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78-853: It contains the Diatessaron (in lieu of the Gospels ), the 23 remaining canonical books of the New Testament , the Epistle to the Laodiceans , and a copy of Jerome 's Prologue to the Canonical Gospels . It represents the Italian text-type . The four gospels are harmonised into a single continuous narrative, according to the form of Tatian 's Diatessaron. Its text is akin to that of Codex Amiatinus . The harmonised gospel text

156-666: A discourse on mission and suffering. Jesus commissions the Twelve Disciples and sends them to preach to the Jews, perform miracles, and prophesy the imminent coming of the Kingdom, commanding them to travel lightly, without staff or sandals. Opposition to Jesus comes to a head with an accusation put forward by the Pharisees that his deeds are done through the power of Satan. Jesus in turn accuses his opponents of blaspheming

234-539: A distinct tradition, as such texts appear to underlie surviving 13th–14th century Gospel harmonies in Middle Dutch , Middle High German , Middle French , Middle English , Tuscan and Venetian ; although no example of this hypothetical Latin sub-text has ever been identified. The Liège Diatessaron is a particularly poetic example. This Latin Diatessaron textual tradition has also been suggested as underlying

312-633: A mixed manuscript; and, further corrected by Victor so as to provide a very pure Vulgate text within a modified Diatessaron sequence and to restore the two genealogies of Jesus side-by-side, this harmony, the Codex Fuldensis , survives in the monastic library at Fulda , where it served as the source text for vernacular harmonies in Old High German , Eastern Frankish and Old Saxon (the alliterative poem ' Heliand '). The older mixed Vulgate/Diatessaron text type also appears to have continued as

390-460: A sign that—due to their rejection of the Christ—the " Kingdom of Heaven " has been taken away from them and given instead to the church. The divine nature of Jesus was a major issue for the community of Matthew, the crucial element marking them from their Jewish neighbors. Early understandings of this nature grew as the gospels were being written. Before the gospels, that understanding was focused on

468-657: A trip to Jerusalem where there is an incident in the Temple , climaxing with the crucifixion on the day of the Passover holiday. John , by contrast, puts the Temple incident very early in Jesus's ministry, has several trips to Jerusalem, and puts the crucifixion immediately before the Passover holiday, on the day when the lambs for the Passover meal were being sacrificed in Temple. The early patristic scholars regarded Matthew as

546-474: Is ' ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ ܕܡܚܠܛܐ ' ( Ewangeliyôn Damhalltê ) meaning: "Gospel of the Mixed". Tatian's harmony follows the gospels closely in terms of text but, in order to fit all the canonical material in, he created his own narrative sequence, which is different from both the synoptic sequence and John's sequence; and occasionally creates intervening time periods that are found in none of the source accounts. This sequence

624-515: Is a Persian harmony that seems to have borrowed some readings from the Diatessaron . There are also Parthian texts with borrowings from the Diatessaron . The Arabic translation was made by Ibn al-Tayyib in the early 11th century from the original Syriac. Tatian was an Assyrian who was a pupil of Justin Martyr in Rome , where, Justin says, the apomnemoneumata (recollections or memoirs) of

702-469: Is amongst the earliest witnesses to this inclusion. Tatian added no significant wording to the textual material he took from the separate gospels. Only 56 verses in the canonical Gospels do not have a counterpart in the Diatessaron, mostly the genealogies and the Pericope Adulterae . The final work is about 72 per cent the length of the four gospels put together; around a quarter of the text of

780-563: Is betrayed. He is tried by the Jewish leaders (the Sanhedrin ) and before Pontius Pilate , and Pilate washes his hands to indicate that he does not assume responsibility. Jesus is crucified as king of the Jews, mocked by all. On his death there is an earthquake, the veil of the Temple is rent, and saints rise from their tombs. Mary Magdalene and another Mary discover the empty tomb, guarded by an angel , and Jesus himself tells them to tell

