Editing Tatian (section)

== Writings ==
His ''Oratio ad Graecos'' (Address to the Greeks) condemns paganism as worthless, and praises the reasonableness and high antiquity of Christianity. As early as [[Eusebius of Caesarea|Eusebius]], Tatian was praised for his discussions of the antiquity of [[Moses]] and of Jewish legislation, and it was because of this chronological section that his ''Oratio'' was not generally condemned.

His other major work was the ''[[Diatessaron]]'', a "harmony" or synthesis of the four [[New Testament]] [[Gospel]]s into a combined narrative of the life of [[Jesus]]. [[Ephrem the Syrian]] referred to it as the ''Evangelion da Mehallete'' ("The Gospel of the Mixed"), and it was practically the only gospel text used in Assyria during the 3rd and 4th centuries.

In the mid 5th century the Diatessaron was replaced in those Assyrian churches that used it by the four original Gospels. [[Rabbula]], Bishop of [[Edessa, Mesopotamia|Edessa]], ordered the priests and deacons to see that every church should have a copy of the separate Gospels (''Evangelion da Mepharreshe''), and [[Theodoret]], Bishop of Cyrus, removed more than two hundred copies of the ''Diatessaron'' from the churches in his diocese.  The [[Syriac Sinaitic]] manuscript of gospels was produced in between AD 411 and 435 as a result of his edict.<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Translation of the Four Gospels from the Syriac of the Sinaitic Palimpsest|url=https://archive.org/details/atranslationfou00lewigoog|last=Lewis|first=Agnes Smith|year=1894|pages=xvii|publisher=Macmillan |isbn=9780790530086 }}</ref>

A number of [[recension]]s of the ''Diatessaron'' are extant. The earliest, part of the Eastern family of recensions, is preserved in Ephrem's ''Commentary'' on Tatian's work, which itself is preserved in two versions: an Armenian translation preserved in two copies, and a copy of Ephrem's original [[Syriac language|Syriac]] text from the late 5th/early 6th century, which has been edited by [[Louis Leloir]] (Paris, 1966). Other translations include translations made into [[Arabic language|Arabic]], [[Persian language|Persian]], and [[Georgian language|Old Georgian]]. A fragment of a narrative about the [[Passion (Christianity)|Passion]] found in the ruins of [[Dura-Europos]] in 1933 was once thought to have been from the ''Diatessaron'', but more recent scholarly judgement does not connect it directly to Tatian's work.

The earliest member of the Western family of recensions is the Latin [[Codex Fuldensis]], written at the request of bishop [[Victor of Capua]] in 545 AD. Although the text is clearly dependent on the [[Vulgate]], the order of the passages is distinctly how Tatian arranged them. Tatian's influence can be detected much earlier in such Latin manuscripts as the [[Vetus Latina|Old Latin translation]] of the Bible, in [[Novatian]]'s surviving writings, and in the Roman Antiphony. After the Codex Fuldensis, it would appear that members of the Western family led an underground existence, popping into view over the centuries in an [[Old High German]] translation ({{circa|830}}), a [[Dutch language|Dutch]] ({{circa|1280}}), a Venetian manuscript of the 13th century, and a [[Middle English]] manuscript from 1400 that was once owned by [[Samuel Pepys]].

In a lost writing entitled ''On Perfection according to the Doctrine of the Savior,'' Tatian designates matrimony as a symbol of the tying of the flesh to the perishable world and ascribed the "invention" of matrimony to the devil. He distinguishes between the old and the new man; the old man is the law, the new man the Gospel. Other lost writings of Tatian include a work written before the ''Oratio ad Graecos'' that contrasts the nature of man with the nature of the animals, and a ''Problematon biblion'', which aimed to present a compilation of obscure Scripture sayings.