Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, & History in Scholarship (review)

Reviewed by: Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, SigniÞcance, & History in Scholarship Robert A. Kitchen William L. Petersen. Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, SigniÞcance, & History in Scholarship. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 25. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994. Pp. xix + 555. Nlg, 220/US$125.75. Most monographs in Early Christian Studies do battle with a text, a person, or an event. William Petersen’s Tatian’s Diatessaron confronts a text that no modern scholar has seen, a personality cloaked in obscurity, and a series of events and consequences derived from these shadows. Petersen has resurrected a fresh form of the traditional Handbuch to organize an imposing amount of material. Since the text of the Diatessaron eludes complete and direct description, Petersen’s primary approach has been to relate the story of Diatessaronic scholarship. With “scholarship is biography” as the hermeneutic, the narration winds through one of the most complex trails in biblical scholarship by an impressive recovery of all the witnesses (texts) and scholars involved. One reads of scholars almost forgotten: J. C. Zahn, C. W. M. Grein, Theodore Zahn; as well as the more renowned and contemporary: Adolf von Harnack, F. C. Burkitt, Daniel Plooij, Anton Baumstark, Curt Peters, Guiles Quispel, Tjitze Baarda, Louis Leloir, William Petersen and M. É. Boismard. There are numerous tales to be recounted along the way: J. C. Zahn’s difÞculty in obtaining access to MS Junius 13 at Oxford’s Bodleian Library; the mysterious disappearance of the Utrecht Harmony loaned to Baumstark at Bonn during the height of World War II; the tragic death and loss to scholarly endeavor of Baumstark’s student Curt Peters; the discovery of the Syriac version of Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron; the innovative work of Guiles Quispel and the vigorous response to his theories. The point is continually made that Diatessaronic scholars need to be cognizant of the other realms in the Þeld, which means that Orientalists and New Testament textual critics must be familiar with a number of the principal Western witnesses. Petersen introduces us to the Latin harmony Codex Fuldensis copied by Victor of Capua, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Middle Dutch Liège Harmony, the Middle Italian Venetian and Tuscan Harmonies; as well as the lesser known Arabic and Persian Harmonies in the East. Reviewing the publications and evidence with an even hand, Petersen sympathetically places each contribution in context whenever the conclusions of his predecessors and contemporaries are found lacking. A rare and admirable quality among modern scholars. Petersen’s opening doxology in his Acknowledgments, “This book is an act of piety, for it pays homage to an extraordinary tradition of scholarship” (ix), sets the tone he maintains throughout the volume. There is a quiet, but fervent passion permeating Petersen’s odyssey for he publicly holds himself accountable—as well as his past and present colleagues—to a rigorous methodology in examining the evidence. Since much of the evidence comes through the discernment of textual variants, the problem is that overenthusiastic scholars frequently stretched too far the validity of a variant in search [End Page 583] of the elusive Diatessaron. If for nothing else, Petersen’s volume will be recognized for its presentation of a systematic scholarly method in the study of Diatessaronic materials. The unique part of Petersen’s work is a long chapter on “Using the Diatessaron” in which he systematizes the dos and don’ts of the approach to this text. Following the explanation of eight methodological “Problems,” Petersen gives a list of seven Logical Principles to guide Diatessaronic studies; and lastly three “Criteria for determining the probability that a variant is Diatessaronic.” Petersen then displays nine exhibits of texts which are possible witnesses to the Diatessaron (378–425), presenting a detailed methodology, a few critical alternatives, and a good number of extended cases in which the methodology is carried out. A somewhat courageous approach, but since Diatessaronic methods have at times been notoriously inconsistent, Petersen is willing to be explicit about his approach. An example is in his exposition of the Diatessaronic witness for the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:33–34) (Exhibit 5). Petersen makes here the case for Syriac as the...