On the Syriac Diatessaron Beginning With "The Gospel of Jesus Christ"

[Secret Alias]

With the assistance of the Most High God, we begin to transcribe the Holy Gospel and most beautiful garden, entitled Diatessaron, the interpretation of which expression is, That which is composed of four, and which Tatian, a Greek, compiled out'of the four evangelists, Matthew the chosen, whose sign is M; Mark the selected, whose sign is R; Luke the lovable, whose sign is Ķ ; and John the beloved , whose sign is H. The excellent and learned presbyter Abû - l - Faraj Abdullah Ibn - at - Tabîb , with whom God be pleased , translated it from the Syriac into the Arabic tongue. And he said as a beginning, The Gospel of Jesus the Son of the living God.

Based on the translation of Ciasca.

[Secret Alias]

On "The Gospel of Jesus the Son of the living God" being an unrecognized variant of Mark 1:1

https://www.academia.edu/1175075/A_Text ... 91_621_629

[Stuart]

My suspicion is the first gospel was titled, or rather marked in the upper margin, as the "Gospel of (Jesus) Christ." Mark versified that title from the document he used by adding one word "the beginning" (Ἀρχὴ). The son of God is not in all manuscripts, seems like a pious scribe addition.

I have long though the original title of the prototype was simply read the "τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ΧΥ," where Χ could be swapped for Κ to read "the gospel of the Lord" as Harnack suggested Marcionites read. We see examples of "the gospel of Christ" throughout Paul (1 Corinthians 9:12, 2 Corinthians 2:12, 9:13, 10:14, Galatians 1:7, Philippians 1:27, 1 Thessalonians 3:2, 2 Thessalonians 1:8). The opposing "Gospel of God" appears only in post-Marcionite or anti-Marcionite passages, often with reference to Davidic origin or Jesus' subservience to God. There does seem to have been some delineation of theological position discernable in the choice of term.

[MrMacSon]

With the assistance of the Most High God, we begin to transcribe the Holy Gospel and most beautiful garden, entitled Diatessaron, the interpretation of which expression is, That which is composed of four, and which Tatian, a Greek, compiled out'of the four evangelists, Matthew the chosen, whose sign is M; Mark the selected, whose sign is R; Luke the lovable, whose sign is Ķ ; and John the beloved , whose sign is H. The excellent and learned presbyter Abû - l - Faraj Abdullah Ibn - at - Tabîb, with whom God be pleased, translated it from the Syriac into the Arabic tongue. And he said as a beginning, "The Gospel of Jesus the Son of the living God."

Based on the translation of Ciasca.

It may only be the beginning [prologue] as the result of Abû-l-Faraj Abdullah [Ibn]'s translated version (?)

[Stuart]

Good point Mac, and probably the correct one. The prescript could well be from the translator.

[Secret Alias]

Really. So "the gospel of Jesus" something or other isn't likely the original name of the gospel. That's out of hand wrong.

[Stuart]

Really. So "the gospel of Jesus" something or other isn't likely the original name of the gospel. That's out of hand wrong.

Well, it's a prescript. The earliest manuscripts are not actually titled like you find in your bible today, but had some label in the upper margin, or sometimes after the entire letter or book. These are almost always in a different hand, usually finer print (think smaller font).

People very early gave the letters and gospels names to reference them by. The very first gospel(s), when they started to be identified as such, were almost certainly referred to by something like "The Gospel of Christ." Mark is sufficiently late in the process that a prescript from his source was versified.

When multiple gospels were accepted, the prescripts (or in some case postscript) often didn't even say gospel, rather "according to" (κατὰ) Luke/Mark/John/Matthew. This was simply to identify them. But what is more, it means that is all that was necessary for people at the time to know which book you were referring to. As time wore on the prescripts got longer and including all sorts of lore.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the titles were not written, but prescripts were. Mark knew the title from the prescripts and versified it, in his typical inane way of stating the obvious.

It appears the replacement in Paul and elsewhere of "Gospel of Christ" with "Gospel of God" appears to be related to sectarian differences to emphasize theological points. The former emphasized Jesus as God, while the latter emphasized his humanness and his subservience to the Father. That the latter form is entirely missing from the Marcionite text alerts us also to it being later.

[Secret Alias]

This is one time where "where there's smoke there's fire" is certainly true. There was a gospel written by Paul which resembled Mark.

[MrMacSon]

It's weird that the-Gospel-attributed-to-Mark has so many hallmarks of being based on the Pauline epistles (and, as rgprice argues, G.Mark's Jesus seems to be based on Paul himself), yet legend has it that the author of G.Mark was a 'hearer' of Peter

There's so many 'mis-alignments' or 'nonalignments' among the early Christian literature based on the traditions of their transmissions, eg., the gospels not even mentioning Paul

[Secret Alias]

Part of the subordination of the Marcionite apostle.