Introduction 📜
The four gospels of the New Testament are arranged in harmony in the Diatessaron, which was composed by Tatian, an early Christian writer and theologian, around 170 AD. It is the earliest known example of a gospel harmony and served as the standard gospel text for approximately 200 years in many churches in the Syrian region. The Diatessaron is no longer in its original form, but a number of quotations from other early Christian literature contain fragments of it.
Most likely, Tatian’s Diatessaron was a response to Marcion’s teachings, an early Christian heretic who opposed the gospels’ Jewish elements and advocated for a more purely Gentile version of Christianity. Marcion held that Jesus’ teachings were fundamentally incompatible with the Jewish scriptures and that the God of the Old Testament was a different, lesser deity than the God of the New Testament. As a harmony of the four gospels, Tatian’s Diatessaron would have tried to show that the gospels were actually consistent with one another and that Jesus’ teachings were in line with Jewish tradition. Tatian could have been seen as attempting to refute Marcion’s claims that the gospels were contradictory and that Jesus’ teachings were fundamentally different from Jewish tradition by creating a cohesive narrative from the four gospels.
━━━
Dating 📜
Tatian likely composed his harmony about 20-25~ years after Marcion came to Rome.
It is very difficult to imagine how the Diatessaron could be used as evidence regarding passages relevant to the Synoptic problem because it is a gospel harmony. In Tatian, a Mt-Lk minor agreement could be an early attestation or a Tatianic harmonization. Do you have any suggestions for controlling for situations like these? Tatian could also be used to solve the synoptic problem in other ways. Using the Diatessaron, AA Hobson discussed ancient writing techniques and editorial use in relation to the Synoptic problem. His work can be updated and its details significantly expanded once a text for the Diatessaron can be established with some degree of certainty—and there are some more fundamental projects that need to be completed before that happens. Although his work serves as a methodological analog, it does not actually assist in determining the distinction between the 2SH and Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre.
━━━
Arguments 📜

The first known attempt to construct a gospel harmony,’ in which all four gospels were combined into one consecutive narrative, came in the late second century from a Syrian Christian named Tatian. His Diatessaron, from the Greek phrase, ‘through four [gospels]‘, roughly follows the outline of Matthew for most of Jesus’ ministry, and of John for Jesus’ final week, while inserting supplementary information from Mark and Luke at the places Tatian felt most appropriate.’ Some of Tatian’s solutions to the more noteworthy differences between parallels were regularly adopted from then on. For example, in dealing with Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Mt. 5-7) and Luke’s ‘sermon on the plain’ (Lk. 6:17-49), Tatian arranges the introductory verses in the order, Matthew 5:1; Luke 6:1-17; Mark 3:14-15; Matthew 5:2ff., to underline the fact that Luke’s Jesus was also in the mountains but then descended to speak to the crowds at a place sufficiently level to accommodate everyone comfortably. Tatian then proceeds to record Matthew’s longer version of the sermon, omitting the passages in which Luke mostly duplicates Matthew but inserting verses where Luke adds unparalleled material. In other cases, Tatian’s solutions are highly improbable. For example, Tatian splits Luke’s account of Jesus’ preaching in Nazareth (Lk. 4:16-30) into two parts, separated by twelve sections of intervening material, in order to place part of the account at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (as in Luke) and part of it as parallel to Mark’s first mention of Jesus in Nazareth, which does not occur until his Galilean ministry is well under way (Mk. 6:1-6). In a few instances, Tatian anticipates an approach which has only really caught on in recent years – recognizing that many of the gospel passages are grouped together topically rather than chronologically. Thus, in contrast to subsequent harmonists who insisted that Jesus must have cleansed the temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry (Jn. 2:14-22) and once during the last week of his life (Mt. 21:12-13 and Mk. 11:16), Tatian combines all twelve of these verses into one coherent narrative. He then appends the story of the widow’s mite (Mk. 12:41-44) and the parable of the Pharisee and the publican (Lk. 18:9-14), presumably because they likewise deal with the issue of true worship in the temple. Mark’s sequence is then resumed with the two parts of the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree (Mk. 11:12-14, 19-23), but having already used the story of the temple cleansing, Tatian inserts the story of Nicodemus in between these groups of verses, because of its proximity in John to the temple cleansing (Jn. 3:1-21).
The church fathers display a similar variety of approaches to the gospel data. In a famous passage, the late second-century bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus, accounts for the overall differences in perspective on theological grounds: John wrote of Jesus as the divine Word of God, Luke emphasized his priestly role, Matthew spoke of him as a human being, and Mark stressed the importance of prophecy.’ Interestingly, only the first of these four characterizations would be accepted today as a major emphasis of that evangelist. In the early third century, Origen of Alexandria recognized that some of the proposed harmonizations were incredible and admitted that at the historical level certain contradictions did in fact exist. But Origen argued that many texts had an allegorical meaning as well as a literal meaning; if harmony could not be achieved at the latter level, it could at the former. The example of the two temple cleansings is just such a case. Origen solves the difficulty by assuming that John’s more ‘spiritual’ account is not the description of a literal activity of Jesus in Jerusalem but a symbolic narrative about the need for Jesus’ followers to put away unrighteousness from their midst and to stop exploiting those who like oxen and sheep are senseless or empty and unstable like doves! (2)

