Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem the Syrian on the Diatessaron

and subscriptions. Isho'dad is called deMaruzaya, where we should have expected Maruzaya or merely deMaru1. Further the closing subscription calls him Bishop of the region of Assyria, without naming the city.

But, however this may be, the name of the author is clearly given, and there is no doubt that it is the Nestorian writer of whom 'Abd-isho' speaks, and whom Wright, in his Syriac Literature (p. 220), described as follows:

'Isho'dadh of Marū or Merv, bishop of Ḥĕdhattā or al-Hadīthah, was a competitor with Theodosius for the patriarchate in 852. According to 'Abhd-isho' his principal work was a Commentary on the New Testament, of which there are MSS. in Berlin, Sachau 311, and in the collection of the S.P.C.K.2 It extended however to the Old Testament as well, for in Cod. Vat. cccclvii. we find the portions relating to Genesis and Exodus.'

The S.P.C.K. manuscript to which Wright alludes is the one which we use from the Cambridge University Library: it contains, as we said above, part of the Commentary on the Pentateuch3. There is also a copy (= Bodl. Or. 624) in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

We shall now give some of the references to the Diatessaron which are found in Isho'dad, after which we shall pass on to collect the fragments which Isho'dad has extracted from Ephrem's Commentary upon the Diatessaron, in connexion with which we shall have to ask whether the acquaintance of the writer with Ephrem extends beyond the commentary in question.

It is very important to observe that the allusions both to the Diatessaron and to the Ephrem Commentary are so extensive that it is necessary to allow that the quotations involve an actual acquaintance with the works in question, and consequently there is no room for doubting Isho'dad's further statement that the Ephrem Commentary is a commentary upon the text of Tatian. It may seem unnecessary to make this last remark, but it is important to remember that the identification has been questioned in certain quarters, and every piece of evidence upon the point is useful.

1 Is there any chance of this being the same person as Isho' Maruzaya or Isho' of Merv, the compiler of a Syriac lexicon, which was one of the sources of Bar 'Ali's glosses? see Wright, Syriac Literature, p. 215.

2 i.e. the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.

3 Three other MSS. are said to exist in America, viz. two in the Library of Lane Theological Seminary, one (incomplete) in the possession of Dr Hall.