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‘And they thought that the time of his decease…had come’ [TA XXIV:5–6]*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2012
Abstract
The Arabic Diatessaron has often been neglected in research on the New Testament, and understandably so. It is, indeed, a late and remote witness, written in a language that does not belong to the usual outfit of most theologians. Moreover, its text sometimes presents readings that are not easy to explain. One of these readings occurs in the Transfiguration Narrative and has found its way into the apparatus of the large Oxford edition of Luke's Gospel. This short study is an attempt to evaluate this variant reading and to clarify its origin.
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References
1 Here I quote the edition of Marmardji, A. S., Diatessaron de Tatien (Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1935) 228:13–230Google Scholar:1 (tr. ibid., 229:17–18–231:1: ‘Et Moïse et Elie apparurent à eux, s'entretenant avec Jésus. Et ils crurent que le temps de sa mort, qui devait avoir lieu à Jerusalem, était arrivé’).
2 The New Testament in Greek. Vol. 3, The Gospel according to St. Luke (International Greek New Testament Project, Part 1; Oxford, Clarendon, 1984) 203; I am not sure who decided to mention TA here. Higgins, A. J. B., ‘The Arabic Diatessaron in the New Oxford Edition of the Gospel according to St. Luke in Greek’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 37 (1986) 415–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, does not mention this varia lectio, nor is it mentioned in the Additional Note which J. K. Elliott gave, cf. J.T.St 38 (1987) 135.
3 It should be noted that this retranslation into Greek is not quite the same text as presented in the Arabic text.
4 Ciasca, A., Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniae Arabice (Rome: S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1888) [Arab.] 92:13–14 (Tr. 43, col. 1)Google Scholar. Ciasca noted the variant Ms. A: وترااى; Ciasca (for Ms. B: 'Alif instead of hèmza) and Marmardji (for Mss. B and E) observed for the second line that the conjunction ان,‘that’,was omitted before وقت,‘the time’, but that لان,‘so that/in order that’, was added before تتم; Marmardji wants to correct بلغت into بلغ, without support of any manuscript, but apparently because the word وقت, ‘time’, is masculine.
5 The plural is also found in Ms. S (i.e. Sbath 1020; a photocopy is preserved in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). Cf. N. P. G. Joosse, ‘The Sermon on the Mount in the Arabic Diatessaron’ (Diss. Vrije Universiteit, 1997) 13.
6 The omission is also attested in Ms. T (i.e. Sbath 1280; a photocopy is preserved in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); cf. Joosse, The Sermon, 13.
7 Hill, J. Hamlyn, The Earliest Life of Christ ever Compiled from the Four Gospels, being the Diatessaron of Tatian (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1894) 138Google Scholar [21910, 98]: ‘And there appeared unto him Moses and Elijah’; H. W. Hogg, The Diatessaron of Tatian, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers 5, X (repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, [1895] 1969) 80 (‘And there appeared unto him Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus’); Preuschen, E. and Pott, A., Tatians Diatessaron aus dem Arabischen übersetzt (Heidelberg: Winters, 1926) 137Google Scholar (‘Und es erschien ihm Mose und Elia, indem sie redeten mit Jesus’).
8 Hill, Earliest Life, 138 n. 2 [21910, 98 n. 2]: ‘ “Him” is apparently an error of the Arabic for “them”’.
9 Horner, W., The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect Otherwise Called Sahidic and Thebaic: I. S. Matthew and S. Mark (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911) 176Google Scholar (Matt).
10 Horner, W., The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect Otherwise Called Memphitic and Bohairic: I. S. Matthew and S. Mark (Oxford: Clarendon, 1898) 145 appGoogle Scholar. (Matthew Mss. Bpc Λc).
11 Walton, B., Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, V (London: Roycroft, 1657) 85 (Matt)Google Scholar; de Lagarde, P., Die vier Evangelien Arabisch (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1864) 22 (Matt)Google Scholar.
12 For Ms. a: Jülicher, A., Matzkow, W., and Aland, K., Itala I, Matthäusevangelium (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2d ed. 1972) 119 ([[a]])Google Scholar; for Ms. g2, cf. Legg, S. C. E., Nouum Testamentum Graece. Vol. 1, Euangelium secundum Matthaeum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940)Google Scholar, in loco.