Although Origen’s orthodoxy was suspect on several counts, the allegorical approach to solving problems, and to interpreting Scripture more generally, would have a long history ahead of it. Not until the Reformation would it meet sustained opposition. Nevertheless more sober exegetes did arise from time to time. The great fourth-century preacher, John Chrysostom, displayed a healthy blend of the type of ‘additive’ harmonization emphasized by Tatian, that is, where divergent accounts are explained as different extracts from a much fuller body of information, and of the type of theological explanation encountered in Irenaeus, where the unique emphases of the individual gospels are taken into account. In addition, Chrysostom seemed to foreshadow those who would later limit the infallibility of Scripture to matters of faith and practice, rather than also including details of history and geography: ‘But if there be anything touching times or places, which they have related differently, this nothing injures the truth of what they have said [but those things] which constitute our life and furnish out our doctrine, nowhere is any of them found to have disagreed, no not ever so little.” St. Augustine’s approach was somewhat more nuanced, emphasizing that the gospels often fail to give a clear indication of the location or sequence of the events they are reporting, and that one is to assume continuity of time and place only when it is explicitly mentioned in the text. He also emphasized that parallel passages may vary in wording yet still convey the same sense, whereas highly divergent ‘parallels’ may in fact represent similar events from separate occasions in Jesus’ life.
Helmut Merkel seems to be correct in concluding that ‘the mediaeval and Reformation expositors could add nothing fundamentally new to the solutions developed in the early church. Under Augustine’s influence harmonization remained for most the reasonable approach.” Not every apparent contradiction among the gospels was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, but most were content to trust that future study would offer better solutions. One contribution to research from these centuries that must not be overlooked was John Calvin’s magnificent commentary on A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke (Latin orig. 1555). Although many of Calvin’s comments on exegetical perplexities relied on previous commentary, his rejection of the predominantly allegorical approach of mediaeval Catholicism rescued biblical interpretation from a sea of arbitrariness. Calvin also adopted perspectives that are still debated by contemporary expositors. For example, after comparing the two versions of the Lord’s prayer (Mt. 6:9-13; Lk. 11:2-4), he considered the suggestion that Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount might in fact be a composite construction gathering together Jesus’ teaching from several different occasions.’ But Calvin nevertheless followed his predecessors in trying to fit all the gospel passages together into one orderly outline of the life of Christ, even if in many cases his exposition was more concerned with what the individual evangelists meant rather than with a close comparison of all the apparent discrepancies.

Augustine faces the challenge of reconstructing the actual events of Easter morning using fragments from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Easter story. Conciliating the women’s accounts of encountering either a young man in white or a glorious angel sitting on the stone that was rolled away (as described in Matthew) is one of the main challenges.

