Book Review: Tjitze Baarda. Essays on the Diatessaron.

Abstract

"For more than three decades, Prof. Baarda has immersed himself in what Arthur Vööbus called "one of the most difficult topics in all the field of New Testament textual criticism"--namely, Tatian's Diatessaron. A Dutchman by birth, Baarda took a doctorate in Semitic languages at the Free University of Amsterdam, where he studied under R. Schippers. After some years teaching there, he moved to Utrecht where he became the successor of W.C. van Unnik. More recently he returned to the Free University, where he is Dean of Theology and Professor of New Testament. Now nearing retirement, he has published more than thirty articles on the Diatessaron. A selection of these was collected and published on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary of teaching at the Free University. It appeared in 1983 and was titled Early Transmission of the Words of Jesus: Thomas, Tatian and the Text of the New Testament. The volume under review collects fifteen additional articles, fourteen of which were published between 1986 and 1993. A lecture delivered at the 1992 Codex Bezae conference held in Montpellier, France, appears here in print for the first time. One of the fourteen previously published pieces was formerly available only in the original Dutch; it now is offered in English."(pg 1)