Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

stance that the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem was bound to a vine, in order to bring the event into connection with Genesis xlix. 11." (Theol. Review, xiv. 328.)

These evidences of Justin's use of the Gospel of John are strengthened somewhat by an indication, which has been generally overlooked, of his use of the First Epistle of John. In 1 John iii. I we read, according to the text now adopted by the best critics, as Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort, "Behold what love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and we are so"; ἵνα τέκνα θεοῦ κληθῶμεν, καὶ ἐσμέν. This addition to the common text, kaì ¿ouév, "and we are," is supported by a great preponderance of external evidence. Compare now Justin (Dial. c. 123): "We are both called true children of God, and we are so ; καὶ θεοῦ τέκνα ἀληθινὰ καλούμεθα Kaì čoμév. The coincidence seems too remarkable to be accidental. Hilgenfeld takes the same view (Einleit. in d. N. T., p. 69), and so Ewald (Die johan. Schriften, ii. 395, Anm. 4).

[ocr errors]

It also deserves to be considered that, as Justin wrote a work "Against all Heresies" (Apol. i. 26), among which he certainly included those of Valentinus and Basilides (Dial. c. 35), he could hardly have been ignorant of a book which, according to Irenæus, the Valentinians used plenissime, and to which the Basilidians and apparently Basilides himself also appealed (Hippol. Ref. Hær. vii. 22, 27). Credner recognizes the weight of this argument.* It can only be met by maintaining what is altogether improbable, that merely the later Valentinians and Basilidians made use of the Gospel, a point which we shall examine hereafter.

In judging of the indications of Justin's use of the Fourth Gospel, the passages cited in addition to those which relate to his Logos doctrine will strike different persons differently. There will be few, however, I think, who will not feel that the one first discussed (that relating to the new birth) is in itself almost a decisive proof of such a use, and that the one relating to John the Baptist (c) is also strong. In regard to

*Geschichte des neutest. Kanon (1860), p. 15 f.; comp. pp. 9, 12.

not a few others, while the possibility of accidental agreement must be conceded, the probability is decidedly against this, and the accumulated probabilities form an argument of no little weight. It is not then, I believe, too much to say, that the strong presumption from the universal reception of our four Gospels as sacred books in the time of Irenæus that Justin's "Memoirs of Christ composed by Apostles and their companions" were the same books, is decidedly confirmed by these evidences of his use of the Fourth Gospel. We will next consider the further confirmation of this fact afforded by writers who flourished between the time of Justin and Irenæus, and then notice some objections to the view which has been presented.

The most weighty testimony is that of Tatian, the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin. His literary activity may be placed at about A.D. 155-170 (Lightfoot). In his "Address to the Greeks" he repeatedly quotes the Fourth Gospel, though without naming the author, in one case using the expression (rò eipnμévov) which is several times employed in the New Testament (e.g. Acts ii. 16; Rom. iv. 18) in introducing a quotation from the Scriptures; see his Orat. ad Græc. c. 13, "And this then is that which hath been said, The darkness comprehendeth [or overcometh] not the light" (John i. 5); see also c. 19 (John i. 3); c. 4 (John iv. 24).* Still more important is the fact that he composed a Harmony of our Four Gospels which he called the Diatessaron (i.e. “the Gospel made out of Four"). This fact is attested by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iv. 29),† Epiphanius (Hær. xlvi. 1), who, however, writes from hearsay, and Theodoret, who in his work on Heresies (Hær. Fab. i. 20) says that he found more than two hundred copies of the book held in esteem in his diocese, and substituted for it copies of our Four Gospels.

* Even Zeller does not dispute that Tatian quotes the Fourth Gospel, and ascribed it to the Apostle John. (Theol. Jahrb. 1847, p. 158.)

† An expression used by Eusebius (ovк oid' öπwç, literally, "I know not how") has been misunderstood by many as implying that he had not seen the work; but Lightfoot has shown conclusively that this inference is wholly unwarranted. It only implies that the plan of the work seemed strange to him. See Contemporary Review for May, 1877, p. 1136, where Lightfoot cites 26 examples of this use of the phrase from the work of Origen against Celsus.

