Abbreviations used for versions of the gospels in Syriac; The Diatessaron, (DT), The Sinaitic Palimpsest, (S). The Curetonian manuscript, (C). The Peshitta version of the whole NT, (P). The Philoxenian versions of some NT letters and probably the Revelation, (Ph). The Harklean version of the whole NT, (H).
To summarize briefly, how these ancient Syriac versions of the gospel are related and how they have survived into our own times. The Diatessaron, (DT) is an archaic, masterful and linguistically excellent Syriac gospel harmony. By this, I mean that the DT is one gospel narrative woven together from the four gospels. The ancient commentators thought that the the DT was the work of Tatian who lived around AD 172. However, since a Syriac text very like the DT was used by some church fathers who lived before Tatian, the DT may be much older. Sadly, no manuscripts of the Syriac DT are known, but many thousands of DT quotations survive in the writings of the early Syrian church fathers. DT readings crop up in many languages, in the writings of the early church fathers who lived and wrote all over the ancient world, including; Britain, Italy, Gaul (France), North Africa, Palestine, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The widespread influence that the DT exerted is strong evidence of its importance and antiquity. The Syriac DT flourished until the time of the first Council of Ephesus in the early 5th century AD when it was put aside and suppressed by the mainstream Syrian denominations in favour of the separate gospel format. Even so, copies of the DT survived for many centuries and the influence of the DT continued until at least into the 13th century.
The Sinaitic, (S) and Curetonian, (C) are surviving manuscript examples of the Old Syriac four gospels. They are classified as Old Syriac to distinguish them from the Peshitta, (P) version. However, the two surviving manuscripts; S (late 4th century) and C (5th century) are damaged, and so some gospel passages are missing. The earliest evidence for the Old Syriac separate gospels is their use by bishop Aitalaha of Edessa who was bishop of Edessa from AD 323 to AD 345 or 346. The Old Syriac separate gospels may be older than AD 323, no-one knows for certain. From AD 323 onwards, the Old Syriac enjoyed a very long career. At first, sets of the separate gospels like S and C were used by the mainstream groups alongside the DT gospel harmony until the DT began to be suppressed in about AD 425. After AD 425, the Old Syriac separate gospels continued in use for many centuries and there is no evidence that they were ever officially suppressed. Consequently, the Old Syriac gospels remained in popular use in many areas, at least until the Muslim conquest in the early 7th century AD. Even after the Muslim conquest, the Old Syriac separate gospels were displaced only gradually by the P version. Indeed, away from the mainstream and particularly in the Syrian monasteries, the Old Syriac four gospels continued to exert a strong influence on the Syriac gospel text at least until the 13th century AD. It can be deduced from the quotations of the early Syrian fathers that the Old Syriac separate gospels existed in a variety of forms. The C and S Old Syriac manuscripts and the others quoted by the early Syrian fathers preserve much archaic and very important textual material. The textual material found in the Old Syriac tradition includes relics from an ancient gospel narrative written in Palestinian Aramaic, others from the Syriac Diatessaron as well as traces of one or more attempts to revise the ancient Syriac text using equally ancient Greek versions.
Next, we have the Syriac Vulgate text called the Peshitta, (P). P is the oldest version of the whole Syriac NT to have survived complete. Evidence for the use of the P version first appears at Edessa around AD 411 and so P is thought to date from the late 4th or early 5th century AD. P is a Syriac text that has been meticulously revised to be quite close to a Greek text, sacrificing a little linguistic elegance in the process. P retains a few archaic readings which show it to be a revision of an Old Syriac text rather than a completely fresh translation. The career of the P version has not yet ended. From its first appearance in the 5th century, it has become gradually more popular and today it is used by every Syriac speaking denomination.
In about 508 AD, Philoxenus who was bishop of Mabbog is said to have ordered a new revision of P which was afterwards called the Philoxenian, (Ph). Using Syriac very elegantly, it is said that he skilfully moved his Ph version nearer to the Greek text than P. Unfortunately, no manuscripts of the Ph gospels survive and Ph gospel quotations are very rare and difficult to verify. Although Philoxenus is said to have commissioned Ph, it is very remarkable that his own frequent gospel quotations preserved in his writings show that he used an Old Syriac set of the four gospels. Anyway, the career of the version that bears his name was short as it was superseded about 100 years afterwards by the Harklean, (H) version.
The Harklean, (H) version is a critical revision of P and Ph completed in 616 AD by the Syrian Orthodox scholar Thomas of Harkel, who later became a bishop. This scholar revised P and Ph to be so close to the Greek text of the NT that he compromised the Syriac language in the process. This made H very awkward for the Syrians to use, which may have limited it's appeal. Nevertheless, H is an important version because of the scholarship that was used to create it. So far as I know, H contains the earliest version of the gospels to be published with critical notes. For, as he was creating H, Thomas wrote down the variant readings which he found in the margin. These ancient critical notes have been consulted by all scholars whenever they have revised the Greek text in modern times. Nevertheless, the everyday use of H was limited to the Syrian Orthodox denomination and it never achieved the wide use and mainstream popularity enjoyed by P.
