Tatian
Tatian
A second-century apologist about whose antecedents and early history nothing can be affirmed with certainty except that he was born in Assyria and that he was trained in Greek philosophy. While a young man he travelled extensively. Disgusted with the greed of the pagan philosophers with whom he came in contact, he conceived a profound contempt for their teachings. Repelled by the grossness and immorality of the pagans and attracted by the holiness of the Christian religion and the sublimity and simplicity of the Scriptures, he became a convert, probably about A.D. 150. He joined the Christian community in Rome, where he was a “hearer” of Justin. There is no reason to think he was converted by the latter. While Justin lived Tatian remained orthodox. Later (c. 172) he apostatized, became a Gnostic of the Encratite sect, and returned to the Orient. The circumstances and date of his death are not known. Tatian wrote many works. Only two have survived. One of these, “Oratio ad Graecos” (Pros Hellenas), is an apology for Christianity, containing in the first part (i-xxxi) an exposition of the Christian Faith with a view to showing its superiority over Greek philosophy, and in the second part a demonstration of the high antiquity of the Christian religion. The tone of this apology is bitter and denunciatory. The author inveighs against Hellenism in all its forms and expresses the deepest contempt for Greek philosophy and Greek manners.
The other extant work is the “Diatesseron”, a harmony of the four Gospels containing in continuous narrative the principle events in the life of Our Lord. The question regarding the language in which this work was composed is still in dispute. Lightfoot, Hilgenfeld, Bardenhewer, and others contend that the original language was Syriac. Harnack, Burkitt, and others are equally positive that it was composed in Greek and translated into Syriac during the lifetime of Tatian. There are only a few fragments extant in Syriac but a comparatively full reconstruction of the whole has been effected from St. Ephraem’s commentary, the Syriac text of which has been lost, but which exists in an Armenian version. Two revisions of the “Diatesseron” are available: one in Latin preserved in the “Codex Fuldensis” of the Gospels datin from about A.D. 545, the other in an Arabic version found in two manuscripts of a later date. The “Diatesseron” or “Evangelion da Mehallete” (the Gospel of the mixed) was practically the on ly gospel text used in Syria during the third and fourth centuries. Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa (411-435), ordered the priests and deacons to see that every church should have a copy of the separate Gospels (Evangelion da Mepharreshe), and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus (423-457), removed more than two hundred copies of the “Diatesseron” from the churches in his diocese. Several other works written Tatian have disappeared. In his apology (xv) he mentions a work “on animals” and (xvi) one on the “nature of demons”. Another work in refutation of the calumnies against the Christians (xl) was planned but perhaps never written. He also wrote a “Book of Problems” (Eus., “Hist. Eccl.”, V, 13), dealing with the difficulties in the Scriptures, and one “On Perfection according to the Precepts of Our Saviour” (Clem. Alex., “Strom.”, III, 12, 81).
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Text of Oratio in SCHWARTZ, Texte u. Untersuchungen, IV (Leipzig, 1888), tr. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, II, 65-83; PUECH, Recherches sur le discours aux Grecs de Tatian suivies d’une traduction du discours, avec notes (Paris, 1903); ZAHN, Tatian’s Diatesseron (1881); CIASCA, Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmonioe Arabice (Rome, 1888), tr. HOGG in Ante-Nicene Fathers, IX, 36-138; BURKITT, Evangelion da Mepharreshe (Cambridge, 1904).