858-446: Is coherent and consistent within itself, but not necessarily consistent with that in all or any of the separate canonical gospels; and Tatian apparently applies the same principle in respect of the narrative itself. Where the gospels differ from one another in respect of the details of an event or teaching, the Diatessaron resolves such apparent contradictions by selecting one or another alternative wording and adding consistent details from

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936-714: Is equally unclear whether Tatian took the Syriac Gospel texts composited into his Diatessaron from a previous translation, or whether the translation was his own. Where the Diatessaron records Gospel quotations from the Jewish Scriptures, the text appears to agree with that found in the Syriac Peshitta Old Testament rather than that found in the Greek Septuagint —as used by the original Gospel authors. The majority consensus

1014-572: Is evident from the gospel that there was conflict between Matthew's group and other Jewish groups, and it is generally agreed that the root of the conflict was the Matthew community's belief in Jesus as the Messiah and authoritative interpreter of the law, as one risen from the dead and uniquely endowed with divine authority. The divine nature of Jesus was a major issue for the Matthaean community,

1092-523: Is placed by the original scribe in the margin in an unusual order, verses 36–40 before 34–35, while the text on the page is the normal order. This section is marked by umlaut in Codex Vaticanus . Several manuscripts of the Western text-type, placed section 1 Cor 14:34–35 after 1 Cor 14:40 (manuscripts: Claromontanus , Augiensis , Boernerianus , it). Also codex 88 , which is not representative of

1170-526: Is preceded by a listing of its sections, with a summary of their contents, which was copied unchanged from the Old Latin exemplar. From this it can be determined that the Old Latin source had lacked the Genealogy of Jesus (which Victor inserted); but that the source had included the passage of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery . The sequence of books follows the ordering: The section 1 Cor 14:34–35

1248-480: Is preserved in two versions: an Armenian translation preserved in two copies, and a copy of Ephrem's original Syriac text dated to the late 5th or early 6th century, which has been edited by Louis Leloir (Paris, 1966). Many other translations have been made, sometimes including substantial revisions to the text. There are translations into Arabic , Latin , Old Georgian , Old High German , Middle High German , Middle English , Middle Dutch and Old Italian . There

1326-699: Is that the Peshitta Old Testament preceded the Diatessaron, and represents an independent translation from the Hebrew Bible. Resolution of these scholarly questions remained very difficult so long as no complete version of the Diatessaron in Syriac or Greek had been recovered; while the medieval translations that had survived—in Arabic and Latin —both relied on texts that had been heavily corrected to conform better with later canonical versions of

1404-422: Is true has already been said elsewhere, with greater clarity and perspective. What it says that is new is almost always wrong, plagued [...] with philological, logical, and methodological errors, and a gross insensitivity to things historical (both within the discipline, as well as the transmission-history of texts). Reading this book fills one with dismay and despair. It is shocking that a work which does not rise to

1482-507: The Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. The gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees with the position that through their rejection of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven has been taken away from them and given instead to

1560-614: The Peshitta version. At the same time, in the churches of the Latin west, the Diatessaron circulated as a supplement to the four gospels, especially in the Latin translation. A number of recensions of the Diatessaron are extant. The earliest, part of the Eastern family of recensions, is preserved in 4th century theologian Ephrem the Syrian 's Commentary on Tatian's work, which itself

1638-562: The Psalms etc.) and in the form of "testimony collections" (collections of excerpts), and the oral stories of his community. Most scholars view the gospel of Matthew as a work of the second generation of Christians, though it draws on the memory of the first generation of Jesus's disciples, for whom the defining event was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD in

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1716-421: The Q source (material shared with Luke but not with Mark) and hypothetical material unique to his own community, called the M source or "Special Matthew." Matthew could have depended on Mark through oral tradition or used memorization rather than simply copying. Alan Kirk praises Matthew for his "scribal memory competence" and "his high esteem for and careful handling of both Mark and Q", which makes claims

