and earliest history of Christianity at Edessa, the new
converts are represented as meeting together to hear read, along with
the Old Testament, the New (Testament) of the _Diatessaron_' [278:3]. It
seems clear from this notice that, at the time when the writer composed
this fiction, the form in which the Evangelical narratives were commonly
read in the churches with which he was best acquainted was a
_Diatessaron_, or _Harmony of Four Gospels_. From internal evidence
however it is clear that the work emanated from Edessa or its
neighbourhood. The date of the fiction is less certain; but it is
obviously an early writing. The St Petersburgh MS containing it is
assigned to the sixth century, and the British Museum MSS to the fifth
or sixth century [279:1]; while there exists an Armenian version said to
have been made as early as the fifth century. The work itself therefore
must have been written much earlier than this. There is indeed no good
reason for doubting that it is the very Syriac document to which
Eusebius refers as containing the correspondence of our Lord with
Abgarus, and preserved among the archives of Edessa, and which therefore
cannot have been very recent when he wrote, about A.D. 325 [279:2]. At
the same time it contains gross anachronisms and misstatements
respecting earlier Christian history, which hardly allow us to place it
much earlier than the middle of the third century [279:3]. Whatever may
be its date, the fact is important that the writer uses _Diatessaron_,
adopted from the Greek into the Syriac, as the familiar name for the
Gospel narrative which was read in public. Of the authorship of this
work however he says nothing. This information we have to seek from
other sources. Nor is it far to seek.

3. We are told that the most famous of the native Syrian fathers,
Ephraem, the deacon of Edessa (who died A.D. 373 [280:1]), wrote a
commentary on the _Diatessaron_ of Tatian. Our informant is Dionysius
Bar-Salibi, who flourished in the last years of the twelfth century, and
died A.D. 1207. In his own Commentary on the Gospels, he writes as
follows [280:2]:--

Tatian, the disciple of Justin, the philosopher and martyr,
selected and patched together from the Four Gospels and constructed
a Gospel, which he called _Diatessaron_, that is _Miscellanies_. On
this work Mar Ephraem wrote an exposition; and its commencement
was--_In the beginning was the Word_. Elias of Salamia, who