Were the Novatians Heretical Because They Used a Harmony?

[Secret Alias]

The Novatians were curious sect who were otherwise entirely orthodox. It is never clear why they were distinguished from the Church:

According to A. Baumstark, Novation (De trin. 24) reads the verb in the second person plural (et vocabitis nomen eius [and you (p1.) will call his name]), which Baumstark thought was the reading of the Diatessaron based on the -u_l j^f-ojj (and you [p1.] will call his name) he found in one manuscript of the Arabic Harmony. See A. Baumstark, "Die Evangelienzitate Novatians und das Diatessaron," OrChr 27 (1930): 7. Whatever one makes of this agreement between Novation and a manuscript of the Arabic Harmony, one must reject this as the reading of the Diatessaron in the absence of cor- roboration from any other Diatessaronic witness. https://books.google.com/books?id=9eWFu ... kQ6AEIIzAA

[Secret Alias]

https://books.google.com/books?id=kbe9C ... ny&f=false

[Secret Alias]

Novatian's text is clearly not the same as the Bible used by his North African contemporary, Cyprian.8 ln 1930, Anton Baumstark saw in Novatian's gospel passages a connection to Tatian's Diatessaron, speculating that Novatian had a Latin translation of the Diatessaron, which he used for his gospel texts. https://books.google.com/books?id=ClAqA ... sQ6AEIIzAA