1794-675: The 16th century Islam-influenced Gospel of Barnabas (Joosten, 2002). Robert F. Shedinger writes that in quotations to the Old Testament where the great uncial codices have κύριος and the Hebrew OT manuscripts יהוה (YHWH), Tatian wrote the term "God". Pavlos D. Vasileiadis reports that "Shedinger proposed that the Syriac Diatessaron, composed some time after the middle of the second century CE, may provide additional confirmation of Howard's hypothesis (Tatian and

1872-458: The Apostles, the gospels, were read every Sunday. When Justin quotes the synoptic Gospels, he tends to do so in a harmonised form, and Helmut Koester and others conclude that Justin must have possessed a Greek harmony text of Matthew, Luke and Mark. If so, it is unclear how much Tatian may have borrowed from this previous author in determining his own narrative sequence of Gospel elements. It

1950-550: The Canonical Epistles includes a direct reference to the heavenly witnesses, with the Prologue written as a first-person epistle from Jerome to Eustochium. In this Prologue unfaithful translators are criticised for removal of the verse. The Prologue from about 1700 on had often been attacked as a late forgery, not by Jerome. At the time the earliest known extant Vulgate with the Prologue was about AD 800. The Prologue

2028-579: The Chester Beatty library was able to track down and buy a further 42 leaves, so that now approximately eighty per cent of the Syriac commentary is available (McCarthy 1994). Ephrem did not comment on all passages in the Diatessaron, and nor does he always quote commentated passages in full; but for those phrases that he does quote, the commentary provides for the first time a dependable witness to Tatian's original; and also confirms its content and their sequence. [1] . Theodoret , bishop of Cyrrhus on

2106-637: The Codex Fuldensis. It also contains some extracts from the Acts of the Apostles. Ernst Ranke published the text of the codex in 1868. Diatessaron The Diatessaron ( Syriac : ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ ܕܡܚܠܛܐ , romanized :  Ewangeliyôn Damhalltê ; c. 160–175 AD) is the most prominent early gospel harmony . It was created in the Syriac language by Tatian , an Assyrian early Christian apologist and ascetic . Tatian sought to combine all

2184-474: The Diatessaron (e.g., Codex Fuldensis ) but is generally considered to be a latter interpolation. This whole passage is also generally considered to be a late addition to the Gospel of John, with the Diatessaron itself often cited as an early textual witness in support of its omission. Most scholars agree that Tatian did, from the beginning, include the longer ending of Mark (Mark 16: 9–20), and correspondingly

2262-524: The Euphrates in upper Syria in 423, suspecting Tatian of having been a heretic, sought out and found more than two hundred copies of the Diatessaron , which he "collected and put away, and introduced instead of them the Gospels of the four evangelists". No Christian tradition, other than some Syriac ones, has ever adopted a harmonized Gospel text for use in its liturgy. However, in many traditions, it

2340-552: The Four Gospels. It is unclear whether Tatian intended the Diatessaron to supplement or replace the four separate gospels; but both outcomes came to pass in different churches. The Diatessaron became adopted as the standard lectionary text of the gospels in some Syriac-speaking churches from the late 2nd to the 5th century, until it gave way to the four separate Gospels such as the Syriac Sinaitic gospels, or later in

2418-566: The German language), or the Q source . This view, known as the two-source hypothesis (Mark and Q), allows for a further body of tradition known as "Special Matthew", or the M source, meaning material unique to Matthew. This may represent a separate source, or it may come from the author's church, or he may have composed these verses himself. The author also had the Greek scriptures at his disposal, both as book-scrolls (Greek translations of Isaiah ,

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2496-504: The Holy Spirit. The discourse is a set of parables emphasizing the sovereignty of God, and concluding with a challenge to the disciples to understand the teachings as scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven . (Matthew avoids using the holy word God in the expression "Kingdom of God"; instead he prefers the term "Kingdom of Heaven", reflecting the Jewish tradition of not speaking the name of God). The fourth narrative section reveals that

