The Diatessaron’s Birth Narrative

This post is about a 2nd century Gospel Harmonization written by a dude name Tatian, especially the birth narrative of Jesus. It's important because it validates the foul-fold Gospel's acceptance quite early and serves almost as a sort of proof text for literary criticism. If you're interested in texts from antiquity, this post is for you. If not, you may hate it.

Oh and you can find more information on the Diatessaron here.

            There are many things to be said about the construction of the Diatessaron in a general sense, especially in the proportion of and particular sections used from the four canonical gospels. When speaking about the Diatessaron’s birth narrative, the most obvious thing to notice is that Mark is wholly absent, excepting perhaps the line 78, which states “Thou shalt go forth before the face of the Lord to prepare his way, to give the knowledge of salvation unto his people, for the forgiveness of their sins…” This line almost certainly is in accord with Mark 1:4 (NASB): “John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Tatian rightly does not include any other material from Mark, as Mark only mentions the birth narrative in passing if at all, so it will be excluded from any following discussion. That having been said, the primary areas of interest in examining the Diatessaron are the attempt Tatian makes to make the account of the birth narrative and Jesus’ ministry at large seem as if it is all one flowing story, the proportionate amount of material used by each of the birth narratives from the Gospel account, and the particular items that are included and excluded from Tatian’s narrative.

            A cursory reading of the text of the Diatessaron reveals Tatian’s motive being to make a story that includes what he considers to be important. That is, the ‘narrative’ structure of the Diatessaron is much more concerned with inclusion of material than with fitting the items together in a straight line of chronology. As an example, the Diatessaron speaks at length about Zacharias five lines in and keeps bringing Elizabeth and Zacharias throughout the entire first section. Additionally, Tatian begins his narrative with an excerpt from John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God is the Word. This was in the beginning with God. Everything was by his hand, and without him not even one existing thing was made. In him was life, and the life is the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not,” a passage that seems outside of time, and then begins to talk with great specificity about the time at which John the Baptist came into the world. In fact, throughout sections one and two, Tatian seems to have only had regard for putting common items in common passages (as it would seem), and then piecing them together in a loose chronology. Perhaps the most important observation concerning the structure of the Diatessaron’s birth narrative is that Tatian neither goes to great lengths to eliminate or shorten the text nor attempts to blend verses together, but instead pieces the story together in chunks as they appear in the texts of Scripture. One caveat to this observation is that the Diatessaron is capped by John’s (the apostle) account of the birth narrative, but has the account of John the Baptist mixed in throughout; the topical seems to be outweighed by the chronological in terms of Tatian’s categories of importance.

            In terms of sheer proportionate amount of material, text from Luke represents approximately two thirds of the birth narrative, followed by approximately one sixth comprised from Matthew, one twelfth from John and one twelfth in ‘common’ textual traditions. This, more or less, is proportionate to the amount of material written by the gospel writers in their own accounts, so it makes sense that Luke is the most-used source of text. One could make the case that Matthew is under-cited; the John-Matthew-Luke proportion of texts is (comparatively) closer to 10-35-55 in the canon as opposed to the 8-16-66 proportion found in the Diatessaron. It is important to be able to compare the amount of texts used in the canon of Scripture and the Diatessaron to be able to assess Tatian’s purpose in including the particular passages he did; it seems to be useful to examine the Diatessaron through the lens of Tatian primarily relying on Luke and Matthew. This view is especially useful in light of John being used to begin and end the birth narrative.

            On a cursory reading, it seems as if the Diatessaron is more interested in the story of Zacharias, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist than the canon of scripture is. In fact, the vast majority of the material in section one is concerned with those three characters rather than with Mary, Joseph, or even the fulfillment of prophecy that is found in Matthew and Luke. However, Luke is probably more present than Matthew in the text of the Diatessaron, so it seems that Tatian probably just used all of Luke’s account (including the Magnificat) and parts of Matthew’s account (more on this in a moment). It is unclear why Tatian would include all of Luke in his harmonization when it does not paint a representative picture of the complexity of Jesus’ arrival in the way that the canon does, but it could be hypothesized that Tatian was influenced by Hellenism (maybe), the detachment of the Church from Judaism (probably), and his role as a Christian apologist (as he was a student of known apologist Justin Martyr [most likely, in my opinion]). Luke is probably the most accessible account of the Gospel, so it being used as the primary proof text is not an unreasonable venture. On this note, it is important to note at least one glaring omission from the canonical Gospel accounts: the genealogy of Jesus. This is perhaps related to the seeming contradiction of the lineages; Tatian (the apologist) probably did not want to place a stumbling block in a harmonization. There is no mention of Jesus’ connection to the characters of the Old Testament, excepting perhaps the connection of some prophecy and the story of Zacharias. Here, it does not seem that Tatian intended to divorce Christianity from Judaism (the Magnificat mentions Abraham, and there are various other innuendos), but he also did not go to great lengths to make sure the reader understood the blatant continuity between the Old and New Testaments that the canon of Scripture implies.

            On the whole, it seems as though Tatian was primarily interested in presenting the birth narrative of Jesus as very believable (in including many historical facts and references), but in doing so removed some key ideas that are present in the canon. Although there were some omissions, it seems as if the Diatessaron is exactly what it was written to be: a simplification and sort of harmonization of the Gospel accounts in the canon, even if that realistically only means the harmonization of Matthew and Luke and ‘throwing a bone’ to John. In sum, it is understandable that the early fathers did not accept the Diatessaron as authoritative over anything in the canon in that it was not quite the best understanding of the original texts; however, the birth narrative is evidence of Tatian attempting to stay true to the meaning of the text, yet offer a clearer explanation of its message.

Ending notes: Tatian was a student of Justin Martyr and was later condemned as a heretic for condemning marriage and his over-the-topic asceticism. That's pretty much all.