Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T07:17:18.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Heresy of Tatian—Once Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

L. W. Barnard
L. W. Barnard
Affiliation:
Rector of All Saints, Winchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Tatian, the second century Christian apologist, is something of an enigma to students of early Christian history and doctrine. How far was he influenced by his teacher Justin Martyr? What caused him to become an extreme exponent of the encratite heresy? Did his heretical views only develop after Justin's death, and were these the cause of his leaving Rome? or were these views only a development of tendencies which existed from the beginning? The answers which we give to these questions will largely depend on the view we take of, and the date we assign to, the one apologetic work of his which is extant—his Oration to the Greeks, a violent polemic against Graeco-Roman culture in the course of which Tatian reveals, in somewhat cryptic manner, his own theological views and gives a brief account of his own spiritual pilgrimage.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1968 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 1 note 1 Patrology, trans. Graef, Hilda C., Freiburg-London 1960, 128.Google Scholar

page 1 note 2 Les apologistes grecs, Paris 1912, 151.Google Scholar

page 1 note 3 ‘The Date of Tatian's Oration’, in Harvard Theological Review, xlvi (1953), 99–101.Google Scholar

page 1 note 4 ‘The Date of the Oration of Tatian’, H.T.R., lx (1967), 122–6.Google Scholar

page 2 note 1 Zahn, T., Forsckungen zw Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, i. Tatian's Diatessaron, Erlangen 1891, 279Google Scholar; Harnack, A., T.U., ii, Leipzig 1882, 286–9.Google Scholar

page 4 note 1 Exc. ex Theod., 51.1 cited by Grant, R. M., ‘The Heresy of Tatian’. J.T.S., N.S., v (1954). 63–4.Google Scholar

page 4 note 2 Jerome, Com. in Ep. ad Gal. vi, adv. Jovin., i.3.

page 6 note 1 Barnard, L. W., Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought, Cambridge 1967, 27–38.Google Scholar

page 6 note 2 ‘Tatian (Or. 30) and the Gnostics’, J. T. S., N.S., xv (1964), 65–9.Google Scholar

page 7 note 1 ‘The Gospel of Thomas: Is rehabilitation possible?’, J. T. S., N.S., xviii (1967), 21–2Google Scholar; cf. I Clem., xxiv.5. = Mt., xiii.3 = Thomas, saying 8.

page 8 note 1 Quispel, G., ‘L'Évangile selon Thomas et le Diatessaron’, Vigiliae Christianas, xiii (1959), 87 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baker, A., ‘The Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron’, J. T. S., N. S., xvi (1965), 449–54.Google Scholar

page 8 note 2 J. T. S., N. S., xviii (1967), 20.Google Scholar

page 8 note 3 ‘The Heresy of Tatian’, J. T. S., N. S., v (1954), 62–8.Google Scholar

page 8 note 4 ‘Variaciones gnosticas sobre las alas del Alma’, Gregorianum, xxxv (1954), 21–33.Google Scholar

page 8 note 5 Tatian und seine Theologie, Göttingen 1960.Google Scholar

page 8 note 6 Andresen, C., ‘Justin und de mittlere Platonismus’, Z. J. T. W., xliv (1952–3), 157–95.Google Scholar

page 9 note 1 History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, i, Louvain 1958, 32–45.Google Scholar

page 9 note 2 He is portrayed as primarily a Jewish-Christian by Bolgiani, F., ‘La tradizione erescologica sull' encratismo’, Att. della Academia delle scienze de Torino, xci (1956–7), 1–77.Google Scholar

page 9 note 3 Adv. Jovin., i. 3.

page 9 note 4 Com. in Ep. ad Gal., vi.

page 9 note 5 Strom., i. 1.

page 9 note 6 Epiphanius, Haer., xlvi. 1. Burkitt, F. C. (J. T. S., xxv (1923–4), 128 ff.Google Scholar) equated Addai with Tatian and so made him the founder of Assyrian Christianity.

page 9 note 7 A Greek fragment containing 14 lines was found in 1933 at Dura-Europos; cf. Kraeling, C. H., Studies and Documents, iii., Harvard-London 1935.Google Scholar

page 10 note 1 Tatian may hint, in Orat., xi, that he had been a soldier in the Roman Army: cf. Hawthorne, G. F., ‘Tatian's Discourse to the Greeks’, H. T. R., lvii (1964), 163.Google Scholar

page 10 note 2 Orat., v; Theoph., ad Autol., ii. 10.