2574-584: The Jewish Scriptures, 136–140). Additionally, within the Syriac Peshitta is discernible the distinction between κύριος rendered as ܡܪܝܐ ( marya , which means "lord" and refers to the God as signified by the Tetragrammaton; see Lu 1:32) and ܡܪܢ ( maran , a more generic term for "lord"; see Joh 21:7)." R. F. Shedinger holds that after יהוה, θεός could be a term before κύριος became the standard term in

2652-676: The Jews. Of his three presumed sources only "M", the material from his own community, refers to a "church" ( ecclesia ), an organized group with rules for keeping order; and the content of "M" suggests that this community was strict in keeping the Jewish law , holding that they must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees in "righteousness" (adherence to Jewish law). Writing from within a Jewish-Christian community growing increasingly distant from other Jews and becoming increasingly gentile in its membership and outlook, Matthew put down in his gospel his vision "of an assembly or church in which both Jew and Gentile would flourish together". Matthew, alone among

2730-487: The New Testament Greek copies. Shedinger's work has been strongly criticized. Since Tatian's Diatessaron is known only indirectly from references to it in other works, Shedinger's dissertation is based on his collection of 69 possible readings, only two of which, in the judgment of William L. Petersen. reach the level of probability. Peterson complains of Shedinger's "inconsistent methodology" and says that

2808-549: The Syriac original of which was rediscovered only in 1957, when a manuscript acquired by Sir Chester Beatty in 1957 (now Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709, Dublin) turned out to contain the text of Ephrem's commentary. The manuscript constituted approximately half of the leaves of a volume of Syriac writings that had been catalogued in 1952 in the library of the Coptic monastery of Deir es-Suriani in Wadi Natrun , Egypt. Subsequently,

2886-421: The Temple's traders and religious leaders. He teaches in the Temple, debating with the chief priests and religious leaders and speaking in parables about the Kingdom of God and the failings of the chief priests and the Pharisees. The Herodian caucus also become involved in a scheme to entangle Jesus, but Jesus's careful response to their enquiry, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God

2964-835: The West from the late 2nd century; with a sequence adjusted to conform more closely to that of the canonical Gospel of Luke ; and also including additional canonical text (such as the Pericope Adulterae ), and possibly non-canonical matter from the Gospel of the Hebrews . With the gradual adoption of the Vulgate as the liturgical Gospel text of the Latin Church, the Latin Diatessaron was increasingly modified to conform to Vulgate readings. In 546 Victor of Capua discovered such

3042-596: The Western text, placed this section after 1 Cor 14:40. One manuscript of the Vulgate does the same ( Codex Reginensis ). According to Metzger the evidence of the codex is ambiguous. Perhaps the scribe, without actually deleting verses 34–35 from the text, intended the liturgist to omit them when reading the lesson. The 1 John text section omits the Comma Johanneum. However, the Vulgate Prologue to

3120-554: The church. The gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew . According to predominant scholarly views, it was written in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture. According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis ( c.  60–130 AD ), the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems. Most modern scholars hold that it

3198-510: The codex and in 745 gave it to the monastic library (Abb. 61), in Fulda , where it remains to the present day (hence the name of the codex). It served as the source text for vernacular harmonies in Old High German and Old Saxon . According to Malcolm Parkes, glosses to James are in Boniface's own handwriting. Codex Sangallensis 56 was copied, in the 9th century, from the Diatessaron of

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3276-591: The course of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 AD). From this point on, what had begun with Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish messianic movement became an increasingly gentile phenomenon evolving in time into a separate religion. They hold that the author wrote for a community of Greek-speaking Jewish Christians located probably in Syria. Antioch , the largest city in Roman Syria and the third largest city in

3354-606: The crucial element separating the early Christians from their Jewish neighbors; while Mark begins with Jesus's baptism and temptations , Matthew goes back to Jesus's origins, showing him as the Son of God from his birth, the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament . The title Son of David , used exclusively in relation to miracles, identifies Jesus as the healing and miracle-working Messiah of Israel sent to Israel alone. As Son of Man he will return to judge

3432-727: The disciples to meet him in Galilee. After the resurrection the remaining disciples return to Galilee, "to the mountain that Jesus had appointed", where he comes to them and tells them that he has been given "all authority in heaven and on Earth." He gives the Great Commission: "Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you". Jesus will be with them "to