13 We may note here that in Luke there is an addition of αὐτῷ after ὀφθέντες, namely in the Greek manuscripts Cc3 M 7 27 60 71 267 903 983 1194 1443 1458 1654 1685 2757 and many lectionaries.
14 However, in Mark it is added in some manuscripts (W fam13(-124) 28 69 543 565 700 788).
15 The fact that Mar Ephraem in his commentary (see below) does not present this particle seems to corroborate this assumption, but the mode of quoting of Ephraem does not allow us to be certain of this.
16 The singular ὤφθη is also found in many Greek manuscripts of Matthew (e.g. א B D Θ fam13) and in most manuscripts of Mark.
17 The plural ὤφθησαν is found in many Greek manuscripts of Matthew (C L W fam1) and a few in Mark (E M 124 pc.). In Luke we find a plural form (οἱ ὀφθέντες).
18 Leloir, L., Saint Éphrem, Commentaire de l'Évangile concordant, Texte Syriaque (Manuscrit Chester Beatty 709) (Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1963)Google Scholar 116:21, 118:7, 120:9.12.
19 Leloir, Commentaire (Syr.), 116:21.
20 Leloir, Commentaire (Syr.), 118:7
21 Leloir, Commentaire (Syr.), 120:9.
22 Leloir, Commentaire (Syr.), 120:12f..; a different version is found in ch. XV:18 (o.c., 156:4, ‘When however James and John saw Moses and Elijah with our Lord’ (
).
23 Leloir, L., Saint Éphrem, Commentaire de l'Évangile concordant, Version Arménienne, CSCO 137, Arm.1 (Louvain: Durbecq, 1953)Google Scholar; for the passages mentioned here, cf. 188:10 (omission); 188:26.
24 de Urbina, I. Ortiz, Vetus Evangelium Syrorum et exinde excerptum Diatessaron (Madrid: Consejo superior de investgaciones cientificas, 1967)Google Scholar 250 also omits ‘to them’ or ‘to him’ (
), but his choice is based only on two of the four references of Ephraem (194: nos. 1317–1318), which he combined.
25 Demonstratio XXIII:12, in: Parisot, J., Aphraatis Sapientis Persae Demonstratio XXIII De Acino, in Patrologia Syriaca I: t. II (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1907)Google Scholar 33(34)–7(38), esp. 36:12–15; 36:19–20. Zahn, T. (Tatians Diatessaron [FGNK I; Erlangen: Deichert, 1881])Google Scholar made a reference to this passage, without making any use of it for his reconstruction of the harmony, but he made the connection with the Transfiguration episode. (Parisot did not list it in his syllabus locorum Sacrae Scripturae, nor did Peter Bruns in his translation of the Demonstrationes [Aphrahat, Demonstrationes—Unterweisungen, I–II (Freiburg: Herder, 1991)]; M.-J. Pierre, however, paid attention to the passage in the ‘Index Biblique’ of the French translation [Aphraate le Sage Persan, Les Exposés, I–II (Paris: Cerf, 1988–1989)].)
26 However, the reading ‘Moses and Elijah’ is found in several manuscripts of Syp (2 5 8pr.m 11 13 17 21 40) and in some editions of the Syriac text.
27 Leloir, Saint Éphrem, Commentaire, 116:19, 21; 118:7, 10, 16f.; 120: 9, 12f., 18; 122: 21; 122:22f.
28 So Hill (‘with’), Hogg (‘to’), cf. Ciasca: ‘loquentes cum Iesu’, Preuschen: ‘indem sie redeten mit Jesus’, Marmardji: ‘s'entretenant avec Jésus’.
29 Cf. Lane, E. W., Arabic–English Lexicon, I:2 (London/Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1865) 762, col. 2–3Google Scholar; usually constructed with accusative (cf. يخاطبانه, Mt-Lagarde), but here it is constructed with -ل, ‘to’/‘with’, apparently a tentative rendering of Syriac 
, ‘with’.
