#tatian

[owenbroadcast]

[howieabel]

How, then, shall I admit this nativity according to Fate, when I see such managers of Fate? I do not wish to be a king; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline military command; I detest fornication; I am not impelled by an insatiable love of gain to go to sea; I do not contend for chaplets; I am free from a mad thirst for fame; I despise death; I am superior to every kind of disease; grief does not consume my soul. Am I a slave, I endure servitude. Am I free, I do not make a vaunt of my good birth. I see that the same sun is for all, and one death for all, whether they live in pleasure or destitution. The rich man sows, and the poor man partakes of the same sowing. The wealthiest die, and beggars have the same limits to their life. The rich lack many things, and are glorious only through the estimation they are held in; but the poor man and he who has very moderate desires, seeking as he does only the things suited to his lot, more easily obtains his purpose. How is it that you are fated to be sleepless through avarice? Why are you fated to grasp at things often, and often to die? Die to the world, repudiating the madness that is in it. Live to God, and by apprehending Him lay aside your old nature. We were not created to die, but we die by our own fault. Our free-will has destroyed us; we who were free have become slaves; we have been sold through sin. Nothing evil has been created by God; we Ourselves have manifested wickedness; but we, who have manifested it, are able again to reject it.

Tatian (110-172), Address to the Greeks

[apollon-quotes]

I have often seen a man.....sometimes personating Aphrodite, sometimes Apollo

– Tatian, Address to the Greeks (describing an effeminate man)

[santmat]

A Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Hebrews: "It seems that, in constructing his 'harmony' [Diatessaron], he [Tatian] used not just the 'canonical' Gospels, but also a 'fifth source', whose material sometimes agreed with readings proper to texts like the Gospel to the Hebrews or the Gospel of Thomas. It has been proposed to identify this source with that Aramaic tradition of Palestinian origin, independent of the Greek Gospels, that had first conveyed a knowledge of Jesus to the peoples of Syria, pivoting, to begin with, on the region's Jewish communities. Certainly, West Aramaic expressions or, more generally, elements left a deep mark not just and perhaps not so much on the Peshitta as on the more general exegetical and 'spiritual' meditation of the Churches of Syria, as many recent studies have demonstrated (cf. e.g. S. Brock, The Lost Old Syriac...).

Paolo Bettiolo,  Syriac Literature, page 426: https://archive.org/details/SyriacLiterature

[wisdomfish]

Not produced by any other being...

Matter is not, like God, without beginning, nor, as having no beginning, is of equal power with God; rather, it is begotten, and not produced by any other being, but brought into existence by the framer of all things alone.

~ Tatian, Oratio ad Greacos ch. 5

[santmat]

A Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Hebrews

“It seems that, in constructing his ‘harmony’ [Diatessaron], he [Tatian] used not just the ‘canonical’ Gospels, but also a ‘fifth source’, whose material sometimes agreed with readings proper to texts like the Gospel to the Hebrews or the Gospel of Thomas. It has been proposed to identify this source with that Aramaic tradition of Palestinian origin, independent of the Greek Gospels, that had first conveyed a knowledge of Jesus to the peoples of Syria, pivoting, to begin with, on the region’s Jewish communities. Certainly, West Aramaic expressions or, more generally, elements left a deep mark not just and perhaps not so much on the Peshitta as on the more general exegetical and ‘spiritual’ meditation of the Churches of Syria, as many recent studies have demonstrated (cf. e.g. S. Brock, The Lost Old Syriac…).”

— Paolo Bettiolo, Syriac Literature, page 426: https://archive.org/details/SyriacLiterature

[worldreligions2019]

Encratites | Definition, Founder, History and Beliefs

Encratites | Definition, Founder, History and Beliefs

Encratites Definition The Encratites (“self-controlled”) were an ascetic 2nd-century sect of Christians who forbade marriage and counseled abstinence from meat. Eusebius says that Tatian was the author of this heresy. It has been supposed that it was these Gnostic Encratites who were chastised in the epistle of 1 Timothy. Encratites Founder: Encratite, member of an ascetic Christian sect led by…

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[wisdomfish]

An Early Roman Witness...

We’ll start with Justin Martyr, who was writing from Rome in around 150 AD.

“In the memoirs [=Gospels], which I say have been composed by the apostles and those who followed them”… Dialogue with Trypho, 103.8.

Some skeptical scholars have suggested that Justin doesn’t know the Gospel of John. This strikes me as a silly notion. For starters, Justin implies that there were multiple Gospels. He says that apostles (plural) wrote them, so that would indicate at least two. Also, in Justin’s writings, he quotes John 3:3. See 1 Apology 61:4: “For Christ also said, ‘Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’

Justin also had a student by the name of Tatian. Just a generation later, Tatian wrote a harmony of the Gospels titled The Diatessaron. In Latin, Diatessaron quite literally means ‘made of four ingredients’. His harmony begins with: “In the beginning was the Word“, quoting John 1:1.

~ Erik Manning