3510-537: The divinity of Jesus, but rather confirm his status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah). There is a broad disagreement over chronology between Matthew, Mark and Luke on one hand and John on the other: all four agree that Jesus's public ministry began with an encounter with John the Baptist, but Matthew, Mark and Luke follow this with an account of teaching and healing in Galilee, then

3588-561: The empire, is often proposed. Other scholars hold that the historical Jesus had already predicted that the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed. The community to which Matthew belonged, like many 1st-century Christians, was still part of the larger Jewish community. The relationship of Matthew to this wider world of Judaism remains a subject of study and contention, the principal question being to what extent, if any, Matthew's community had cut itself off from its Jewish roots. It

3666-491: The ethics of the kingdom of God , introduced by the Beatitudes ("Blessed are..."). It concludes with a reminder that the response to the kingdom will have eternal consequences, and the crowd's amazed response leads into the next narrative block. From the authoritative words of Jesus, the gospel turns to three sets of three miracles interwoven with two sets of two discipleship stories (the second narrative), followed by

3744-549: The final conclusions but also in the details of the argument." Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels . It tells how Israel's messiah ( Christ ), Jesus , comes to his people (the Jews) but is rejected by them and how, after his resurrection , he sends the disciples to the gentiles instead. Matthew wishes to emphasize that

3822-400: The genealogy, birth and infancy of Jesus, the first narrative section begins. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. Jesus prays and meditates in the wilderness for forty days, and is tempted by Satan . His early ministry by word and deed in Galilee meets with much success, and leads to the Sermon on the Mount , the first of the discourses. The sermon presents

3900-399: The gospels, alternates five blocks of narrative with five of discourse, marking each off with the phrase "When Jesus had finished" (see Five Discourses of Matthew ). Some scholars see in this a deliberate plan to create a parallel to the first five books of the Old Testament; others see a three-part structure based around the idea of Jesus as Messiah , a set of weekly readings spread out over

3978-457: The healing and miracle-working Messiah of Israel (it is used exclusively in relation to miracles), and the Jewish messiah is sent to Israel alone. As Son of Man he will return to judge the world, a fact his disciples recognize but of which his enemies are unaware. As Son of God he is named Immanuel ('God with us'), God revealing himself through his son, and Jesus proving his sonship through his obedience and example. Matthew's prime concern

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4056-418: The healing by Jesus entering Jericho the previous day of a single unnamed blind man (Luke 18:35ff). Otherwise, Tatian originally omitted altogether both of the different genealogies in Matthew and Luke, as well as Luke's introduction (Luke 1:1–4); and also did not originally include Jesus' encounter with the adulteress (John 7:53–8:11). The pericope is present in western manuscripts believed to be based on

4134-454: The increasing opposition to Jesus will result in his crucifixion in Jerusalem, and that his disciples must therefore prepare for his absence. The instructions for the post-crucifixion church emphasize responsibility and humility. This section contains the two feedings of the multitude (Matthew 14:13–21 and 15:32–39) along with the narrative in which Simon, newly renamed Peter ( Πέτρος , Petros , 'stone'), calls Jesus "the Christ,

4212-399: The latter two works are significantly different in terms of theology or historical reliability dubious. Matthew has 600 verses in common with Mark, which is a book of only 661 verses. There is approximately an additional 220 verses shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, from a second source, a hypothetical collection of sayings to which scholars give the name Quelle ('source' in

4290-399: The law no longer having power over the New Testament Christian into antinomianism , and addressed Christ's fulfilling of what the Israelites expected from the "Law and the Prophets" in an eschatological sense, in that he was all that the Old Testament had predicted in the Messiah. The gospel has been interpreted as reflecting the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and

4368-413: The level of a master's thesis should be approved as a doctoral dissertation; how it found its way into print is unfathomable. One shudders to think of the damage it will do when, in the future, it is cited by the ignorant and the unsuspecting as "demonstrating" what it has not." Jan Joosten's review of Shedinger's work is also condemnatory. In his judgment "Shedinger's study remains unconvincing, not only in

