Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception by James W. Barker (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception by James W. Barker
• Charles E. Hill

James W. Barker Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021 Pp. ix + 157. $85.00.

James Barker states his case for a major modification of the "new perspective" and a partial return to the "old perspective" on Diatessaronic studies. The Diatessaron, the first known harmony of the four Gospels, was composed by Tatian in Greek or in Syriac ca. 170–75 c.e. Its Greek legacy is almost entirely lost, save for the famous Dura fragment (if indeed this is a copy of the Diatessaron). The Syriac version has left a commentary traditionally attributed to Ephrem, some Gospel citations by Aphrahat, and an eleventh-century translation of the whole work into Arabic. The Latin and later European harmonies are headed by the sixth-century Codex Fuldensis, created by Victor, Bishop of Capua, and his scribe. Victor had discovered a manuscript containing an unum ex quattuor euangelium, which he determined must have been a copy of Tatian's Diatessaron. He had a new copy made, using Jerome's Vulgate for the text and equipping it with a reworked version of Eusebius's section and canon tables. Barker maintains that Victor's Vorlage was written in Old Latin, and this is key to his theory that he hopes will represent the next advance in the field of Diatessaronic scholarship.

The "old perspective," exemplified by William Petersen's Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 1994), theorized a (perhaps very early) Old Latin Diatessaron. It sought for remnants of this translation in the many Latin and vernacular harmonies, glosses, and commentaries in places where they agreed with some eastern source, but disagreed with Fuldensis. The new perspective, developed especially by Ulrich Schmid, along with August den Hollander and Elizabeth Meyer, and accepted by most today, has abandoned the quest for an Old Latin Diatessaron. The entire western Diatessaronic tradition, it proposes, descends ultimately from the single volume, Codex Fuldensis. There are no routes around Fuldensis to an Old Latin version.

Barker thinks one route remains. Victor's Vorlage, or one of its relatives, Barker supposes, survived long past the sixth century to produce a group of late medieval, western harmonies headed by the Middle Dutch Liège (ca. 1280) and Stuttgart (1332) harmonies and the Middle High German Zurich harmony (1300) (this combination hereafter S-L-Z). These harmonies share most of their content-related characteristics with Fuldensis and the rest, departing from them only occasionally. These departures, Barker contends, are the pathway back to the Western Archetype of the Diatessaron.

Along the way to making his case (mostly made in Chapter Six) are several well-informed chapters on the Diatessaronic witnesses, Tatian's compositional practices, the characteristics of the original Diatessaron's sequence, and the changes made in the western branch of witnesses. It is also good to have Barker's take on the major Diatessaron controversies. For instance, despite some recent challenges to this position, the Dura fragment is indeed, Barker affirms, a copy of the Diatessaron. And, while agreeing with Matthew Crawford that Tatian [End Page 577] called his work "the Gospel" and not "the Diatessaron," there is nevertheless no doubt that Tatian combined all four Gospels and "did not use additional sources such as the Gospels of Thomas and Peter" (29n2). Even Mark was an integral component of the Diatessaron: "Tatian grafts Markan Sondergut into the Diatessaron with surgical precision," and Mark "is always embedded in Synoptic or fourfold gospel harmonizations" (36n33). On Petersen's idea that Tatian wanted to supersede the fourfold Gospel with his "super-gospel," Barker concludes that "Tatian reasonably expected his Gospel to be read alongside—not instead of—its eventually canonical counterparts" (43).

Chapter Two delivers some highly instructive reflections on Tatian's working methods. "(N)early three-fourths of the time Tatian worked with three or four Gospels simultaneously" (36), probably using waxed tablets, bookrolls, and codices in the course of his work. For some stretches, particularly portions of John that lack Synoptic parallels, Tatian may have "cannibalized" (i.e...