Did Origen Use Ammonius's Diatessaron Gospel?

[Ben C. Smith]

I think this about as close as I have found regarding a confirmation that Origen was using a four column book with Matthew as the first colum, Mark as the second column, Luke as the third:

16.13 First, you should observe that both Matthew and Mark have recorded (ἀνέγραψαν) that this event with the blind men or the blind man happened when Jesus was going out from Jericho with the disciples. Luke, however, says, “And it happened when he drew near to Jericho” (Lk 18.35). Thus, according to Luke, he completed the [healing] ministry (oikonomia) with respect to the blind man when he was coming to
Jericho and was near it. Now, someone might say that, in terms of the mystical word, Luke’s version is first, Mark’s is second, [K516] and
Matthew’s is third ( κατὰ τὸν μυστικὸν λόγον ὅτι πρῶτόν ἐστι τὸ τοῦ Λουκᾶ, δεύτερον δὲ τὸ τοῦ Μάρκου [K516] καὶ τρίτον τὸ τοῦ Ματθαίου). For it is necessary first to draw near to Jericho, then to come into it, and <after these things> to go out from it. Luke recorded (ἀνέγραψε), then, that “it happened when he drew near to Jericho,” and Mark that “he also came to Jericho, and when he was coming out of there” (Mk 10.46), but Matthew recorded neither that he drew near to Jericho nor that he came to Jericho, but only that when they were going out from Jericho, a large crowd followed him (Matt 20.29). It is possible, therefore, that [Jesus] had drawn near to Jericho according to Luke, and according to Mark he came to Jericho, but according to Matthew he came out from it.

Well, that is interesting. The temporal sequence, as Origen notes, would be Luke-Mark-Matthew; but he recounts the story in the order Matthew-Mark-Luke before making that observation.

[Secret Alias]

Thank you. Sometimes I waste a lot of space here. But I am trying to find little nuggets like this. The facts are I recognize that I haven't proven my case. But at least it's a start.

[Ben C. Smith]

Origen's use of ἀναγράφω. It always surfaces in discussion of variation within the four accounts.

....

Mark has also preserved all these things in order, from “They were ascending in the way to Jerusalem,” up to, “Immediately he will send it back here again” (Mk 10.32- 11.3). Should you set the gospels alongside one another in terms of these passages and compare them you would find what we have said [is the case]. Luke also, however, has in part recorded something similar, placing before them (καὶ ὁ Λουκᾶς μέντοι ἐκ μέρους τὸ ὅμοιον ἀνέγραψε προτάξας αὐτῶν τὸ) “And strife occurred among them, as to which of them <might b>e the greatest” (Lk 22.24).

....

As I found myself in book 16 of Origen's commentary on Matthew this morning and came across the passage above once again, a couple of the terms that Origen used reminded me of Eusebius' discussion of Ammonius' harmony:

From Origen, Commentary on Matthew 16.7: 7 Should you set the gospels alongside [παραθεὶς] one another in terms of these passages [τόπους] and compare them you would find what we have said [is the case].

From Eusebius, epistle to Carpianus: Ammonius the Alexandrian, having exerted a great deal of energy and effort as was necessary, bequeaths to us a harmonized account of the four gospels. He set alongside [παραθείς] the gospel according to Matthew the corresponding sections of the other gospels. But this had the inevitable result of ruining the sequential order of the other three gospels, as far as a continuous reading of the text was concerned. Keeping, however, both the body and sequence of the other gospels completely intact, in order that you may be able to know where each evangelist wrote passages [τόπους] in which they were led by love of truth to speak about the same things, I drew up a total of ten tables according to another system, acquiring the raw data from the work of the man mentioned above. These tables are set out for you below.

I think that more attention ought to be paid to Alexandria overall: how the treatment of the text developed over the generations from Clement through Ammonius and Origen and Pamphilus to Eusebius and beyond. (Alexandria is, after all, responsible in the main for our current eclectic Bible texts.) I know we do not (yet) possess the smoking gun to prove that Origen used Ammonius' harmony, but both men worked in Alexandria, and Origen is the first father of whom I am aware who made such extensive use of the various parallels between the gospels. He would have been a fool not to have taken advantage of such a tool at his disposal for such intricate work.