4446-461: The nations. At the end of the discourse, Matthew notes that Jesus has finished all his words, and attention turns to the crucifixion. The events of Jesus's last week occupy a third of the content of all four gospels. Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph and drives the money changers from the Temple, holds a Last Supper , prays to be spared the coming agony (but concludes "if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done"), and

4524-456: The original text has not survived. It was reconstructed in 1881 by Theodor Zahn from translations and commentaries. The title Diatessaron comes from the Latin diatessarōn , meaning: "made of four [ingredients]"; this is derived in turn from Greek , διὰ τεσσάρων ( dia tessarōn ), meaning "out of four" (i.e., διά , dia , "at intervals of" and tessarōn [genitive of τέσσαρες , tessares ], "four"). The Syriac name for this gospel harmony

4602-412: The other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees. It tells how Israel's Messiah , rejected and executed in Israel, pronounces judgment on Israel and its leaders and becomes the salvation of the gentiles . Prior to the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews are referred to as Israelites —the honorific title of God's chosen people. After it, they are called Ioudaios (Jews),

4680-459: The other gospels; while omitting apparent duplicate matter, especially across the synoptics. Hence, in respect of the healing of the blind at Jericho the Diatessaron reports only one blind man, Bartimeaus, healed by Jesus when leaving the city according to the account in Mark 10:46ff (expanded with phrases from Luke 18:36–37); consequently omitting any separate mention of two unnamed blind men healed by Jesus leaving Jericho (Matthew 20:29ff), and also

4758-461: The published versions of the Diatessaron in English); and a 13th-century Persian harmony. The Arabic harmony preserves Tatian's sequence exactly, but uses a source text corrected in most places to that of the standard Syriac Peshitta Gospels; the Persian harmony differs greatly in sequence, but translates a Syriac text that is rather closer to that in Ephrem's commentary. A Vetus Latina version of Tatian's Syriac text appears to have circulated in

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4836-433: The revelation of Jesus as God in his resurrection, but the gospels reflect a broadened focus extended backwards in time. Matthew is a creative reinterpretation of Mark, stressing Jesus's teachings as much as his acts, and making subtle changes in order to stress his divine nature: for example, Mark's "young man" who appears at Jesus's tomb becomes "a radiant angel" in Matthew. The miracle stories in Mark do not demonstrate

4914-404: The separate Gospel texts. There is scholarly uncertainty about what language Tatian used for its original composition, whether Syriac or Greek . The Diatessaron was used as the standard Gospel text in the liturgy of at least some sections of the Syrian Church for possibly up to two centuries and was quoted or alluded to by Syrian writers. Ephrem the Syrian wrote a commentary on it,

4992-426: The separate gospels being adjudged by Tatian to be duplicated. (McFall, 1994). In the early Church , the gospels at first circulated independently, with Matthew the most popular. The Diatessaron is notable evidence for the authority already enjoyed by the gospels by the mid- to late-2nd century. Within twenty years after Tatian's harmony was written, Irenaeus was expressly arguing for the authoritative character of

5070-408: The son of the living God", and Jesus states that on this "bedrock" ( πέτρα , petra ) he will build his church (Matthew 16:13–19). Matthew 16:13–19 forms the foundation for the papacy's claim of authority . Jesus travels toward Jerusalem, and the opposition intensifies: he is tested by the Pharisees as soon as he begins to move toward the city, and when he arrives he is soon in conflict with

5148-399: The surviving readings do not support his conclusions. Petersen thinks the dissertation should never have been accepted for a doctoral degree, in view of "the illogical arguments, inconsistent standards, philological errors, and methodological blunders that mar this book. [...] the errors are so frequent and so fundamental that this volume can contribute nothing to scholarship. What it says that

