Ian Mills: Tatian’s Diatessaron as “Canonical” Gospel: Walter Bauer and the Reception of Christian “Apocrypha”

Up through the fifth century, the life of Jesus was known in the Syriac speaking east not from the four canonical gospels but a single, continuous narrative – Tatian’s so-called Diatessaron.Attributed by some late antique commentators to the pen of Jesus himself, this gospel was used liturgically, became the object of commentaries, and rivaled the subsequently introduced “separate gospels.” As such, Tatian’s Diatessaron is often ignored by scholars attempting to reify canonical boundaries. Not a single criterion for canonicity enumerated in Marcus Bockmuehl’s recent attempt to advance a Eusebian vision of gospel origins can distinguish Tatian’s gospel from the canonical collection. Furthermore, Tatian’s gospel is the best documented instance of the formal suppression of once-authoritative Christian scripture – a phenomenon now widely denied. While the Diatessaro nis not unique among “apocryphal” books in any of these particular details, its third through thirteenth century reception history offers unrecognized support for Walter Bauer’s account of the origins of Christian scripture.