144 KEY. P. P. FLOURNOY, D.D., ON BEARING OF ARCH^OLOGICAL 



The importance of the discovery and publication of the 

 Diatessaron can hardly be over-estimated. In it we have all 

 that is told ns in the Four Gospels.* With all its peculiarities 

 of expression, due to mistakes of translators and transcribers, 

 there is nothing which can be traced to any of the many 

 Apocryphal Gospels. It was composed from our four Gospels. 

 The Gospels are skilfully interwovenf to give a continuous 

 account of our Saviour's wwks and teachings, and its first words 

 are from that Gospel which has been most disputed' — the Gospel 

 of John — while a much larger portion of this Gospel than of 

 any other is incorporated in it.J Its author is a well-known 

 character, the philosopher Tatian, the companion of Justin 

 Martyr. This fact dates the Diatessaron within narrow limits. 

 Tatian carried it in Syriac to the people of that tongue as early 

 as 172 A.D., and Dr. Sanday thinks it not improbable that a 

 rough draft of it had been made during Justin's lifetime, and 

 used by both Justin and Tatian in Eome. 



Justin suffered martyrdom in 163, and both he and Tatian 

 were born during the generation following the death of the 

 Apostle John, and probably in the earlier half of it, as Justin 

 had become an eminent man before the half century following 

 the Apostle's death expired. Tatian is supposed by some to 

 have been older than Justin, his teacher in Christian truth. 

 Both could have known, and in all probability did know, many 

 who knew the last Apostle. It is certain that they knew a 

 large number of Christians who were younger contemporaries of 

 the Apostle. The fact, then, that Tatian prepared a harmony 

 of the Four Gospels, using the very words of these Gospels, w^ith 

 no Apocryphal ingredients (as Ebed Jesu, the Syrian author, 

 expressed it, " and of his own he did not add a single saying "), 

 surely points to the Four Gospels as univerally recognized as 

 the sacred records of the life and teachings of our Lord, just as 

 they were in the time when Irena3us wrote his Against Heresies 

 (183 A.D.) ; and that no other so-called Gospels were thus 

 recognized and generally used. 



The genealogies were probably omitted in the Syriac, though they 

 are found in the two Arabic MSS. 



t Glancing down a page of the Diatessaron^ I find all four Gospels 

 drawn on to make four lines, 



X According to a careful estimate of Professor G. F. Moore the 

 Diatessaron contains 50 per cent, of St. Mark, 66 per cent, of St. Luke, 

 76*5 per cent, of St. Matthew, and 96 per cent, of St. John. {Ante-Nicene 

 Fathers. Allan Menzies, D.D. The Christian Literature Co., N.Y., 

 vol. ix, p. 29.) 



