Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem the Syrian on the Diatessaron

have pointed out elsewhere¹ the meaning of the curious passage² in which Ephrem says that the words in Daniel where 'a stone is cut out without hands,' are not the same in meaning as the passage 'Look to the mountain and the valley,' in which case he intimates the male and the female. But here he says 'without hands.'

The explanation of our Lord's birth from a virgin by means of Daniel's stone without hands is, of course, well known, but Ephrem reveals to us the counter text of the Adoptionist those who believed Jesus was human and adopted by God who objects to the stone without hands a stone hewn out of a mountain and a valley; he is quoting Isaiah li. 1 as a reference to the Syriac text with Ephrem's comment on it will shew, and hence concludes for a natural birth by the male and the female³.

It is in this way that we are able to restore the watchwords of early battlefields, and no book will help us to so many of these as Ephrem's Commentary on the Diatessaron. For the study of Marcionism, Gnosticism or Adoptionism, it is of very great value; and deserves, therefore, an edited text and a scientific commentary.

Not less important is the volume for the light that it throws upon the Old Syriac text both of the distinct Gospels and of the Diatessaron. The textual critic will read his Ephrem side by side with the oldest copies of the Syriac text. For if the Ephrem Commentary often throws light upon the early condition of the Syriac text, conversely the early Syriac texts (notably the Lewis text) often throw light upon Ephrem. The recurrence, for example, of some curious word or expression will often shew what was the reading most familiar to Ephrem, even where the verse itself may not be actually quoted, or where, when it was actually quoted, the influence of the later Vulgate text has caused a superficial correction.

For example, in Matt. i. 25, Ephrem's copy of the Diatessaron read 'Sancte habitabat cum ea' original: "He lived with her holily" as in the Curetonian. Six times Ephrem quotes it directly; but the diffusion of the reading is such that not only does it influence his comments in other places such

¹ Contemp. Rev. Nov. 1894, p. 669.
² Mösinger, p. 22.
³ Another Adoptionist error is corrected on p. 27, where we are told that the Scripture does not say 'a Saviour who is to become the Lord's Christ, but a Saviour who already is the Lord's Christ.'