By having the Matthean angel remove the stone and frighten the guards, Tatian’s Diatessaron tries to distinguish the two figures by having the Markan angel deliver the Easter message inside the tomb. Augustine, on the other hand, discovers that this method hides the fact that Matthew’s angel also has a message for the women outside the tomb that is almost identical to the message Mark gives to his young man in white inside the tomb.

Augustine, on the other hand, decides to consider the two figures to be one and the same. He suggests that the term “tomb” can mean either the rock-hewn cavity in which Jesus’ body was placed or a larger enclosed area surrounding this cavity. Mark’s description of the women entering the tomb and seeing a young white man is consistent with Matthew’s depiction of an angel seated on a stone.
Augustine also has trouble reconciling Luke’s description of “two men standing by them in dazzling apparel” (Luke 24:4) and John’s account of Mary alone encountering two white angels sitting where Jesus’ body had been (John 20:11-12). Augustine chooses to link Luke’s angels to those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Instead, he links Luke’s angels to John’s. He constructs a composite narrative in which the women encounter the angel when they arrive at the tomb (also known as the enclosure), then enter the tomb (also known as the cavity) and encounter two additional angels. One of the angels engages Mary in a brief conversation before standing to deliver a further message to the group as a whole.

This misinterpretation of Luke and John also has significant repercussions, as evidenced by Mary’s two trips to the tomb in John 20. She returns to the male disciples with the news that the Lord’s body has been removed and finds it empty the first time, but she does not meet an angel. However, Mary returns to the tomb and observes her vision of angels from the inside. She learns the truth about the resurrection from her encounter with Jesus and returns to tell the disciples.

Augustine’s most ambitious attempt at conflation is in his discussion of the Easter story, where he tries to put the pieces back together and figure out what happened on Easter morning.

Clement on Tatian

Clement, a prominent early Christian leader and theologian, addresses the topic of “marriage” within the framework of Christian beliefs and practices in Book 3 of his work “Stromateis.” In particular, he discusses the significance of sexual activity to Christians’ lives and positions the church as a middle ground between two opposing extremes represented by various “heresies” or “sects.”

On the one hand, Clement expresses his outrage at certain Carpocratesians and his son Epiphanes’ followers who argue that private property of any kind is incompatible with the divine creator’s gifting of everything to everyone, including humans and animals. They argue that when Moses and other human legislators introduced the idea of private property, they opposed the divine law of equality. At their love feasts, they practice their communist beliefs.

Clement, on the other hand, has a problem with Prodicus’ followers who use spiritual unions in the Pleroma realm to justify their licentiousness. They believe that if they engage in sexual activity and imitate these spiritual couplings, they will enter God’s kingdom. They think that they are better than the rest of the human race and that they are free from the small restrictions that angelic or human powers impose on them.
Clement also addresses the viewpoints of Marcion’s and Tatian’s followers, who, out of self-control (), completely reject marriage and sexual activity. This is a viewpoint that is especially associated with Marcion and his followers, who, upon learning that the God is goodness rather than merely justice, refuse to replenish the tragic world of the creator deity. In his book “On the Saviour’s View of Perfection,” Tatian also advised against marriage and sexual activity.

Julius Cassianus, the author of the multivolume “Exegetica” and a former follower of Valentinus, is Clement’s primary foe in Book 3 of the Stromateis. According to Cassianus, it is a huge mistake to believe that the true God or the Saviour created our bodies and, more specifically, our generative organs, rather than angelic powers. He is of the opinion that the One who came to save us could not have made it. The title of Cassianus’s book on the subject, “On Self-Control” or “On Being a Eunuch,” refers to Jesus’ praise of those who transform themselves into eunuchs for the benefit of the kingdom of heaven.

In conclusion, Clement presents himself and the church as being in the middle ground between opposing extremes represented by various “heresies” or “sects” regarding the topic of marriage and sexual activity in the early Christian community. He expresses opposition to communist doctrines that allow for licentious behavior and extreme asceticism, which forbids marriage and sexual activity altogether.