Professor Matthew R. Crawford and Professor Nicholas J. Zola discuss the exploration of whether Tatian’s Diatessaron was merely a “gospel harmony,” mechanically compiling canonical texts, or a gospel in its own right, designed to supplant its sources; in the edited collection The Gospel of Tatian, one of the latest volumes in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries.
- How would you describe this book in one or two sentences?
Christians were still writing Gospels in the second century when Tatian composed what we call the Diatessaron. This book situates Tatian’s “Gospel” within the broader context of Gospel writing and reception, specifically exploring its sources, its witnesses, and its relationship to the emerging fourfold Gospel.
- What drew you to amassing an anthology on Tatian’s Diatessaron?
Tatian’s Diatessaron is one of the most fascinating yet elusive of early Christian gospel texts. In some circles, it superseded the four Gospels in popularity for over a century. In other circles it was banned. Today essentially only citations and translations survive. Yet it is one of the earliest attempts to combine the primary information known about Jesus into a single work. Over the last two decades a significant shift has occurred in scholarship on the Diatessaron, and we thought the time was ripe for a volume drawing together a collection of studies that explore this new perspective, in engagement with older scholarship. This volume thus reports and reflects upon this recent reorientation, while calling for some changes of its own.
- Are there any new discoveries that you and the contributors made while writing this book?
There are several provocative chapters in this volume. Francis Watson contends that the Diatessaron is much better read as a Gospel in its own right, and not a gospel harmony. James Barker, on the other hand, suggests that however Tatian might have classified his work, he could not have hoped to supplant the Gospels that came before him. Ian Mills argues that what is commonly considered the oldest surviving fragment of the Diatessaron (the Dura Fragment) is actually a piece of some other gospel harmony entirely. Charles Hill overturns a general consensus by demonstrating there is no direct evidence that Tatian employed extra-canonical written Gospels as sources for the Diatessaron. Finally, the opening chapter features the last published essay of a recently passed pioneer of the field, Tjitze Baarda; and the final chapter (by Nicholas Zola, one of the co-editors) calls for a moratorium on citing the Diatessaron in the apparatus of the Greek New Testament, after tracing the general failure of this enterprise.
- What themes did you choose to focus on, and why? What does your book focus on that hasn't been explored elsewhere?
We focused on two long-running questions plaguing Diatessaronic studies: (1) Was Tatian trying to supplement the four Gospels or supplant them? (2) How can we reconstruct the text of the Diatessaron when an original no longer exists? Our essays provide new answers and insights into these questions that push the state of the question beyond where it has been. A new age of Diatessaronic studies is dawning and there are big changes afoot. Our volume is designed to function as a herald of some of those changes.
- What do you hope this volume will contribute towards fourfold gospel scholarship?
In the past, studying the Diatessaron has been presented as an esoteric and arcane endeavor. It is indeed a complicated field, but our volume is an attempt to make it both more accessible and inviting. Correctly fitting Tatian’s Diatessaron into the developmental timeline of the fourfold gospel canon is imperative for understanding the history of Gospel writing in general. The new insights into the surviving versions of the Diatessaron suddenly make the field ripe for scholarly harvest. It’s our hope that this volume will inspire a new generation of Diatessaronic scholars to take up the call.
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