jewish-christian gospels and syriac gospel traditions that Tatian’s original used the verb “hide.”^98 But where did the authors of
theRecognitionsandThomasget the same verb? Do they depend on the
Diatessaronor are they perhaps both using a pre-Diatessaronic Jewish-
Christian gospel?
The wording of the ArabicDiatessaronsuggests (but does not prove)
that Tatian did not conflate Matthew : with Luke :, asThomas
andRecognitionsdid, but presented them separately and successively.
DiatessaronXL – (Arabic)
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye have shut
the kingdom of God before men. Woe unto you that know the law! for ye
concealed the keys of knowledge: ye enter not, and those that are entering
ye suffer not to enter.This shows that harmonization inThomasandRec. goes further than in
the (Arabic)Diatessaron.Moreover,bothThomasandRecognitionsrefer
to the “receiving”^99 of the keys which is not present in synoptic parallels
or in Diatessaronic witnesses.
All the above similarities show that both Thomas and Pseudo-
Clementineshaveusedthesameharmonizinggospeltraditionthathas
some connections to Diatessaronic traditions but it has clearly been a
harmony of its own. Is it possible that we are dealing here with the same
tradition that surfaced in logion which is paralleled in theGospel of
the Ebionites?TheexistenceofthesametraditioninEpiphanius’Gospel of
the Ebionitesand inPseudo-Clementineswould not be surprising because
it is often assumed that Epiphanius was creating his picture of the Ebion-
ites on the basis of Pseudo-Clementine writings (or their sources; see
Chapter ..). Moreover, F. Stanley Jones, in his monograph onRec.
.–, concludes that the source ofRec.wasusingtheGospel of the
Ebionites. According to Jones: “The most remarkable common element
is the explicit statement that the Pharisees were baptized by John (Pan.
...;Rec. ..–).”^100 InRecognitions,thisisstatedinthesame
verses that we are dealing with here. Because it is never stated in the
(^98) For the criteria to be used in the reconstruction of theDiatessaron’sreadings, see
Petersen , –, .
(^99) Notably, both the Copticjias well as the Greekλαμ*%νωin logion can be
translated “to take” or “to receive.” In Layton’s edition, Lambin (Coptic) and Attridge
(Greek) have translated “have taken the keys.” However, “have received the keys” would
also be an acceptable translation. The Greek especially might even read better if the
meaning is ‘to receive’ because the lacuna in the manuscript seems to presuppose a full
stop after the “keys of knowledge.” For the reconstruction, see Attridge , .
(^100) Jones , –.