The Diates­saron And Its Con­flict With The New Tes­ta­ment Gospels

The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary Sam Shamoun writes in his rebut­tal to Islam­ic Aware­ness’ arti­cle, ​“Is the Bible in Our Hands the Same as Dur­ing the Time of Muham­mad^(P)?” as follows :

It seems that Sai­ful­lah con­fus­es two issues when address­ing the claims of Jochen Katz that the Holy Bible of Muham­mad’s day is the same as our present day Bible. Sai­ful­lah con­fus­es the con­tent of Scrip­ture with the canon of Scrip­ture. The point is not the canon per se, but whether the con­tent of our present day Bible is the same as in the days of Muhammad.

Let us exam­ine the claim made by the mis­sion­ary. Before we pro­ceed fur­ther it is impor­tant to make it clear the Mus­lim posi­tion on the Bible. There is ample proof to the believ­er that Islam­ic the­ol­o­gy does indeed con­sid­er the Bible as cor­rupt and the Qur’an is the Guardian (muhaymin) over all oth­er scrip­tures to fil­ter out false­hood from the truth, regard­less of how the mis­sion­ar­ies mis­in­ter­pret the Qur’an and ahadeeth.

The pur­pose of this rebut­tal is only to prove that the con­tent of the Diates­saron is not the same as the cur­rent con­tent in the New Tes­ta­ment gospels.

A. Voobus, a Bib­li­cal schol­ar, informs us that thus :

Tat­ian did not only re-arrange the evan­gel­i­cal tra­di­tion into a har­mo­ny, but when com­pos­ing the Diates­saron left his fin­ger­prints on its pages.A. Voobus, Ear­ly Ver­sions of the New Tes­ta­ment (PETSE 6 ; Stock­holm, 1954) 22

Let us take this oppor­tu­ni­ty ana­lyze what these fin­ger­prints were.

Divin­i­ty of Christ is a cor­ner­stone of Chris­tian­i­ty ; there­fore it is safe to con­clude that if the divin­i­ty of Christ is not men­tioned in the Diates­saron, then a major part of Chris­tian­i­ty is missing. 

Let us see what schol­ars have to say about the Diates­saron :

Ishodad of Merv (bish­op of Hed­hat­ta ca AD 850) in his descrip­tion of the Diates­saron said : ​“Tatianos…selected from the four gospels and com­bined and com­posed a Gospel and called it Diates­saron…and on the Divin­i­ty of Christ he did not write.“J.R. Har­ris, Frag­ments of the Com­men­tary of Ephrem Syrus upon the Diates­saron (Lon­don, 1895) 14

It is an indis­putable fact that Tat­ian was con­sid­ered a heretic due to his Encratite ten­den­cies. Let us now analyse whether Tatian’s Diates­saron reflects his Christology.

Such touch­es have often been not­ed in the area of Tatian’s atti­tude towards mar­riage and in par­tic­u­lar to the par­ents of JesusCf. Met­zger, Ver­sions, 34f. So, for exam­ple, the fol­low­ing changes were made :

Matt 1:19 : ​“her hus­band Joseph, being a just man…”
Diates­saron : ​“Joseph, because he was a just man…“Ephraem (Hill, Dis­ser­ta­tion, 7:8 ; Per­sian I.4 (Messi­na, 17).

Luke 2:33 : ​“his father and his mother”
Diates­saron : ​“Joseph and his moth­er“Ara­bic Dia. 2.41 ; Per­sian I.6 (Messi­na, 23); Dutch : ​“Joseph and Mary” (Liege, 29).

Luke 2:41, 43 : ​“his parents”
Diates­saron : ​“his kinsfolk…Joseph and his moth­er.“Ara­bic Dia. 3.25, 27 ; Per­sian (I.13 ; Messi­na, 31) fol­lows the Ara­bic exact­ly, the Dutch sup­plies ​“Joseph and Mary” for the first, and sim­ply ​“they did not know of it” for the sec­ond (Liege, 35f).

By means of these changes Tat­ian obscures the rela­tion­ship between Joseph and Mary.For bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion see J.M. Fuller, Tatianus, DCB IV (1887) 783 – 804 ; E. Preuschen, Unter­suchun­gen zum Diates­saron Tatians, S.H.A.W. (Ph‑h. Kl) IX:15 (1918) 8 – 30 ; Whit­tak­er, Tat­ian, ix-xvii.

Anoth­er notable ten­den­cy found in the Ara­bic Diates­saron is the sub­sti­tu­tion of ​“Jesus” for Luke’s ref­er­ences to ​“the Lord” in the nar­ra­tive settings :

Luke Ara­bic Diates­saron :None of the fol­low­ing are attest­ed in Ephrem’s com­men­tary. But all are sup­port­ed by the Ara­bic and at least one of the oth­er versions.

7:13 : ​“when the Lord saw her…”
11.19 ​“Jesus saw…“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 108); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (I.69, Messi­na, 90f)

7:19 : ​“sent them to the Lord…”
13.39 ​“he sent them to Jesus“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 143); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (I.70, Messi­na, 90f)

10:1a : ​“the Lord appoint­ed seventy”
15.15 ​“Jesus appoint­ed…“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 151); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (III.7, Messi­na, 202f)

10:41 : ​“the Lord answered her…”
13.34 ​“Jesus answered…“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 142); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (III.26, Messi­na, 226f)

11:39 : ​“the Lord said to him…”
20.14 ​“Jesus said…“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 215); Per­sian : no intro (II.10, Messi­na, 112f)

12:42 : ​“And the Lord said.…”
43.2 : ​“Jesus said…“Dutch : not attest­ed ; Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (I.63, Messi­na, 82f)

13:15:“Then the Lord answered…”
27.45 ​“Jesus answered…“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 329); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (II.22, Messi­na, 128f)

19:8 : ​“and said to the Lord…”
31.22 “…said to Jesus“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 398); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (III.32, Messi­na, 232f)

22:61 : ​“And the Lord turned…”
49.16 ​“Jesus turned…“Dutch : ​“Jesus” (Liege, 701); Per­sian : ​“Jesus” (IV.40, Messi­na, 342f)

Although this short expo­si­tion is not intend­ed as an exhaus­tive rebut­tal, it is suf­fi­cient to show that the mis­sion­ar­ies are either patho­log­i­cal liars or extreme­ly igno­rant about the sub­ject mat­ter. The Diates­saron was in fact dif­fer­ent at the time of the Prophet Muham­mad^(P) in con­tent and in the canon as has been estab­lished by Islam­ic Aware­ness. Fur­ther­more, from Sam Shamoun’s rebut­tal, it is evi­dent that the mis­sion­ary has in fact accept­ed that Diates­saron was the only avail­able Gospel at the time of Muham­mad^(P). There­fore, it is also equal­ly clear that if the Diates­saron did indeed dif­fer in con­tent and canon, his whole argu­ment falls flat on its face.

And Allah knows best.