Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem the Syrian on the Diatessaron

words which he used about a prophet being without honour in his own country imply his previous residence among them.

In this way we get glimpses of the character of the disputes between the Marcionite and the Catholic; we can reconstruct something of the argument, and we can collect the leading passages around which the discussion raged. Indeed it will often be found that the texts which Ephrem treats with the greatest fulness and variety are those which relate to the burning questions of the generation or century preceding his own; and the only difficulty lies in determining when he is speaking in his own person, and not quoting or personating a heretic.

Another case which he discusses is that in which the physical body of Christ was denied, for it appears that he enters into an argument with those who held that Christ’s body was not natural, but had descended from heaven, perhaps by passing through the Virgin, as water through a tube, according to some Valentinian Gnostics. It is evident from Ephrem that such persons had made use of the expression in the Gospel of John, ‘no man hath ascended into heaven except him that descended from heaven’; from which they concluded that Christ descended σωματικῶς bodily from above. And they seem to have confirmed this belief, in Syria, by the use of the primitive translation of the Gospel of John into Syriac, in which we are told (John i. 14) that ‘the Word became (or was) a body and dwelt among us.’ To these Ephrem replies¹

‘You are not to say that the body of Christ descended from heaven...but it was Gabriel who descended from heaven...and therefore it says ‘He that descended from heaven.’’

And I think we can see the difficulty which arose in the interpretation of the first chapter of John by the naïve admission of another Syriac commentator², to whom we shall presently refer, and who is perhaps retailing an actual remark of Ephrem, that the original reading was ‘body’ but it was changed to ‘flesh’ in order that people might not suppose that the body descended from heaven³.

One other instance shall be given of the importance of the Ephrem Commentary for a knowledge of the early heresies. I

¹ Mösinger, p. 187.
² Isho'dad of Merv.
³ How characteristic was this translation of σὰρξ flesh by ‘body’ may be seen by studying the text of the Old Syriac Version of the Gospels.