Boid on the Beginning of the Diatessaron

This single word “John” in the Arabic text of the Diatessaron makes no sense at all. It baffled both of the translators into English, Hamlyn Hill and [INSERT NAME OF THE ACTUAL TRANSLATOR OF THE DIATESSARON IN WHAT YOU REFER TO AS “SCHAFF”]. The first editor of the Arabic text, Ciasca, passes over it in silence. According to the Semitic textual critic Rory Boid, it is a general rule that the presence of an impossibly awkward word or phrase in a text that has been translated twice can often be explained by the translator at the second stage having misunderstood what was before him, and having done his best to render faithfully what was actually there, leaving it to others with more information to solve the difficulty. In this case the first translation was from Hebrew (or Aramaic) to Greek, and the second translation was from Greek to Syriac, followed by an Arabic translation of the Syriac. We can imagine the same passages in both Hebrew and Greek as reading:
In Hebrew ראשית בשרת ישו המשיח: ליוחנן: בראשית היה הדבר וגו' .
In Greek ΑΡΧΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΥΑΓΓΗΛΙΟΥ ΙΗΣΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ: ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ: Εν αρχη ην ‘ο λογος κτλ.
The Hebrew ליוחנן would be rendered by the genitive case with no preposition in Greek, as ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ. [SENTENCE DELETED]. It is highly likely that the name (in the genitive case) was abbreviated, as is normally done in mss., and the translator saw simply ΙΩΑΝΝ or ΙΩΑΝ with no indication of the case that was intended. In this case a translation without a preposition would be inevitable. What would have confused or misled the translator even more was that he would have been familiar with the phrase ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ (with the accusative case) meaning “according to John”, with its implicit assumption of the existence of four Gospels. He would not have been thinking in terms of a single Gospel. He would thus not have expected ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ meaning “by John” with the intended meaning that this was the only Gospel and this single Gospel was composed by someone with the name or title of John, or by anonymous editors claiming the authority of John for this edited text of the original [words deleted] “super-Gospel”. (Note that the term “super-Gospel” as used in this monograph does not mean a combined Gospel, but rather an original long Gospel not yet divided between four or even more shorter Gospels. See chapter …).

In favour of this explanation, the faithful reproduction of what was no longer intelligible, is the preservation of the acrostic on the name MRQH in the scribal prefatory note. The Syriac translator would not have understood that this was an Aramaic equivalent of the name Marcus, because in Syriac the name would be spelt with Alef, not He. He still reproduced the acrostic, without trying to alter it to make sense of it. This scribal note seems, then, to go back either to the Greek translator, or to the original Hebrew (or Aramaic). It would not be expected that the Greek translator would have invented an Aramaic acrostic. Also, the Aramaic in this form and with this spelling fits only two forms of Aramaic, the Samaritan dialect and the Jewish Palestinian dialect before 150 A.D. Actually, it would be somewhat anomalous in the Jewish Palestinian dialect, which usually, though admittedly not always, keeps the original Latin or Greek case ending. A Samaritan Aramaic origin is therefore much more likely. Regardless of which explanation is right, the fact remains that the spelling of the Aramaic name Marqe as required by the acrostic, with He instead of Alef, would have been unknown to the Syriac translator and irrelevant to the Greek translator. Both translators have faithfully reproduced this ancient scribal scholion. The assumption of the faithful reproduction of the name John by the Syriac translator is consistent with this faithfulness.