03-10-2009, 10:06 PM
Quote:What would you like me to look at in particular. As I mentioned I have been actively investigating this topic for 8 years or so.
If you have some evidence that the diatessaron predates the peshitta, then I am all ears.
How long you've investigated the topic is irrelevant. Did you do hardcore research or buy a few books on the subject, only to browse through a few pages? If the former, has it been peer-reviewed? If not, then 8 or 18 yrs doesn't matter.
What did Christians use as 'scripture' before the second century? According to Bruce Metzger:
For early Jewish Christians the Bible consisted of the Old Testament and some Jewish apocryphal literature. Along with this written authority went traditions, chiefly oral, of sayings attributed to Jesus. On the other hand, authors who belonged to the 'Hellenistic Wing' of the Church refer more frequently to writings that later came to be included in the New Testament. At the same time, however, they very rarely regarded such documents as 'Scripture'.
Furthermore, there was as yet no conception of the duty of exact quotation from books that were not yet in the full sense canonical. Consequently, it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to ascertain which New Testament books were known to early Christian writers; our evidence does not become clear until the end of second century. (Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development, p 72-73)
Accordingly, there were two groups: The "Hellenistic Wing" and the "Jewish Christians." Before the second century, the Jewish Christians possessed "traditions, chiefly oral, of sayings attributed to Jesus."
What did come first was Tatian's Diatessaron, which is dated 170-175 CE, of which is said:
It would seem, therefore, that at a quite early stage the Diatessaron was very widely if not universally read in the Syriac churches, and commented on by scholars as the gospel; that in time it fell under the condemnation of some at least of the church leaders, who made violent efforts to suppress it; that it could not be suppressed; that a commentary on it was (perhaps in the fifth century45 ) translated into Armenian; that it was still discussed by commentators, and new Syriac mss. of it made in the ninth century, and thought worth the labor of reproduction in Arabic in the beginning of the eleventh century; that mss. of the Armenian volume continued to be made down to the very end of the twelfth century, and of the Arabic edition down to the fourteenth century; but that this long life was secured at the expense of a more or less rapid assimilation of the text to that of the great Syriac Bible which from the fourth century onwards became more and more exclusively used-the Peshitta. (Roberts-Donaldson Intro. to the Diatessaron)
In the fourth century, the Peshitta arose. According to Bruce Meztger, the Peshitta
...represents for the New Testament an accomodation of the canon of the Syrians with that of the Greeks. Third Corinthians was rejected, and, in addition to the fourteen Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews, following Philemon), three longer Catholic Epistles (James, 1 Peter, and 1 John) were included. The four shorter Catholic Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude) and the Apocalypse are absent from the Peshitta Syriac version, and thus the Syriac canon of the New Testament contained but twenty-two writings. For a large part of the Syrian Church this constituted the closing of the canon, for after the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) the East Syrians separated themselves as Nestorians from the Great Church (Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament: Its Origin, Significance & Development, pp. 227-228)
It arose for an interesting reason:
Still today the official lectionary followed by the Syrian Orthodox Church, with headquarters at Kottayam (Kerala), and the Chaldean Syriac Church, also known as the the Church of the East (Nestorian), with headquarters at Trichur (Kerala), presents lessons from only the twenty-two books of Peshitta, the version to which appeal is made for the settlement of doctrinal questions (ibid)
Conclusions: The Diatessaron came before the Peshitta. The Peshitta arose centuries later. It's unclear, at best, to determine what Syriac Churches used beforehand.