[blocks in formation]

He tells us that Tatian, who is supposed to have prepared the Harmony after he became a Gnostic Encratite, had "cut away the genealogies and such other passages as show the Lord to have been born of the seed of David after the flesh." But notwithstanding this mutilation, the work seems to have been very popular in the orthodox churches of Syria as a convenient compendium. The celebrated Syrian Father, Ephraem, the deacon of Edessa, who died A.D. 373, wrote a commentary on it, according to Dionysius Bar-Salibi, who flourished in the last part of the twelfth century. Bar-Salibi was well acquainted with the work, citing it in his own Commentary on the Gospels, and distinguishing it from the Diatessaron of Ammonius, and from a later work by Elias Salamensis, also called Aphthonius. He mentions that it began with John i. I—"In the beginning was the Word." (See Assemani, Biblioth. Orient. ii. 158 ff.) Besides Ephraem, Aphraates, an earlier Syrian Father (A.D. 337) appears to have used it (Hom. i. p. 13 ed. Wright); and in the Doctrine of Addai, an apocryphal Syriac work, written probably not far from the middle of the third century, which purports to give an account of the early history of Christianity at Edessa, the people are represented as coming together "to the prayers of the service, and to [the reading of] the Old Testament and the New of the Diatessaron."* The Doctrine of Addai does not name the author of the Diatessaron thus read; but the facts already mentioned make the presumption strong that it was Tatian's. A scholion on Cod. 72 of the Gospels cites "Tatian's Gospel" for a remarkable reading of Matt. xxvii. 49 found in many ancient MSS.; and

*In Cureton's Ancient Syriac Documents (Lond. 1864) the text, published from a MS. in the British Museum, is here corrupt, reading Ditonron, a word without meaning; comp. Pratten's Syriac Documents (1871), p. 25, note, in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xx. Cureton conjectured that the true reading was Diatessaron (see his note, p. 158), and his conjecture is confirmed by the St. Petersburg MS. published by Dr. George Phillips, The Doctrine of Addai, London, 1876; see his note, p. 34 f. Cureton's Syriac text (p. 15), as well as his translation (p. 15), reads Ditonron, not Ditor non, as Lightfoot, Pratten, and Phillips erroneously state, being misled by a misprint in Cureton's note. Phillips gives the reading correctly in the note to his Syriac text (p. 36). Moesinger, in the work described below, is also misled, spelling the word Diathurnun (Præf. p. iv). The difference between Ditonron and Diatessaron in the Syriac is very slight, affecting only a single letter.

*

it is also cited for a peculiar reading of Luke vii. 42.* So far the evidence is clear, consistent, and conclusive; but on the ground of a confusion between Tatian's Harmony and that of Ammonius on the part of a Syrian writer of the thirteenth century (Gregorius Abulpharagius or Bar-Hebræus), and of the two persons by a still later writer, EbedJesu, both of which confusions can be traced to a misunderstanding of the language of Bar-Salibi, and for other reasons equally weak, † the fact that Tatian's work was a Harmony of our Four Gospels has been questioned by some German critics, and of course by Supernatural Religion. But the whole subject has been so thoroughly discussed and its obscurities so well cleared up by Bishop Lightfoot, in an article in the Contemporary Review for May, 1877, that the question may be regarded as settled. ‡ Lightfoot's view is confirmed by the recent publication of Ephraem's Commentary on the

*See Tischendorf, N. T. Gr. ed. 8va, on Matt. xxvii. 49, and Scholz, N.T. Gr., vol. i., p. cxlix., and p. 243, note x.

† Such as that Victor of Capua (A.D. 545) says that it was called Diapente (i.e., "made out of five "). But this is clearly a slip of the pen of Victor himself, or a mistake of some scribe; for, as Hilgenfeld (Einleit. p. 79, note) and Lightfoot remark, Victor is simply reporting Eusebius's account of it, and not only does Eusebius say that Tatian called it the Diatessaron, but Victor himself has just described it as “unum ex quatuor." The strange mistake, for it can be nothing else, may possibly be accounted for by the fact that Diatessaron and Diapente being both musical terms, one might naturally recall the other, and lead to an unconscious substitution on the part of some absent-minded copyist. Under no circumstances can any inference about the composition of the work be drawn from this Diapente, for Victor derives his information from Eusebius, and not only do all the Greek MSS. in the passage referred to read Diatessaron, but this reading is confirmed by the very ancient, probably contemporary, Syriac version of Eusebius, preserved in a MS. of the sixth century, and by the Latin version of Rufinus, made a century and a half before Victor wrote. (See Lightfoot, p. 1143.) The mistake ascribed to the Syriac lexicographer Bar-Bahlul is proved to be due to an interpolator. (See Lightfoot, p. 1139, note.) The statement of Epiphanius, the most untrustworthy and blundering of the Fathers, that "it is called by some the Gospel according to the Hebrews" (Hær. xlvi. 1), if it had any foundation beyond a mere guess of the writer, may have originated from the omission of the genealogies, which were omitted also in one form of the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Epiph. Har. Xxx. 13, 14). The supposition that it was that Gospel contradicts all our information about the two works except the circumstance just mentioned; and that it had additions from that Gospel is a conjecture for which we have not a particle of evidence. (See Lightfoot, p. 1141; Lipsius in Smith and Wace's Dict. of Christian Biog. ii. 714.)