The first significant study into the origins of the Peshitta text was published by F. Crawford Burkitt, in his 'Evangelion daMepharreshe' Publ.: CUP 1904, (2 volumes). In volume 2, pp. 100ff. of his book, Burkitt proposed, and tried to prove, that the Peshitta NT was a version created by Bishop Rabbula of Edessa, (AD 411- 435) and that the Peshitta displaced the (now lost) Diatessaron gospel harmony.
Burkitt's approach went unchallenged for fifty years until a very interesting study on the history of the Peshitta text was published in 1951 by Arthur Vööbus, 'Studies in the history of the gospel text in Syriac', Publ.: CSCO vol. 128, subsidia, tome 3, Louvain, 1951. Vööbus gathered the extant Greek and Syriac fragments which were written by Rabbula and by examining his gospel quotations, proved that Bishop Rabbula actually used an Old Syriac gospel text like S and C, not the Peshitta. Using the same approach, he went on to show that Old Syriac texts were the dominant text type used by the Syriac speaking clerics in the 5th century AD. Thus, he proved that Rabbula was not responsible for the introduction of the Peshitta. From my own study of Rabbula's gospel quotations it is clear to me that he used a set of the four Old Syriac gospels into which many DT gospel readings had been inserted.
Although there is evidence that the Peshitta existed by AD 411, quotations of the gospel text in a majority of ecclesiastical sources from the 5th and early 6th century show that the Old Syriac four gospels were the officially approved gospel type used in the Syrian churches during this period. By quoting the works of other prominent Syriac churchmen and writers of the time, Vööbus shows convincingly, that the Old Syriac text type was the dominant Syriac text type during the 5th century. Vööbus also demonstrated that the Peshitta made no significant inroads into popular usage before the mid 6th century AD. He then proceeded to demonstrate how Old Syriac text types (like the DT, S and C) persisted for centuries longer than had earlier been thought. Again, by quoting various authors from different streams of Syriac speaking Christianity, official church publications, translated literature and liturgies he shows that the Old Syriac texts were used fairly often up to the 10th century AD. He then traces how the Old Syriac texts were slowly displaced by P before falling out of use around the 13th century AD.
There is good historical evidence that at least two Syrian bishops, Rabbula of Edessa and Theodoret of Cyrrhus were actively promoting the Old Syriac four gospels and destroying the Diatessaron in around AD 425. Theodoret says that he found 200 copies of the Diatessaron in his own diocese. Now, from the record of the first Council of Ephesus in AD 431 (i.e. only six years afterward) we know that there were about 34 west Syrian bishoprics at this time. Thus, by simple multiplication we can estimate that around AD 425, there were at least 6,800 copies of the Diatessaron still in circulation within Syrian Orthodox circles alone. This does not take into account the Diatessaron copies that Theodoret did not find, nor the other copies owned by thousands of Syrian monks who were scattered all over the orient. Nevertheless, it does give us some quantitative idea of the large numbers of Diatessaron copies that existed prior to AD 425.
But then, how did all these Diatessarons get into the hands of Theodoret's parishioners in the first place? We get a clue from Theodoret's and Rabbula's actions. They considered the single gospel type, not only obsolete, but old hat. We have some evidence that the Old Syriac four gospel format was in use about a century before AD 425. We can infer this, because Aitalaha who was bishop of Edessa from AD 323 to 345 or 346 says he was using the separate gospels in a letter he wrote to some Persian Christians. Nevertheless, as has just been shown, there were still many thousands of copies of the Diatessaron circulating in AD 425. The sheer number of copies extant in 425 AD indicates that there was a time, perhaps a time before the days of bishop Aitalaha, when the Diatessaron was used by the Syrian clerics also.
As I have described above, there were a number of Old Syriac texts; There were a number of Old Syriac separate gospel text types, the Diatessaron gospel harmony and the early Peshitta separate gospels. All of these texts were in circulation by the time our earliest Syriac manuscripts appear. This situation presents scholarship with an obvious challenge; How can the various Old Syriac gospel text types be untangled and properly understood? This is the essence of the Old Syriac problem.
Although P and H are preserved in numerous manuscripts, S and C consist of only one manuscript each. S and C were discovered during the 19th Century. The P is by far the most common version used in the manuscripts. However, the best manuscripts for any study into the early Syriac gospels are manuscripts which preserve the writings of the early Syriac speaking church fathers. Fortunately, these writings are very rich in gospel quotations and the Syrian fathers often used Old Syriac gospel manuscripts rather than the Peshitta which became dominant only later, during in the Mediaeval period.
A significant number of the world's surviving Syriac manuscripts and historical evidence for S, C, P, Ph and H are preserved in the UK and Ireland; in the British Library, London, the Cambridge University Library, The Bodleian Library, Oxford, The Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Other very important collections of Syriac manuscripts are located in St Catherine's Sinai, the Vatican Library, the national libraries in Paris and Berlin, the Harvard Semitic Museum in the USA, the St Petersburg collection in Russia as well as in museums, churches, monasteries and libraries in the Middle East.
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