GREEK PAPYRI—METZGER 
gether phrases, now from this Gospel 
and now that, he would cross out these 
phrases in the four manuscripts from 
which he was copying. Otherwise it 
is difficult to understand how he was 
able to put together so successfully a 
cento of very short phrases from four 
separate documents. 
The most spectacular reading pre- 
served in this fragment is near the 
beginning. Although it rests partly 
on a restoration, and although none 
of the translations of Tatian which 
were known hitherto exhibits the 
reading, it is probable that Tatian 
referred to “the wives of those who 
had followed” Jesus from Galilee. 
This statement and the information 
which it conveys are without parallel 
in the text of the separate Gospels in 
any manuscript or version.** 
Not long after the Dura fragment 
was discovered another leaf believed 
to be from an ancient Greek harmony 
was edited. It is a page from a 
papyrus codex acquired by Professor 
Carl Schmidt in 1937 in Egypt and 
placed by him in the Berliner Staat- 
lichen Museum. It measures only 4 
inches high and 8% inches wide, and 
at least one half of the page has been 
lost. The editor dates the fragment 
at the turn of the fifth or sixth cen- 
turies. Although the text is from only 
84 Another minor difference is the absence 
of Matthew’s characterization (27:57) of 
Joseph as “a rich man.” The Arabic and 
Latin forms of the Diatessaron do not omit 
this trait. Have they added it to complete 
the harmony? Did Tatian have some sort 
of special antipathy against wealth? 
85 Otto Stegmiiller, “Ein Bruchstiick aus 
dem griechischen Diatessaron (P. 16,388),” 
Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissen- 
schaft, vol. 37, pp. 223-229, 1938. 
451 
one Gospel (it is Matt. 18:32-34; 
19:1-3, 5-7, 9-10), the editor was led 
to suspect that it goes back to Tatian 
because of the presence of so very 
many unusual variant readings within 
so few verses, many of which agree 
with readings in the Latin, Arabic, 
and other forms of the Diatessaron.*® 
Conclusion 
The study of the Greek papyri of the 
New Testament is part of the work of 
the textual critic. His work is funda- 
mental to every other Biblical or theo- 
logical inquiry. Before a text can be 
interpreted, systematized, or applied, 
it must first be made available in as 
pure a form as can be recovered. 
Moreover, besides being absolutely 
basic, the work of the textual critic is 
also more permanent than that of 
many other theological scholars. 
Unaffected by the ebb and flow of 
philosophical tides and the changing 
winds of doctrines, the painstaking 
labor of an accurate collator of Biblical 
manuscripts remains a lasting con- 
tribution to scholarship. In this field 
“the harvest truly is plenteous, but 
the laborers are few.” 
36 The veteran polyglot investigator of the 
Diatessaron, Anton Baumstark, agrees with 
the opinion of Stegmiiller; see his “Ein 
weiteres Bruchstiick griechischen ‘Diates- 
saron’ Textes,”’ Oriens Christianus, ser. 3, vol. 
14, pp. 111-115, 1939 (he is not yet convinced 
that Greek was the original language of 
Tatian’s harmony). On the other hand, 
Curt Peters, “Ein neues Fragment des 
griechischen Diatessaron?” Biblica, vol. 21, 
pp. 51-55, 1940, maintains that, although 
the Berlin fragment may show the influence 
of the Diatessaron, it is not itself a descendant 
of Tatian’s harmony; so also in his ‘“‘Neue 
Funde und Forschungen zum Diatessaron,” 
ibid., vol. 23, pp. 68-77, 1942. 
