On the Diatessaron

Using the term Diatessaron for anything except the book called THE Diatessaron causes confusion and is unscientific. The book called THE Diatessaron was so named by mistake. The name can be taken to mean “spread across four” and might have only meant that the content was equivalent to the set of four, but it was interpreted very early to mean “compiled from four”. The long gospels can’t be called diatessarons. You can’t say a long gospel such as the Gospel of the Hebrews is A Diatessaron. It is a CONTRADICTION IN TERMS to say the set of four gospels was edited from a Diatessaron.

The use of such terminology puts the reader in the position of having to reject the terminology so as to understand the meaning intended. What will happen in practice is that the reader will assume you must mean what is printed and that you didn’t mean what is not printed. Then the argument will be rejected because it is self-contradictory.  Constant Mews was dubious about the assumptions about early long gospels because he assumed that the words printed must be what you intended to say. He couldn’t be expected to know that what was meant was something other than what was printed.

Using the term diatessaron for anything other than the book edited by Tatian will produce printed assertions that a long gospel was compiled from four early on, say in the late first century, and this long gospel was split up into four in about 180 CE. This is what the words mean, if what is printed is something like “the Gospel of the Hebrews was a Diatessaron”, but it is nonsense. If you say the Pepys text is a relic of an old long gospel and then say it is a diatessaron, you contradict yourself. And so on.