The Musical Diatessaron in Alexandrian Christianity - Clement Reports that the Catechumen Were Only Baptized 'After Three' Years

We have been uncovering the influence of the diatessaron 'the fourth' in Alexandrian Christianity. One passage in the writings of Clement of Alexandria suggests to Maxwell E Johnson (Rites of Christian Initiation that there was a four year initation period for the catechumen before baptism:

Clement may be a witness to a rather lengthy process of prebaptismal catechesis in Egypt when he writes in his Stromata (or Miscellanies) II:18:

. . . husbandmen derived advantage from the law in such things. For it orders newly planted trees to be nourished three years in succession, and the superfluous growths to be cut off, to prevent them being loaded and pressed down; and to prevent their strength being exhausted from want, by the nutriment being frittered away, enjoins tilling and digging round them, so that [the tree] may not, by sending out suckers, hinder its growth. And it does not allow imperfect fruit to be plucked from immature trees, but after three years (ἀλλὰ μετὰ τριετίαν), in the fourth year; dedicating the first-fruits to God after the tree has attained maturity.

This type of husbandry may serve as a mode of instruction, teaching that we must cut the growths of sins, and the useless weeds of the mind that spring up round the vital fruit, till the shoot of faith is perfected and becomes strong. For in the fourth year, since there is need of time to him that is being solidly catechized, the four virtues are consecrated to God, the third alone being already joined to the fourth, the person of the Lord.(τοῦ κυρίου τετάρτην ὑπόστασιν)

Because another early Christian document, the so-called Apostolic Tradition, ascribed to Hippolytus of Rome (ca. 217) does have a reference to "three years" of catechumenal instruction, scholars have often concluded that the overall length of the catechumenate both in Egypt and Rome, if not universally throughout the early church, was three years in duration. [p. 64 - 65]

I think Maxwell doesn't see that this also reinforces our understanding of the original interpretation of an 'after the third' day resurrection as being on the 'fourth day.' Notice also that 'the Lord' is called 'the fourth' (τετάρτην). My guess is that all of this develops from the original significance of the diatessaron. It may even be the source of the Arian preservation of the original Alexandrian distinction of the Son as being subordinate to the Father (as the diatessaron is half the diapason or 'octave').

The diatessaron is the underlying mystical context by which baptism and the resurrection are joined together to form the 'baptism into the death of Christ' (Rom 6:3).