5226-495: The textual material he found in the four gospels - Matthew , Mark , Luke , and John - into a single coherent narrative of Jesus's life and death. However, and in contradistinction to most later gospel harmonists, Tatian appears not to have been motivated by any aspiration to validate the four separate canonical gospel accounts; or to demonstrate that, as they stood, they could each be shown as being without inconsistency or error. Although widely used by early Syriac Christians ,

5304-423: The things that are God's", leaves them marveling at his words. The disciples ask about the future, and in his final discourse (the Olivet Discourse ) Jesus speaks of the coming end. There will be false Messiahs, earthquakes, and persecutions, the sun, moon, and stars will fail, but "this generation" will not pass away before all the prophecies are fulfilled. The disciples must steel themselves for ministry to all

5382-496: The very end of the age". Christology is the theological doctrine of Christ, "the affirmations and definitions of Christ's humanity and deity". There are a variety of Christologies in the New Testament, albeit with a single centre—Jesus is the figure in whom God has acted for mankind's salvation. Matthew has taken key Christological texts from Mark, but has sometimes changed the stories found in Mark, giving evidence of his own concerns. The title Son of David identifies Jesus as

5460-412: The words "The Book of Genealogy [in Greek, 'Genesis'] of Jesus Christ", deliberately echoing the words of Genesis 2:4 in the Septuagint . The genealogy tells of Jesus's descent from Abraham and King David and the miraculous events surrounding his virgin birth , and the infancy narrative tells of the massacre of the innocents , the flight into Egypt , and eventual journey to Nazareth . Following

5538-450: The world, an expectation which his disciples recognize but of which his enemies are unaware. As Son of God , God is revealing himself through his son, and Jesus proving his sonship through his obedience and example. Unlike Mark, Matthew never bothers to explain Jewish customs, since his intended audience was a Jewish one; unlike Luke, who traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, father of the human race, he traces it only to Abraham, father of

5616-408: The year, or no plan at all. Davies and Allison, in their widely used commentary, draw attention to the use of "triads" (the gospel groups things in threes), and R. T. France , in another influential commentary, notes the geographic movement from Galilee to Jerusalem and back, with the post-resurrection appearances in Galilee as the culmination of the whole story. The Gospel of Matthew begins with

5694-417: Was not unusual for subsequent Christian generations to seek to provide paraphrased Gospel versions in language closer to the vernacular of their own day. Frequently such versions have been constructed as Gospel harmonies, sometimes taking Tatian's Diatessaron as an exemplar; other times proceeding independently. Hence from the Syriac Diatessaron text was derived an 11th-century Arabic harmony (the source for

5772-528: Was noted to be in the Codex Fuldensis of AD 546 when the text was published by Ranke c. AD 1850. Victor of Capua (died 554) reports that he found an Old Latin harmony of the Gospels, which he recognised as following Tatian's arrangement of the Diatessaron . He substituted the Vulgate text for the Old Latin , appending the rest of the New Testament books from the standard Vulgate. Boniface acquired

5850-453: Was that the Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. This concern lies behind the frequent citations of Jewish scripture, the evocation of Jesus as the new Moses along with other events from Jewish history, and the concern to present Jesus as fulfilling, not destroying, the Law. Matthew must have been aware of the tendency to distort Paul's teaching of

5928-467: Was the first gospel to be composed and that Matthew and Luke both drew upon it as a major source for their works. The author did not simply copy Mark but used it as a base, emphasizing Jesus 's place in the Jewish tradition and including details not found in Mark. Writing in a polished Semitic "synagogue Greek", he drew on the Gospel of Mark as a source, plus a hypothetical collection of sayings known as

6006-399: Was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time. However, scholars such as N. T. Wright and John Wenham hold there are problems with dating Matthew late in the first century, and argue that it

6084-461: Was written in the 40s–50s AD. Whether the Gospels were composed before or after 70 AD, according to Bas van Os, the lifetime of various eyewitnesses that includes Jesus's own family through the end of the First Century is very likely statistically. Markus Bockmuehl finds this structure of lifetime memory in various early Christian traditions. The majority of scholars believe that Mark

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