Talk:Diatessaron

message: I have re-edited the text to be more consistent with the entry on Tatian, and to take into account recent manuscript discoveries  TomHennell 11:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would we be right in assuming that you mean this edit?. It is regrettably devoid of sources, and some of it I have just deleted. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 15:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  the Diatessaronic Tradition 

message: How is it that a date of c. 175 AD is set for this when Bruce Metzger (reflected over at ntcanon.org) puts a date of 150-160 AD?  15 years makes a difference.
Sntjohnny 16:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is generally agreed that Tatian left Rome for Syria after the death of Justin Martyr in 165. I suppose it depends whether you consider that Tatian compiled the Diatessaron while in Rome, or later.  Since the most recent scholarship tends to suggest that the language of composition was Syriac, the later date would appear more likely.  However, a difference or 15 years more or less really is crucial to your evaluation of a NT text, then I suggest you may need to reconsider your theorising. TomHennell 14:26, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of compilation 

message: Apparently not. It is actually possible that the Gospel of John was being written about the time of Tatian's Diatessaron, or was not widely read at that time. According to Helmut Koester, professor of New Testament Studies at Harvard University, in his book "History and Literature of Early Christianity" page 32, The Gospel of John was not included.166.203.44.113 (talk) 22:49, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I have found the page you refer to - isn't Google wonderful - and I fear that you may have misread Koerster's point.  He is stating that Justin's harmony most likely only contained only the synoptics, and that Tatian merged his own Syriac translation of John into this to create the Diatessaron. So I take Koerster as supporting the statement as in the article. TomHennell (talk) 08:20, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  did Tatian use the Gospel of John? 

message: 01/04/09 The title says "Diatessaron" but the actual article refers to the "Diatesseron"
---  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.215.79.212 (talk) 05:08, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: sorted (I think) TomHennell (talk) 01:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncategorized remarks from 2009 

message: I have been reading through Petersen's 1994 opus magnum on the history of research on the Diatessaron, and I came across some interesting observations that I thought were worth noting.
The first one is about the great light on the water during Jesus' baptism which is thought to have been in the Diatessarion. Examples of the great light can be found in Codex Vercellensis (Codex a) and Codex Sangermanensis I (Codex g1) as well as the Pepysian Gospel Harmony. It is also found in fragments of the Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel of the Hebrews preserved in quotations by the early Church Fathers. Petersen has an interesting discussion about this on pp.14-22; he speculates that this tradition is related to the fire on the water during Jesus' baptism described by Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho 88.3 (c. 160). Petersen notes that the words for light and fire are very different in Greek (translated "phos" and "pyros", respectively), but they are homophones in Aramaic (translated "nuhra" and "nura", respectively). He credits scholar David Levinson with this insight and conjectures that both variants derive from an earlier common Jewish-Christian tradition.
The second observation comes from a later chapter with 8 examples of readings that Petersen thinks are most likely to have come from the Diatessaron. In Exhibit 8 on pp.414-20, Petersen describes an alternate reading of Luke 23.48 found in Codex g1 following Jesus' death on the cross which reads as follows: "...beating their breasts turning back saying, 'woe to us who have today, on account of our sins, hastened the desolation of Jerusalem'." The reading is also found in slightly modified form in Ephrem the Syrian's Comm. 20.28: "'Woe, woe to us,' they said. 'This was the Son of God!'... 'Behold, the judgement of the destruction of Jerusalem has come!'.", and in the Gospel of Peter: "...began to lament and to say, 'Woe unto our sins; the judgement and the end of Jerusalem is drawn near'." /* This reading has an obvious parallel to the Gospel of the Ebionites and the Ascents of James in which Jesus' prophetic mission is to abolish the Jewish sacrifices. (my OR)*/
If someone ever decides to expand this article, these might be two interesting examples to include. Ignocrates (talk) 19:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes