In Greece, he encountered an Ionian theologian, who has been identified as Athenagoras of Athens ; while in the east, he was taught by an Assyrian, sometimes identified with Tatian, and a Jew, who was possibly Theophilus of Caesarea.

Tatian was a pupil of second-century Christian convert, apologist, and philosopher Justin Martyr

It is equally unclear whether Tatian took the Syriac Gospel texts composited into his Diatessaron from a previous translation, or whether the translation was his own.

Tatian was one of his pupils.

In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, after disputing with the cynic philosopher Crescens he was denounced by the latter to the authorities, according to Tatian ( Address to the Greeks 19 ) and Eusebius ( HE IV 16. 7-8 ).

Nicholas Perrin argues that Thomas is dependent on the Diatessaron, which was composed shortly after 172 by Tatian in Syria.

Hippolytus claims that Monoimus was a follower of Tatian, and that his cosmological system was derived from that of the Pythagoreans, which indeed seems probable.

On the other hand, Vanderbilt Professor Kathy L. Gaca ( The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity, University of California Press, 2003 ) promotes a view of Epiphanes as one of the voices in early Christianity who held a positive and liberationist view of sexual pleasure, and who was among those like him who were ultimately silenced by the victorious sex-negative leadership represented by Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine.

In Early Christian writings it is used to denote " being " or " substantive reality " and is not always distinguished in meaning from ousia ( essence ); it was used in this way by Tatian and Origen, and also in the anathemas appended to the Nicene Creed of 325.

Tatian, the Assyrian, created the Diatessaron, a gospel harmony written in Syriac around AD 170 and the earliest form of the gospel not only in Syriac but probably also in Armenian.

Tatian the Assyrian < ref >

Prominent early Christian figures have lived in and emerged from this region such as Tatian the Assyrian who came to Edessa from Hadiab ( Adiabene ).

The earliest mention of Justin is found in the Oratio ad Graecos by Tatian, who calls him " the most admirable Justin ," quotes a saying of his, and says that the Cynic Crescens laid snares for him.

However, he affirms Genesis 1: 28 and Hebrews 13: 4 and distinguishes himself from the disparage of marriage by Marcion and Manichæus, and the error of Tatian who thought all intercourse to be impure, and explains, " while we honour marriage we prefer virginity which is the offspring of marriage.

The author of the smaller treatise To the Greeks cannot be Justin, because he is dependent on Tatian ; Harnack places it between 180 and 240.

There are echoes in Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Cyprian, and Lactantius.

Exceptions to this positive witness include Tatian, a disciple of Justin Martyr turned heretic, as well as the Gnostic Basilides.

: PG 6: Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus of Antioch, Hermias philosophus

I refer to Justin and Miltiades and Tatian and Clement and many others, in all of whose works Christ is spoken of as God.

* Martyr Macedonios in Phrygia, and with him martyrs Tatian and Theodoulos

In the course of their studies, men such as Tatian of Antioch ( flourished in 180 ), Clement of Alexandria ( died before 215 ), Hippolytus of Rome ( died in 235 ), Julius Africanus of Jerusalem ( died after 240 ), Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine ( 260-340 ), and Pseudo-Justin frequently quoted their predecessors, the Graeco-Jewish biblical chronographers of the Hellenistic period, thereby allowing discernment of more distant scholarship.

Tatian combined the four gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — into a single narrative.

Other students have noted a range of textual similarities between passages in the Gospel of Barnabas, and variously the texts of a series of late medieval vernacular harmonies of the four canonical gospels ( in Middle English and Middle Dutch, but especially in Middle Italian ); which are all speculated as deriving from a lost Vetus Latina version of the Diatessaron of Tatian.

The apologist and ascetic Tatian had previously harmonized the four gospels into a single narrative, the Diatesseron ( c 150-160 ).

" EH 4. 29. 6 mentions the Diatessaron: " But their original founder, Tatian, formed a certain combination and collection of the gospels, I know not how, to which he gave the title Diatessaron, and which is still in the hands of some.

* Tatian produces his Diatessaron, a harmony of the four gospels.

Perhaps his primary importance to the historian of Syriac literature lies in the zeal with which he strove to replace the Diatessaron or Gospel Harmony of Tatian with the four canonical Gospels, ordering that a copy of the latter should be placed in every church.

The Diatessaron ( c 160 – 175 ) is the most prominent Gospel harmony created by Tatian, an early Christian apologist and ascetic.