[Secret Alias]

That's absolutely brilliant Ben! I will definitely add this to my article and credit you (I will use 'Ben Smith' unless you PM me to make it otherwise). I don't mean to use this to flesh out my own ideas on the direction of the paper - to be honest I submitted it to someone and they wanted so many changes I've put it to the side - but I wonder whether Alexandria was even the location of Ammonius. I mean, we have one anonymous sighting of Ammonius's presence in the city which is used. But really the Diatessaron and Ammonius could have been established at Rome and then Alexandria - or Antioch. We really have no reliable information either way.

The parallel I look at is the dating of Easter. There seems to have been two centers - Rome and Alexandria - which determined the calculation. Demetrius is one name, Hippolytus another. But clearly we're in the dark about the whole process.

Another thing. And I enjoy contemplating the 'form' of things so excuse me for this. Let's think about what it would be like to have a side by side four columned 'gospel' as the basis to everything. You'd have Matthew to one side - the left side. And Matthew runs through from beginning to end. Then beside it you have passages from Mark, Luke and sometimes John. This is the 'gospel.' At some point 'the gospel' turns into back to back bound Matthew-Mark-Luke-John. But clearly the beginning of the gospel must have been Mark or Luke (the prologue) and the end was the last words of John (which Trobisch already takes as perhaps applying to the 'four gospels' and not just John.

So the fourfold gospel is Matthew 'and the rest.' This explains Irenaeus's reworking of Papias (i.e. that Matthew was primary and all the rest had the gospel in a slightly wrong order (= Mark) and Papias's statement about Mark. I can't help but think that Ammonius's gospel must have predated Origen. In other words, the Diatessaron gospel was already known to Irenaeus in Rome (presuming he wrote from Rome). I know this sounds crazy but 'the gospel' (i.e. the Diatessaron gospel) or its underlying assumptions were already found in Papias too.

And then Justin used some sort of a 'harmony.' But this harmony can't be the Diatessaron. Yet at some point too the very name 'Diatessaron' becomes conflated with Justin's harmony. In other words, there seems to be two texts both harmonies in some sense but one seems to be a single narrative which seems 'harmonized' i.e. that bits and pieces of Matthew, Mark, Luke and maybe John appear like a quilt i.e. woven together and then there is Ammonius's 'Diatessaron' gospel which is Matthew arranged side by side with three other columns.

I see the struggle between Justin's harmony and this 'Diatessaron' already present in Tertullian's Against Marcion. It helps contextualize the accusation against Marcion regarding the excising of things only found in Matthew. There is a statement in there about Marcion rejecting the four, only accepting one - i.e. Luke - and thus his ignoring of Matthew is argued to be his downfall. This is where the arrangement of the narrative is so interesting. The Diatessaron comes to shape the argument insofar as - if my argument is accepted - insofar as the argument that Marcion's gospel is Luke and Luke fits in Matthew must have been an argument made from the Diatessaron. You wouldn't say 'he cut this out of Matthew' without having the Diatessaron available. I will explain this later have to get back to work.

[Secret Alias]

You might find this interesting also:

And there the disciples say to Him when He was not inquiring, that they had only five loaves and two fishes; but here to Him making inquiry, they give answer about the seven loaves and the few small fishes. And there He commands the multitudes to sit down or lie upon the grass; for Luke also wrote, Make them sit down, Luke 9:14 and Mark says, He commanded them all to sit down; Mark 6:39 but here He does not command but proclaims to the multitude to sit down. Again, there, the three Evangelists say in the very same words that He took the five loaves and the two fishes and looking up to heaven He blessed; but here, as Matthew and Mark have written, Jesus gave thanks and broke; there, they recline upon the grass, but here they sit down upon the ground. You will moreover investigate in the accounts in the different places the variation found in John (κατὰ τοὺς τόπους τὸ τοῦ Ἰωάννου παρηλλαγμένον), who wrote in regard to that transaction that Jesus said, Make the men sit down, John 6:10 and that, having given thanks, He gave of the loaves to them that were set down, but he did not mention this miracle at all. Attending, then, to the difference of those things which are written in the various places in regard to the loaves (κατὰ τοὺς τόπους ἐπὶ τοῖς ἄρτοις γεγραμμένων), I think that these belong to a different order from those; wherefore these are fed in a mountain, and those in a desert place. [Origen Comm Matt 11:19]

