Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Why the 'Dia Tessaron' was Probably Related to the Two Gospels of Clement's Letter to Theodore

I know William Petersen set out to write the definitive book on the subject of the Diatessaron and in many respects he did in fact achieve his goal.  Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Signifcance and History (1997) is a remarkable work.  On almost every page there is something new to discover.  For most of us, it opens a door to a whole new way of thinking about the origins of the gospels. 

Most scholarship on the subject of the development of the gospels has to ignore the fact that the Syrian and Eastern Church preferred this gospel type.  They have to ignore it because it challenges all their basic assumptions about the relationship between Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.  It is like any field of study or any path to success.  In order to truly understand thngs at a microscopic level, one has to ignore the 'big picture' it seems. 

So it is that we have to ignore the fact that the preferred gospel type in 'Jesus's part of the world' was other than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  That's a big thing to ignore.  We concentrate instead upon the preferred gospel type in 'our' part of the world even though it is very unlikely that anyone who ever saw Jesus had any influence here (sorry but I don't take Acts to be a credible historical document). 

The people from Jesus's part of the world preferred a text that was identified as the 'Diatessaron' which was associated a certain Tatian the Assyrian, a student of Justin Martyr.  Tatian lived in the latter half of the second century but our first reference to the Diatessaron is actually found in a fourth century writer, Eusebius of Caesarea who writes in Book Four of his Church History:

However, their [the Encratites'] first leader, Tatian, brought together a certain combination and collection — I do not know how — of the gospels, he called this the Diatessaron, which is also still now received by some. [HE IV.29.62]

Petersen rightly takes the wording here as an acknowledgement that Eusebius never actually saw this 'Diatessaron.'  By the time of Epiphanius it is identified as one and the same with the Gospel of the Hebrews.

It certainly is problematic that Tatian is only identified as the author of this text a hundred and fifty years after the text was first introduced.  That Irenaeus mentions Tatian without any reference to the 'Diatessaron' is terribly important.  It implies that either (a) the Diatessaron was unknown to Irenaeus (b) that he knew the text but did not associate the text with Tatian or (c) Irenaeus knew the text, might have associated the text with Tatian but did not consider it heretical or simply chose not to mention it. 

I find it hard to believe that Irenaeus had no familiarity with the Diatessaron given the resemblance of the gospel citation common to 1 Clement and Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians with what appears in our earliest 'gospel harmonies.'  Moreover as Harvey repeatedly demonstrates, Irenaeus seems to cite from an early Syriac New Testament canon.  It would seem to be impossible for an early Syriac speaking Christian like Irenaeus to be completely ignorant of this text.  Why then doesn't Irenaeus mention the text?  Given the fact that Against Heresies seems to be a compendium of 'things heretical,' Irenaeus's lack of mention of the Diatessaron would argue for the idea that the Church Father did not deem the text to be worthy of condemnation. 

Indeed I take the evidence that 1 Clement and Polycarp's letter originally cite from the same Diatessaron as giving greater likelihood to the idea that Irenaeus was actually moving away from Diatessaronic tradition.  Whatever the Diatessaron was, Irenaeus's introduction of the fourfold gospel seems to be a development of the idea that this Syrian gospel was 'fourfold.'  In other words, the name 'διὰ τεσσάρων' came to mean 'from four (gospels)' under Irenaeus's influence but originally I am quite certain it meant something else.  What was the original connotation of the term?  All the evidence from Against Heresies seems to suggest it was connected with Pythagoreanism.

Petersen only mentions the Pythagorean connection in a single line in his book and even here it is an indirect reference to Paul de Lagarde's misunderstanding of the original application of ancient Greek 'scientific' understanding.  The reality is that within a Pythagorean context it would be impossible to mis-take 'διὰ τεσσάρων' to mean a something made up of four other things.  As we noted in a previous post the Pythagoreans took the term 'διὰ τεσσάρων' to mean the division of a string in a 4:3 ration. 

To give the reader some idea about how the original Pythagorean terminology might have applied to the creation of the gospel we need only look to Plato's Republic where, speaking of human birth, Plato declares:

Now that which is of divine birth has a period which is contained in a perfect number (= 6), but that which is of human birth is contained in a number in which first (i.e. declining from the perfect cycle) increments by involution and evolution giving three intervals and four terms of approximating and differentiating and increasing and decreasing numbers make all agreeable and commensurable.  The base of these (3) with a third added (4) when joined with a figure of five (20) and raised to the third power furnishes two harmonies; the first a square which is a hundred times as great (400 = 4 + 100), and the other a figure having one side equal to the former, but oblong, consisting of a hundred numbers squared upon rational diameters of a square (ie omitting fractions), the side of which is five (7 x 7 = 49 x 100 = 4900), each of them being less by one (than the perfect square, which includes the fractions, sc. 50), or less by two perfect squares of irrational figures (of a square the side of which is five = 50 -(— 50 = 100); and a hundred cubes of three (27 X 100 = 2700 + 4900 + 400 = 8000). Now this number represents a geometrical figure which has control over the good and evil of births. [Plato Republic 546 B]
Now I think the reader can see why at once New Testament scholars lazily adopted the idea inherited from the Church Fathers that 'dia tessaron' just meant made 'through four' gospels.  It is a lot of work to sift through all this Pythagorean mumbo-jumbo.  But I will argue that if we want to do justice to the original identification we will have to literally 'do the math' here.