In order to fit all the canonical material in, Tatian created his own narrative sequence, which is different from both the synoptic sequence and John's sequence.

Tatian omitted duplicated text, especially among the synoptics.

If so, it is unclear how much Tatian may have borrowed from this previous author in determining his own narrative sequence of Gospel elements.

There is scholarly uncertainty about what language Tatian used for its original composition, whether Syriac or Greek.

Modern scholarship tends to favour a Syriac origin ; but even so, the exercise must have been repeated in Greek very shortly afterwards — probably by Tatian himself.

Irenaeus speaks of his martyrdom and of Tatian as his disciple.

Examples of the Western text are found in Codex Bezae, Codex Claromontanus, Codex Washingtonianus, the Old Latin ( i. e., Latin translations made prior to the Vulgate ), as well as in quotations by Marcion, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Cyprian.

* Discourse to the Greek ( Oratio ad Graecos ), by the Syrian Tatian, is the first treatise on the evils of paganism in Christian literature.

Snippets of biographical information are provided by ancient authors as diverse as Tatian, Proclus, Clement of Alexandria, Cicero, Aelian, Plutarch, Galen, Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides and several anonymous authors in the Palatine Anthology.

He was almost positive it was not Assyrian nor Cassite, and imagined it must have been German or English.

The last Assyrian city to fall was Harran in south east Anotolia, this city was also the birthplace of the last king of Babylon, the Assyrian Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar.

When they lost control of Assyria itself, the name Syria survived and was applied only to the land of Aramea to the west, that had once been part of the Assyrian empire.

By 150 BC, Assyria was under the control of the Parthian Empire as Athura ( the Parthian word for Assyria ) where the Assyrian city of Ashur seems to have gained a degree of autonomy, and temples to the native gods of Assyria were resurrected.

It was known as Asuristan during this period, and became a main centre of the Church of the East ( now the Assyrian Church of the East ), with a flourishing Syriac ( Assyrian ) Christian culture which exists there to this day.

Temples were still being dedicated to the national god Ashur in his home city and in Harran during the 4th century AD, indicating an Assyrian identity was still strong.

The city of Assur was still occupied by Assyrians during the Islamic period until the 14th century when Tamurlane conducted a massacre of indigenous Assyrian Christians.

An Assyrian war of independence was fought during World War I following the Assyrian Genocide suffered at the hands of the Ottomans and their Kurdish allies.

Additionally, the claimants to this ancestry also claim descendancy from Sargon of Akkad ( whose dynasty died out over 1500 years before the Assyrian dynasty fell ), and from Nabopolassar, who was a Chaldean, politically and militarily opposed to Assyria, and not in fact an Assyrian.

In the Neo-Assyrian period the Aramaic language became increasingly common, more so than Akkadian — this was thought to be largely due to the mass deportations undertaken by Assyrian kings, in which large Aramaic-speaking populations, conquered by the Assyrians, were relocated to Assyria and interbred with the Assyrians.

Achaemenid Assyria ( 539 BC – 330 BC ) retained a separate identity ( Athura ), official correspondence being in Imperial Aramaic, and there was even a determined revolt of the two Assyrian provinces of Mada and Athura in 520 BC.

It also remained the spoken tongue of the indigenous Assyrian / Babylonian citizens of all Mesopotamia under Persian, Greek and Roman rule, and indeed well into the Arab period it was still the language of the majority, particularly in the north of Mesopotamia, surviving to this day among the Assyrian Christians.

It was remembered that there had been an Assyrian empire predating the Persian one, but all particulars were lost.

Eventually Hezekiah revolted against Assyria, and as Isaiah had predicted the country was ravaged by Assyrian armies.

Nineveh — where Jonah preached — was the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, which fell to the Medes in 612 BC.

The first stage was the collection and arrangement of some spoken sayings of the historical Micah ( the material in chapters 1-3 ), in which the prophet attacks those who build estates through oppression and depicts the Assyrian invasion of Judah as Yahweh's punishment on the kingdom's corrupt rulers, including a prophecy that the Temple will be destroyed.

Jonah had already uttered his message of warning, and Nahum was followed by Zephaniah, who also predicted ( Zephaniah 2: 4-15 ) the destruction of the city, predictions which were remarkably fulfilled ( 625 BC ) when Nineveh was destroyed apparently by fire, and the Assyrian empire came to an end, an event which changed the face of Asia.