jewish-christian gospels and syriac gospel traditions that share some of the readings with the Old Syriac and Diatessaronic
witnesses but no single manuscript or family of manuscripts comes as
close to the wording of Origen’s passage as do the Old Syriac translations.
In fact, there are only two synoptic expressions in Origen’s story for which
there are no parallels in the Syriac tradition. The Lukan participlefaciens
is not paralleled in the Old Syriac translations but this is only natural
since, due to the different character of the language, Greek participial
constructions are usually expressed in Syriac with a parataxis of two finite
verbs.^31 Origen’sdivideis another expression not paralleled in the Old
Syriac translations. Notably, parallels for that expression are listed only
in the Old Latin versions a (distribute)andk(divide) and in the Greek
group of f^13 .Thus,itisclearthatifdivideis not from the pen of the Latin
translator, it is only attested in versions that are usually regarded as close
relatives of the Old Syriac translations.
...The Influence of the Diatessaronic ContextDespite all the similarities between Origen’s quotation and the Diatessa-
ronic witnesses, it is clear that the actual story about the rich man in the
Diatessaronwas not the same as that of Origen. The analyzed Diatessa-
ronic witnesses show no sign that the beginning of the story would not
have included the list of individual commandments in theDiatessaron.
Furthermore, in the Diatessaronic witnesses, there are no traces of the
second, enlarged discussion between the rich man and Jesus that forms
the main point in Origen’s quotation.
There are two main possibilities for explaining both the differences
and the similarities. We may assume that Origen’s quotation is rooted in
an earlier harmony of synoptic gospels which was used by Tatian when
he composed hisDiatessaronor we may date the tradition in Origen’s
quotation after Tatian and take it as a later representative of traditions
rooted in Tatian’sDiatessaron. As was seen above, the second option
explains the final wording of Origen’s passage very well. Nevertheless,the
influence of a pre-Diatessaronic composition in the earlier stages of the
transmission also seems probable as will become clear in the following.
In theDiatessaron,thestoryabouttherichmanwasplacedbetween
two Lukan passages: the Rich Fool from Luke :–, and the Rich
Man and Lazarus from Luke :–, –. As discussed before,
there are notable similarities between Origen’s quotation and these two
(^31) For this, see Brock , –.