As Adam notes Plato is here discussing the connection between human fecundity and divine mathematics.  The way numbers develop is 'perfect' and humankind is an imitation of mathematics.  The original Greek text of Plato here is dealing with the 'cubing' of numbers (literally 'the multiplication of root by square').  As Adam notes "the period of human gestation is therefore the first number in which cubings 'make everything'" and not surprisingly - given that we are dealing with Pythagoras - everything comes down to Pythagoras's famous theorum about right angle triangles.

I know most of you have now likely forgot all you learned in school but that is no matter given that your teachers likely did not inform you of the original mystical signfiicance of the so-called 'Pythagorean theorum.'

Pythagoras originally taught that human gestation was connected to the cubing of those 'elements which make like and unlike and wax and wane.'  These elements are the numbers 3, 4 and 5, which measure the three sides of the Pythagorean triangle. as we are informed by many authorities — Aristotle, Plutarch, Aristides Quintilianus, Proclus and many more - Plato used in his Numbers.  The numbers 3, 4, and 5 are said to ' make like because, as we shall see, in the latter part of the Number, where the triangle fulfils its office as kosmikon trigonon (Proclus l.c II p. 45, 23) they produce the 'harmony' 3600 squared and square numbers are dmoioi (Iamblicus l.c. p. 82): they 'make unlike' because the produce the harmony 4800 x 2700.

As the elements out of which the Universe is formed, they may be said to grow with its growth, and decline with its decline. The words have also a further meaning as a description of 3, 4, 5 regarded as the archai of all that exist.  Now the first number in which cubing of 3, 4 and 5 are present is 3 squared + 4 squared + 5 squared = 216.

Now we move on to context of the term 'dia tessaron.'  The Pythagoreans asserted that the embryo develops according to the proportions of the 'harmony' or musical scale.  As Adam notes:

The first stage is complete in 6 days, the second in 8, and 8:6 is 'the fourth' (διὰ τεσσάρων). The third stage (making flesh) takes 9 days, and 9:6 is 'the fifth' (διά πέντε). In the next 12 days the body is formed : and 11 : 6 is the octave (διὰ πασῶν).  Total 6 + 8 + 9 + 12 = 35 and 35 is a 'harmony' (Plut. de anim. grec. Tim 1017 F)  Now 216 = (6 x 35) +6, so that the number 216 contains 6 'harmonies' together with 6 times total plus six (Nicomachus Excerpt, ex Nicom. in von Jan's Mus. Scr. Gr p. 279).  [Adam, Commentary on Plato's Republic p. 206]

It seems impossible to me to believe that this pre-existent Pythagorean understanding of the term διὰ τεσσάρων is not the original meaning of the term.

The various heresies condemned by Irenaeus clearly invoke Pythagorean number theory at every turn.  At the very beginning of Book One for instance Irenaeus accuses the Valentinians of developing their theories about Bythus and Sige, and then Nous and Aletheia. from "the first and first-begotten Pythagorean Tetrad, which they also denominate the root of all things." (AH 1.1)  The heretic Mark (or Marcus) claims to have had a vision where the Tetrad literally descended upon him, presumably at his baptism (cf. AH 1.14.1).  But the Tetrad is only a derivative of the διὰ τεσσάρων.  The διὰ τεσσάρων is not 'of four' things but 'the fourth' again in a ratio of lengths of point on a string.  It would seem certain then that Irenaeus developed his idea of a 'gospel in four' from the pre-existent interest in Pythagoreanism among members of the Alexandrian Church which came before him. 

We see clear evidence of an interest in Pythagoreanism in the writings of Clement of Alexandria.  Clement even gives Philo the epithet 'the Pythagorean' owing to his interest in the same mathematical system.  There are many examples of Pythagorean though in Clement's writings but we find the same - more importantly - in the thought of Tatian, the alleged 'author' of the Diatessaron.  His teacher Justin admits undergoing initiation into the mystic Pythagorean tradition (Dialogue II).  We unfortunately have only one surviving work from Tatian but in it he too demonstrates intimacy with Pythagorean mystical doctrine (cf. Oration. 28.1). 

I find it thus impossible that someone like Tatian could have been so willfully ignorant to have misapplied the name 'διὰ τεσσάρων' to a text.  The use of the Pythagorean terminology was so widespread in educated circles at the time that Tatian couldn't have conceived of a 'harmony of four' called διὰ τεσσάρων.  If he had an inkling to combine four texts into a harmony he would have called it 'the Tetrad' or something like that as we see other Christians of the period apparently do.  The only reason that this publicly circulating text was called διὰ τεσσάρων was because it was the first gospel produced from the heavenly revelation which ultimately established two texts (cf. 1 Cor. 2. 1 - 7).  The other text - described by the apostle as a 'secret wisdom' (1 Cor 2.6,7) - must have been the  clumsily referenced by Victor of Capua.  Together the διὰ τεσσάρων and the διά πέντε made up the complete διὰ πασῶν.

This was conceived as the 'complete' harmony of the gospel by Justin, Tatian and undoubtedly Clement too. 


Email stephan.h.huller@gmail.com with comments or questions.


 
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