To Lightfoot's article I am much indebted. The other writers who treat of the subject most fully are Credner, Beiträge u.s.w., i. 437-451, who has thrown more darkness upon it than anybody else; Daniel, Tatianus der Apologet (Halle, 1837), pp. 87-111, who has refuted Credner's arguments; Semisch, Tatiani Diatessaron, Vratisl. 1856; Hilgenfeld, Einleit. in d. N.T. (1875), pp. 75-79; Supernatural Religion, vol. ii., pp. 148-159, 7th ed.; and E. B. Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews (London, 1879), p. 16 f., and pp. 126-133, who does not appear to have seen Lightfoot's article, but exposes independently many of the errors and fallacies of Supernatural Religion. See also Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels, iii. 292 ff.

Diatessaron, to which I have already had occasion to refer. * This exists only in an Armenian version of the Syriac, made, it is supposed, in the fifth century. The Armenian text was published in the second volume of the collected Works of St. Ephraem in Armenian, printed at Venice in 1836 (4 vols. 8vo); but Aucher's Latin translation of the Commentary, revised and edited by G. Moesinger, who compared it with another Armenian manuscript, first appeared at Venice in 1876, and the work has hitherto been almost unnoticed by scholars.† It should be observed that Ephraem's commentary is only on select passages of the Harmony, unless the work which has come down to us is merely an abridgment. But there seems to be no ground for questioning the genuineness of the work ascribed to Ephraem; and little or no ground for doubting that the Harmony on which he is commenting is Tatian's, in accordance with the account of Dionysius Bar-Salibi. ‡ It agrees with what we know of Tatian's in omitting the genealogies and in beginning with the first verse of the Gospel of John. Further, the character of the text, so far as we can judge of it from a translation of a translation, is such as to lend confirmation to the view that it is Tatian's. It presents some very ancient various readings which accord remarkably with those of Justin Martyr and other early writers, and with the Curetonian Syriac where it differs from the later Peshito. |

*See Note A, no. 4.

†The volume is entitled: Evangelii concordantis Expositio facta a Sancto Ephraemo Doctore Syro. In Latinum translata a R. P. Joanne Baptista Aucher Mechitarista cujus Versionem emendavit, Adnotationibus illustravit et edidit Dr. Georgius Moesinger. Venetiis, Libraria PP. Mechitaristarum in Monasterio S. Lazari. 1876. 8vo. pp. xii., 292. Lipsius, art. Gospels, Apocryphal, in Smith and Wace's Dict. of Christian Biog., vol. ii. (London, 1880), p. 713, is not even aware that the Armenian translation has been published. + See Moesinger, ubi supra, Præf. p. ii. ff.

|| We find, for example, the very ancient punctuation or construction which ends the sentence in John i. 3 with ovde ev, “not even one thing," connecting ô yeyovev with ver. 4. (See Moesinger's edition, p. 5.) This accords with the citation of the passage by Tatian (Orat. ad Græc. c. 19). In Matt. i. 25, we read "sancte (or in sanctitate) habitabat cum ea" (Moesinger, pp. 23, 25, 26); so the Curetonian Syriac. In Matt. viii. 10 (p. 74), it reads, "Non in aliquo in Israël tantam fidem inveni," with Cod. Vaticanus (B), several of the best cursives, the MSS. a gi. k q of the Old Latin, the Curetonian Syriac, Sahidic, Coptic, and Æthiopic versions, the Harclean Syriac in the margin, Augustine once, and the "Opus Imperfectum" on Matt. In Matt. xi. 27 (Moesinger, pp. 117, 216), it agrees with Justin, the Clementine Homilies, and the Gnostics in Irenæus, in the transposition of the clauses relating to the Father and the Son. (See

« ForrigeFortsett »