Greek vs. Aramaic

[yuku]

You need to demonstrate to me 2 things - (1) that the Church of the Persian Empire used the Diatesseron (or Old Scratch) - (2) and then you need to demonstrate to me that they suppressed it (either the Diatesseron or the Old Scratch.)

So far, you have done neither. :?

Shlama, Akhi Paul!

It is a general view among the Textual Scholars that Mar Aphrahat used the Diatessaron when he cited the gospels. For example,

(quote)

Aphraat
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ccel.org/w/wace/biodict/htm/iii.i.xiii.htm">http://www.ccel.org/w/wace/biodict/htm/iii.i.xiii.htm</a><!-- m -->

The language is Syriac, the quotations from the O.T. are taken from the Peshitta, but in the N.T. he quotes the Gospels from the Diatessaron.

(unquote)

More recently, the same conclusion has been reached by Baarda in the following volume.

T. Baarda, THE GOSPEL QUOTATIONS OF APHRAHAT, THE PERSIAN SAGE: Aphrahat's text of the Fourth Gospel. 2 vols. (Diss.). Amsterdam, 1975.

I don't know if the Church of the East suppressed the Diatessaron, but the fact that the Syriac Diatessaron no longer exists speaks for itself, and certainly tends to give grounds for such a suspicion.

(Aphrahat, Demonstrations 57:04) )$tm(t clwtk qdm )lh)
"Thy prayer hath been heard _before God_."

(Old Syriac Luke 1:13) h) gyr $m( )lh) bql clwtk
_God_ hath hearkened to the voice of thy prayer.

So what we see in this case is that Aphrahat, Ephrem, the Diatessaron, and the OS all agree, because they all mention God in this verse. But the Peshitta agrees with the Greek, and neither mentions God in this verse.

First of all, I have to correct myself here. I previously said that Ephrem and Aphrahat agree exactly on this quote, and I based that on Burkitt's comments in his 1904 edition of the Curetonian MS. But Burkitt only had access to the Armenian translation of Ephrem.

Well, now we do have the Syriac Ephrem (published since the 1960s), and according to McCarthy [C. McCarthy, ST. EPHREM'S COMMENTARY ON TATIAN'S DIATESSARON, Oxford, 1993], this is how Ephrem cited this verse 3 times,

"God has heard the voice of your prayer".

So this looks the same as the OS Sinaiticus version. And since Ephrem cited this verse 3 times, the possibility of a mistake is very small.

Therefore, since Ephrem and the OS Sinaiticus agree, this must be a valid version as used by the ancient Syriac Church.

You also asked me where I found this verse in the Diatessaron. I have found it both in the Persian Diatessaron, and in the Magdalene Gospel (the English Diatessaron). They both say that Zacharias' prayer "was heard before God".

And so, they have this phrase in the same form as was used by Mar Aphrahat.

But again, the original point was about Old Scratch. Not about the Diatesseron.

It is widely agreed among Textual Scholars that Aphrahat, the Diatessaron, and the Old Syriac gospels have many areas of agreement between them in those passages where the Peshitta goes with the Greek text. Many examples of that can be cited.

Shlama,

Yuri.