jewish-christian gospels and syriac gospel traditions harmonizations where Luke’s gospel has influenced Matthew’s text. Thus,
they do not contradict the conclusion that Origen’s passage contains
features of Matthew’s and Luke’s editorial work and depends on the
canonical gospels.
Origen’s passage has no notable similarities with Mark’s gospel if
compared with the critical text of the th edition of Nestle–Aland, but
there are some agreements with Mark’s textual variants as will become
evident in the next section....Comparison with Variant Readings
and Diatessaronic Witnesses
According to Klijn, Origen’s passage agrees with variant readings that
can be found particularly in Caesarean manuscripts like f^1 and f^13 ,
and in the Syriac tradition represented by theDiatessaron,OldSyriac
translations,aswellasAphrahatandEphrem.^22 Connections between
these manuscript traditions and Origen’s passage are remarkable, indeed.
Nevertheless, more than with anything else, Origen’s passage agrees with
the Old Syriac translations. Together with the features that the passage
shares with Diatessaronic witnesses, the agreement suggests that Origen’s
passage was composed in a context where the Old Syriac translations and
theDiatessaronwere available.
The relation of Tatian’sDiatessaronto the Old Syriac translations con-
tinues to be debated but today most scholars seem to think that Tatian’s
SyriacDiatessaronpreceded the Old Syriac translations.^23 Theoretically,
if Origen’s passage agrees with the Old Syriac translations, this may be
due to the dependance of Origen’s passage on theDiatessaron(or on its
traditions) or due to the dependance on the finished Syriac translations
(or on their other sources besides theDiatessaron). For each individual
variant there are, of course, many possible explanations but in my opin-
ion the force of the cumulative evidence is compelling: no other sources
in addition to theDiatessaronand the Old Syriac translations need to
be assumed. Because the reconstruction of the original wording of the
Diatessaronis a subject of its own and an extremely demanding one,
I have treated the Old Syriac translations and other Diatessaronic wit-
nesses as one group that comes close to the sphere of tradition where
(^22) Klijn , .
(^23) See, Metzger , –. Petersen , –, . For Syriac as the original
language of theDiatessaron, see also Petersen , –.