Neither of these passages is found in the actual text of “Tatian.” Finally, we may quote the other instance pointed out by Mr. Harris:
The Docetic quotation from the Psalm “My Power, my Power, hast thou forsaken me?” is peculiar in this respect, that the second possessive pronoun is wanting, so that we ought to translate it “Power, my Power ...” Now, it is curious that Tatian's text had a similar peculiarity, for Ephrem gives it as “God, my God,” and the Arabic Harmony as Yaiil, Yaiili, where the added suffix belongs to the possessive pronoun. This is a remarkable coincidence, and makes one suspect that Tatian had “Power, my Power” in his text, and that it has been corrected away. And it is significant that Ephrem in commenting on the passage, says: “The divinity did not so far depart from the humanity as to be cut off from it, but only [pg 041]as regards the power of the divinity, which was hidden both from the Slain and the slayers.” This looks very suspicious that Ephrem found something in his text of Tatian differing from the words “God, my God.”[69]
Mr. Harris reserves his final judgment on this relation between Tatian and the Gospel according to Peter; but as in a later article[70] he is not unwilling to allow the date of a.d. 130 to be assigned to the fragment, it is scarcely to be decided as Peter quoting Tatian. Mr. Harris throughout these passages, however, states the case in a most impartial manner, and the reader must form his own opinion.
We may, before leaving “Tatian,” point out another instance of agreement to which Mr. Harris does not allude. In the Commentary there is the following passage: “Et dederunt ei bibere acetum et fel. Acetum ei porrexerunt, pro felle autem magna ejus miseratio amaritudinem gentium dulcem fecit.”[71] It will be remembered that this agrees with the representation of the fragment that they gave Jesus “vinegar and gall” to drink.
All these instances may, indeed, throw a new light upon the Diapente in the text of Victor, which has so exercised apologists, and lead to the opinion that Tatian's Harmony was not composed out of four Gospels, but out of five. If it be agreed, as it is by a majority of critics, that Justin made use of the Gospel of Peter, the probability that his pupil Tatian likewise possessed the same work, and used it for his Harmony, is immensely increased.
VII
We shall not attempt to fix any even approximate date to the Gospel according to Peter, although we shall presently have to consider its relation to our canonical Gospels in a way which will at least assign it a position in time relative to them. Harnack, in the preface to the second edition of his article on the fragment, suspends his judgment on its relation to our Gospels, and will not even undertake a sufficient examination of this important question, so long as there remains a hope of still recovering more of the Gospel. It is devoutly to be hoped that the Cemetery of Akhmîm may still give us more of this and other important early works; but there is no reason why we should not, even now, endeavour to derive what information we can from this instalment, and the worst—or the best—which can happen is that future acquisitions may enable us to correct the errors—or confirm the conclusions—of the present. So long as we confine ourselves to the legitimate inferences to be drawn from the actual fragment before us, we cannot go far wrong.
It is frequently possible to assign well-defined limits within which early works, whose authors are unknown, must have been composed, when a more precise date cannot with certainty be fixed. Direct references to the writing, or its use, by writers the period of whose literary work is known, may enable us to affirm that it was written at least before their time; and sometimes [pg 043] certain allusions or quotations in the work itself may, on the other hand, show that it must have been composed after a certain date; and thus limits, more or less narrow, become certain, within which its production must lie. The Gospel according to Peter, as we might expect, contains none of the allusions or quotations to which we refer, and we are therefore reduced to the one indication of age—reference to, or the use of it by, early writers, leaving the approximate date to which it may be set back wholly to conjecture. As we have already remarked above, the question whether it is dependent on, or independent of, our canonical Gospels has yet to be considered; but there is too much difference of opinion regarding the date of these Gospels themselves to render this more than a relative indication. So far, the opinions of critics assign the Gospel according to Peter to dates ranging from a period antecedent to our Gospels, in their present form, to about the middle of the second century.[72]