four' eventually canonical Gospels. Though it circulated widely for centuries, the Diatessaron disappeared in antiquity. Nevertheless, numerous ancient and medieval harmonies survive in various languages. Some texts are altogether independent of the Diatessaron, while others are definitely related. Yet even Tatian's known descendants differ in large and small ways, so attempts at reconstruction have proven confounding. In this book James W. Barker forges a new path in Diatessaron studies. Covering the widest array of manuscript evidence to date, Tatian's Diatessaron reconstructs the compositional and editorial practices by which Tatian wrote his Gospel. By sorting every extant witnesses according to its narrative sequence, the macrostructure of Tatian's Gospel becomes clear. Despite many shared agreements, there remain significant divergences between eastern and western witnesses. This book argues that the eastern ones preserve Tatian's order, whereas the western texts descend from a fourth-century recension of the Diatessaron. Victor of Capua and his scribe used the recension to produce the Latin Codex Fuldensis in the sixth century. More controversially, Barker offers new evidence that late medieval texts such as the Middle Dutch Stuttgart harmony independently preserve traces of the western recension. This study uncovers the composition and reception history behind one of early Christianity's most elusive texts. Cover Tatian’s Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception Copyright Acknowledgments Contents List of Abbreviations Introduction 1: An Overview of Diatessaron Witnesses 1.1 Eastern Witnesses 1.1.1 The Arabic Harmony 1.1.2 Ephrem’s Commentary 1.1.3 Aphrahat’s Demonstrations 1.2 Western Witnesses 1.2.1 Codex Fuldensis and Its Copies 1.2.2 The Stuttgart–Liège–Zurich Harmonies and Their Offshoots 1.3 Unrelated and Distantly Related Harmonies 1.4 The Dura Europos Fragment as a Bridge between East and West 1.5 Summary 2: Tatian’s Compositional Practices 2.1 Mental Processes and Material Production 2.2 How Long was Tatian’s Diatessaron? 2.3 Tatian’s Authorial Expectations 3: Characteristics of the Diatessaron’s Sequence 3.1 Jewish Festivals and the Chronology of Jesus’s Ministry 3.1.1 Ephrem’s Suppression of Jewish Festivals 3.1.2 Tatian’s Sequence of Jewish Festivals 3.1.3 Derivative Reorientation toward John’s Chronology 3.2 A Nonviolent Conclusion to Jesus’s (First) Sermon at Nazareth 3.3 A Blessing upon Jesus’s Mother, Who Happens to be Nearby 3.4 Intercalating the Pharisees’ Warning after the Transfiguration 3.5 A Sukkoth Parade of Money Men 3.6 Gathering the Pharisees in Jerusalem 3.7 Tatian’s Redactional Tendencies 4: Quintessential Changes in the Western Archetype 4.1 Eliminating Redundancies 4.1.1 Calling Tax Collectors and the Sign of Jonah 4.1.2 Exorcisms of Speech Impairment and the Beelzebub Controversy 4.1.3 Mark’s Blind Man at Bethsaida 4.1.4 Anointing(s) 4.1.5 Satan and Judas 4.2 Combining the Sermon on the Mount/Plain and Mission Discourse 4.3 Relocating Capernaum Miracles to Nain 4.4 Editorial Fatigue in the Return of the Twelve 4.5 Grouping the Shrewd Steward with the Sukkoth Money Men 4.6 Nicodemus, the Adulteress, and the Fig Tree 4.7 The Timing of Judas’s Suicide 4.8 The Western Recensionist’s Redactional Tendencies 5: The Priority of Codex Fuldensis 5.1 Interpolations in the Stuttgart–Liège–Zurich Harmonies 5.2 The Timing of the Outsider Exorcist 5.3 Matthew’s Parable of the Talents and Luke’s Parable of the Minas 5.4 The Last Supper and Jesus’s Washing of the Disciples’ Feet 5.5 Resurrection Appearances to Mary Magdalene 5.6 The Stuttgart–Liège–Zurich Harmonies’ Redactional Tendencies 6: The Priority of the Stuttgart–Liège–Zurich Harmonies 6.1 The Absence of the Lukan Prologue 6.2 The Timing of the Triumphal Entry 6.3 The Presence of Luke’s Parable of the Faithful Slave 6.4 The Presence of the Capernaum Synagogue Exorcism 6.4.1 The Sequence of the Western Archetype 6.4.2 The Wording of the Western Archetype 6.5 Victor of Capua and His Scribe’s Redactional Tendencies 7: The Western Archetype as a Sufficient Hypothesis 7.1 Prefaces to the Western Harmonies 7.2 The Insufficiency of Extant Glossed Manuscripts 7.3 Circularity versus Alternating Primitivity 7.4 A Stemma of Diatessaron Witnesses 7.5 The Fate of the Western Archetype Conclusion Appendix: Comparison of Sequences of the Arabic Harmony, Stuttgart–Liège–Zurich Harmonies, and Codex Fuldensis Bibliography Manuscripts Electronic Resources Editions and Translations Secondary Literature Scripture Index Index of Medieval Manuscripts Index of Modern Authors Subject Index