Diatessaron

A Gospel Harmony (Latin harmonia evangelica, harmonia evangeliorum ) tries taking into account all data on the life and ministry of Jesus, which are mentioned in the four canonical gospels to tell a unified life and performance history of Jesus.

With a Diatessaron not to be confused is the parallel arrangement of the individual Gospels in separate columns, a tool of modern research Gospels to simplify scientific comparisons, which is called synopsis. A literary development found the Gospels harmonies in the Messiaden in the wake of the 18th century.

Diatessaron of Tatian

The most famous Diatessaron of antiquity, the Diatessaron ( Greek " four ", " four " ) authored by 170 Tatian. She was commonly used as the sole text Gospels in Syriac communities. As late as the middle of the 4th century, it has used in Edessa in worship. Later it was - less because of their own content than for other writings of Tatian - condemned as heretical, so that the bishop Theodoret, confiscated and destroy all copies of 400 in his diocese. Thus, the Diatessaron was lost. We know its contents, however, for the most part in Syriac from a by St. Ephrem wrote this comment. It adheres to the chronology of John's Gospel, beginning with its opening words. The Diatessaron seems to be handled relatively freely with the text of the Gospels, but is not a paraphrase. With the exception of the two hardly harmonisierbaren genealogies of Jesus seems to have processed all the passages in the four Gospels.

The original language of the Diatessarons is unclear. In most cases, it is assumed that Tatian has written it after his return from Rome to Syria there in Syriac. A fragment from Dura Europos is preserved in the Greek language, grammatical variations of the Greek NT text can, however, suggest a reverse translation. A Syrian text output only exists in a modern attempt to reconstruct on the basis of Ephrem Diatessaronkommentar.

This Diatessaron was translated several times, so it appeared 544 in Latin, but heavily modified edition of Victor of Capua. This in turn was translated into Old High German in the 9th century in the monastery of Fulda ( Old High German Tatian ) - this was the oldest German Diatessaron. There are also important an Arabic translation from 9-10. Century and a medieval Persian translation.

Other Gospels harmonies

A second Diatessaron edited Ammonius of Alexandria in the 3rd century by laying the Gospel of Matthew to reason and referred to the other Gospels by asides. Ammonius ' work was written in the Greek language. At the time of Constantine the Great ( 306-337 ) wrote a Juvencus Diatessaron in about 2400 hexameters, which is also mainly based on Matthew.

Self harmonistic work in German language are the Gospels Book ( Liber evangeliorum ) of the monk Otfrid of White Castle and the old Saxon Heliand, both dating from the 9th century. Augustine was of such an effort a scientific directive in his De consensu evangelistarum.

More specific principles we sought since the Reformation ( and Others John Calvin, Martin Chemnitz). At that time the term " Gospel Harmony " was also first used, namely for begun by Martin Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard completed by processing the four Gospels.

Try to write a chronology of Jesus' life on a pre- enlightened basis, also came from the Lutheran reformer Andreas Osiander. Osiander argued for a harmonia evangeliorum that does not allow contradictions between the versions of the text of the four Gospels, the chronology of the life of Jesus. However, this argument forced the assertion that some " obviously parallel and identical transactions " were not identical and happen several times. This view was later abandoned in favor of finding a gospel, which have best preserved the actual sequence of events.