Appendix: Marcion’s Gospel and Tatian’s Diatessaron

Appendix: Marcion’s Gospel and Tatian’s Diatessaron.

A short time after Marcion, Tatian — probably also in Rome — produced his “Diatessaron.” He shared the ascetic principles with M.; he taught, like him, a Demiurge, even if he judged him more favorably; he denied Adam salvation, and he composed a work, unfortunately not preserved to us, whose title, “Problems,” recalls M.’s “Antitheses.” The conjecture therefore suggests itself that his Gospel-work had a certain kinship with the Marcionite one. In fact, the genealogies of Jesus were also absent from the Diatessaron, and at Luke 2:34 Tatian struck out “many in Israel,” and at Matthew 1:20 the Davidic sonship. But beyond this, so far as I can see, no related features can be found between the two Gospels. Insofar as M.’s Western text agrees with the Curetonian Syriac, and Tatian’s text stands close to this, there exists a [p. 237*] kinship;¹ but M.’s tendentious corrections exercised no influence on Tatian. One may therefore also assume that he made the corrections noted above for reasons other than M.’s, and uninfluenced by him.

Like M., Tatian too rejected the Epistles to Timothy; he retained, however, the Epistle to Titus (see Origen in Jerome, Comm. in Titum, Praef., and Clement, Strom. II, 11, 52).

[Translator’s note: This closes “C. Untersuchungen zum Evangelium Marcions” and, with it, the whole of Beilage IV, “Das Evangelium Marcions” (pp. 159*–237*). Harnack’s text continues immediately with Beilage V, “Die Überlieferung über die Lehre Marcions und über seine Kirche” (“The Tradition Concerning Marcion’s Teaching and Concerning His Church”), which falls outside the scope of the present reconstruction.]