παραλλάσσω = to change side by side https://books.google.com/books?id=Ci1FA ... BnoECAYQAQ, make things alternate, transpose The term is defined = as Παραλλάσσω, Αιι. παραλλάττω, fut. ξω, to change things that are near each other ; to change in an alternate order https://books.google.com/books?id=avosA ... wQ6AEIKjAA I think this is almost as good as we're going to get. He's talking about a four columned work where 'passages' are arranged 'side by side.' If we look for other uses in the commentary I am sure we will find other examples. Compare παράλληλος, γράμμα, Παράλληλος, ου, αdi. that are placed, that lie, or that run, near, or opposite each other, especially, at the same distance in every point.

Also from Liddell Scott - παραλλάξ (παραλλάσσω) adv., alternately, Soph. A. 1087 (ubi v. 1.ob.), Tim. Locr. 95 C.-11. in Читаем order,i. с. in alternating rows, Thuc. 2, 102. https://books.google.com/books?id=PbIKA ... 82&f=false I think we're almost there! Thanks so much

Timaeus of Locri https://books.google.com/books?id=2D4EA ... BE&f=false

[Secret Alias]

Maybe I was too enthusiastic. Eusebius Demonstation:

Two ways of life were thus given by the law of Christ to His Church. The one is above nature, and beyond common human living; it admits not marriage, child-bearing, property nor the possession of wealth, but wholly and permanently separate from the common customary life of mankind (ὅλον δὲ δι' ὅλου τῆς κοινῆς καὶ συνήθους ἁπάντων ἀνθρώπων ἀγωγῆς παρηλλαγμένον), it devotes itself to the service of God alone in its wealth of heavenly love!

[Secret Alias]

παρηλλαγμένον just means altered, changed, unusual.

[MrMacSon]

Whether what Eusebius said about Ammonius is true and whether he was a Christian would seem to be debatable.

According to Porphyry, Ammonius rejected Christianity.

According to Plotinus, a pupil of Ammonius, Cassius Longinus, said Ammonius wrote nothing, contradicting Eusebius.

Hierocles, writing in the 5th century, stated that Ammonius' fundamental doctrine was that Plato and Aristotle were in full agreement with each other [Hierocles in Photius, Bibl. cod. 214, 251]

[Secret Alias]

I don't think Ammonius's religion has any bearing on the existence or influence of the Diatessaron or Ammonius's authorship of it. Can we finally eradicate "mountainmanisms" at this forum? No one said anything about Ammonius being a Christian. I consider it an intriguing possibility that the Diatessaron was authored by a non-believer. The Mishnah might have been compiled by a non-observant Jew around the same time who likely sat at the Imperial court. Life (and history) is strange.

I don't think think an observant Jew - one who belonged or adhered to an established tradition - could have compiled the Mishnah. In the same way it makes sense that Ammonius didn't believe or belong to any existing Christian tradition when he compiled a harmony of four (but basically three appendages related back to Matthew). Seems like Ammonius just 'built out' the Diatessaron from the suggestion of Papias.

[MrMacSon]

I'm not addressing the notion that Ammonius authored the Diatessaron [ I presume you mean the Diatessaron generally attributed to Tatian].

What I'm wondering and will thus infer is if/that Eusebius has taken aspects of Origen's Commentary on Matthew - eg. 16.7 - and attributed it to Origin's predecessor Ammonius in his (ie. Eusebius') epistle to Carpianus.

That is, it's another example of Eusebius talking up the endeavours of someone 1-200 yrs previously as being entirely Christian endeavours, as he appears to have done for Ammonius* (and thus also for Origen and himself) in Eccl hist, IV,19, 'Circumstances Related of Origen'

* based on what others say about Ammonius

It is through contemplation of these assertions about Ammonius and Origen and wider commentary around 'Ammonius' that garnered the proposals that there were two Ammoniuses and two Origens in Alexandria at the same time, but it would seem just as likely that there are different portrayals of these same persons and largely b/c of spin that Eusebius has laid down.