30 Matt: συλλαλοῦντες μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ, cf. Luke 9.30: συνελάλουν αὐτῷ.
31 Mark: συλλαλοῦντες τῷ ᾽Ιησοῦ.
32 Leloir, Saint Éphrem, Commentaire, 116:21; 122:24.
33 Cf. وكانا يقولان, ‘and said’, in the Arabic Gospel of Luke (P. de Lagarde, Die vier Evangelien Arabisch [Leipzig: Brockhaus] 83).
34 So Mss. C3 M 27 71 213 827 1194 1458 1654 pc.
35 Sometimes Semitic ’mr can mean ‘to think’, but then construed with ‘in himself’ or ‘in his heart’ (אמר בלבו). For example in the expression 
, ‘they thought by themselves’ (R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, I [Oxford: Clarendon, 1889 (repr. 1981) col. 243]).
36 Not ‘Moses and Elijah’, as A. Resch assumed (see below n. 40).
37 My first thought, starting from the reconstruction in the IGNTP apparatus (ἔδοξαν), was that the mistake was made in the Greek stage of the Diatessaron tradition: the word ἔξοδον is transmitted as δόξαν in several manuscripts (6 726 827 954 1187 1200 1319 1424 1510) and in a Lectionary (211) and in the Ethiopic version. It could have created the word ἔδοξαν, if δόξαν had been noted in the margin as an alternative reading for ἔξοδον. However, this solution seems to me far-fetched now.
38 It was corrected in Hill's second edition (‘that his decease’), but then the words ‘the time of’ were forgotten; it is interesting that Preuschen (Tatians Diatessaron, 137) renders with ‘seines zukünftigen Todes’, a rendering which preserves the adjective ‘futuri’ of Ciasca's translation, and that for no reason.
39 This noun وفاة is derived from a root وفى (wafā), which in stem III means ‘to come’. Perhaps Ciasca was misled by this meaning, but one should expect that the Syriac wordings (
, Sys.c or 
, Syp.h) could have warned Ciasca that he was wrong in his assumption.
40 Resch, A., Aussercanonische Paralleltexte zu den Evangelien. II. Paralleltexte zu Lucas (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1895)Google Scholar 162f.: ‘Sehr merkwürdig ist der Text des arabischen Diatessaron, wonach die letzte Ankunft Jesu in Jerusalem geschehen müsste und die beiden Vertreter des A.T. irrthümlicher Weise der Meinung gewesen wäre, dass die Zeit für die letzte Parusie des Messias damals bereits gekommen sei. Hiernach wären Moses und Elias als die beiden Propheten gemeint, welch nach Apoc. 11,3ff. der Parusie vorausgehen würden und damals auf dem Berge der Verklärung irriger Weise zu bald erschienen wären’.
41 Cf. 
, ‘to depart’, also ‘depart from life’; for the Syriac-Arabic word lists, cf. Smith, R. Payne, Thesaurus Syriacus, II (repr. Hildesheim/New York: Olms, 1981 [Fasc. VIII, Oxford: Clarendon, 1890])Google Scholar 2933.
42 Cf. 
, ‘to go out’, ‘proceed’, ‘leave’; 
is rendered with مخرج, cf. Payne Smith, Thesaurus, II [Fasc. VII, 1886] 2427f.
43 The rendering of Preuschen (‘[der] jetzt vollendet werden sollte’) is not in the Arabic text.
44 Cf. the rendering in Lagarde's text: مخرجه الذى كان مزمعا, ‘his exit that was determined’.
45 The verb تم (tamma) is found in Syriac-Arabic lexica for 
(Ethpa.); the 3rd p. sing. fem. (تتم) is due to the feminine word وفاة, ‘decease’.
46 Cf. ‘iam advenisse’ (Ciasca), ‘was already come’ (Hill), ‘erreicht sei’ (Preuschen), ‘était arrivé’ (Marmardji). Marmardji wants to correct the feminine verb بلغت into the masculine form بلغ, Technically, Marmardji was right, for the Arabic word for ‘time’ is masculine, but the verb is conformed to the feminine word for ‘decease’ (constructio ad sensum).
47 Cf. the idea expressed by Resch (see n. 40) ‘dass die Zeit für die letzte Parusie des Messias damals bereits gekommen sei’.
48 The same is valid for Syriac 
, ‘time, moment, season, or period’.
49 My attention was drawn to this text by Stephan Huller (in an email of July 2010).