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Updated: June 1, 2025
In fact, there is no possible reason for calling the work whose contents ate utterly unknown a harmony of the Gospels at all; the notion that it is a harmony is the purest of assumptions. There is some slight evidence in favour of the identity of the Diatessaron with the Gospel of the Hebrews.
Paley does not state, until later, that the "follower of Justin Martyr" turned heretic and joined the Encratites, an ascetic and mystic sect who taught abstinence from marriage, and from meat, etc.; nor does he tell us how doubtful it is what the Diatessaron now lost really contained. He blandly assures us that it is a harmony of the four Gospels, although all the evidence is against him.
The fifth work, alluded to by Victor of Capua, may possibly have been the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Just as the interest of Tatian turns upon the interpretation to be put upon a single term 'Diatessaron, so the interest of Dionysius of Corinth depends upon what we are to understand by his phrase 'the Scriptures of the Lord. 'As brethren pressed me to write letters I wrote them.
Here we get the Diatessaron identified with the widely-spread and popular early Gospel of the Hebrews. Theodoret states that he took these books away, "and instead introduced the Gospels of the four Evangelists;" how strange an action in dealing with so useful a work as a harmony of the Gospels, to confiscate it entirely and call it an evil design!
Well, instead of such an absurd and indirect way of proceeding, which presupposes that Antoninus Pius was well acquainted with the Diatessaron, he simply reproduces the substance of the doctrine of St. John, and interweaves with it the words of institution as found in St. Matthew. I shall afterwards advert to the hypothesis that this account was taken from an apocryphal Gospel. Again, St.
The text was in other places different, so much so that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels; but of this Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The 'Diatessaron' has been long lost, and the name is the only clue to its composition.
A new edition of White's 'Diatessaron', with a running comment the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman writers before Christ, and those after him who, it is morally certain, drew no aids from the New Testament, is a grand 'desideratum'; and if anything could open the eyes of Socinians, this would do it. Ib. p. 24.
There is, however, one alleged proof of the existence of four, and only four, Gospels, put forward by Paley: Tatian, a follower of Justin Martyr, and who flourished about the year 170, composed a harmony or collection of the Gospels, which he called Diatessaron, of the Four.
The church early appreciated the value and the difficulty of having four different pictures of the life and teachings of the Lord. Before Irenæus, however, another had sought to obviate the difficulty of having four records which seem at some points to disagree, by making a combination of the gospels, to which he gave the title "Diatessaron."
Tatian's first work of importance, an 'Address to Greeks, which is still extant, was written soon after the death of Justin. It contains no references to the Synoptic Gospels upon which stress can be laid. The chief interest however in regard to Tatian centres in his so- called 'Diatessaron, which is usually supposed to have been a harmony of the four Gospels.
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