Page "Diatessaron" Paragraph 11

No Christian tradition, other than some Syriac ones, has ever adopted a harmonized Gospel text for use in its liturgy.

However, in many traditions ( given the inherent tendency of Christian liturgical texts to ossification ), it was not unusual for subsequent Christian generations to seek to provide paraphrased Gospel versions in language closer to the vernacular of their own day.

Frequently such versions have been constructed as Gospel harmonies, sometimes taking Tatian's Diatessaron as an exemplar ; other times proceeding independently.

Hence from the Syriac Diatessaron text was derived an 11th Century Arabic harmony ( the source for the published versions of the Diatessaron in English ); and a 13th Century Persian harmony.

The Arabic harmony preserves Tatian's sequence exactly, but uses a source text corrected in most places to that of the standard Syriac Peshitta Gospels ; the Persian harmony differs greatly in sequence, but translates a Syriac text that is rather closer to that in Ephrem's commentary.

The Diatessaron is thought to have been available to Muhammad, and may have led to his faulty conclusion in the Qur ' an that the Christian Gospel is one text or one book alone, without reference to the canonical authors or New Testament corpus ; he calls this supposed text the Injil.