PATRICK J. HEALY Transcribed by Larisa Vidmar
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Tatian
a notable Christian writer of the 2nd century, was a native of Assyria, though Clemens Alexandrinus and later fathers term him a Syrian. He had mastered the Graeco-Romaun culture of his day, largely through extended travels; and his reading was very wide, no fewer than ninety-three classic authors being referred to in his works. In the course of his wanderings as a strolling rhetorician he came to Rome, at that time the great center for all intellectual interests and tendencies, and there turned his attention to Christianity. To justify this action he wrote his , a work in which he confesses himself a convert to the barbarian philosophy of the despised sect, and invites his contemporaries to examine it, that they too might observe the astonishing contrasts it presents, with its simplicity and its clearness, to the darkness of the heathenism of that and every other age. At Rome Tatian was associated with Justin, perhaps as a pupil; but he soon became himself a teacher of Christianity. His attitude was apologetic, and necessarily involved the most marked antagonism to paganism. Stern and even harsh in his morality, he could recognize no truth in heathen philosophy, and feel no sympathy, even though but of a scientific or vesthetical nature, with heathen life and culture. To him, as to his contemporary Christians, the belief in one God was of the highest moral significance.
The loss of this faith, he taught, had exposed the soul of man to the rule of the dark powers of material nature, the daemons with whom polytheistic views originate. Its recovery delivers from servitude to the wandering daemons (the planets) upon which astrological fate is based. In opposition to the materialistic pantheism of the Stoics, Tatian defended the supermundane spirituality of the one God, the Creator and First Cause of all things, in whom, as the Great Source of being, all things, including matter, potentially existed at the first. At the beginning the Logos sprang into being as the first-born work of the-Father, that he might produce the world, himself creating the material. The created universe is everywhere pervaded by the spirit of material life, which is inferior to the Divine Spirit being in man the soul, which is indissolubly connected with the body, and in the world the world-soul ( ). Human nature in its pure state is, however, privileged to a substantial and intimate union () with the perfect nature, the Spirit of God himself. This throws a significant light upon Tatian’s conception of the Trinity.
He teaches that as the Father is (in his essence) Spirit, so the Logos proceeding from the Father is Spirit; and the latter, that he might imitate the Father, has made man in the image of immortality, to the end that man might have part in God and attain to immortality. The Spirit thus became the life-companion of the soul. In this way God himself lives in man by his ministering Spirit, by which is to be understood simply the hypostatized efficiency of the Logos. The fall involved the removal of the Divine Spirit from the soul, and plunged the latter deeper into the condition of the merely hylic, so that but faint sparks of the Spirit and dim longings after God remain. It is possible, however, for-the soul to turn away from evil and towards God in the exercise of its freedom-how, Tatian does not clearly state. The fame which Tatian acquired through his apology, from which the foregoing sketch is principally taken, was lost in consequence of his perversion to Gnosticism. He went to Syria, it would seem, after the death of Justin (in 166?). He is charged with holding to the existence of means after the fashion of Valentinus (q.v.), and similar speculations; with an ascetical course of life, carried even to the extent of using water instead of wine; with rejecting marriage as a state of practical fornication; with promulgating Docetic ideas respecting the person of Christ, etc. all of which must be regarded as substantially a truthful indictment. He would seem, however, to be more nearly related to Saturninus (q.v.) than to Valentinus in his views. The time of Tatian’s death is not exactly known, but it seems to have been prior to the date of the work by Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. (c. 175). His most famous work was a harmony of the Gospels, the Diates saron, of which the Jacobite bishop Bar-Salibi (12th century) reports that Ephraem Syrus (q.v.) wrote a commentary on it, and Theodoret the: genealogical tables and all the passages by which the Lord’s descent from David is made apparent. The Oratio ad Graec. was first published at Tigur. 1540, fol., and afterwards often. See Daniel, Tatianus, der Apologet. (Halle, 1837); Mohler, Patroologie; Ritter, Gesch. d. christl. Philosophie, vol. 1; Dorner, Person Christi, 1, 438; Moller, Kosmologie d. griech. Kirche, p. 168 sq.; Stockl, Gesch. d. Philos. in d. patrist. Zeit, p. 148 sq.; Huber, Philos. d. Kirchenvoter, p. 20 sq.; Duneker, Apologet; Secund. Sec. de Essential. Naturae Hum. Partibus Placitc (Gott. 1850), pt. 2; and Herzog, Real- Encyklop. s.v. For monographs, see Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 104.