Theophilus of Antioch’s Gospel Harmony: Jerome, the Book of Saint James , and Canon Formation

Abstract

Enigmatic passages in Jerome’s Letter to Algasia and the 12th century Book of Saint James have led scholars to attribute a Gospel harmony to Theophilus of Antioch. This lost harmony has played an increasingly important role in recent attempts to date the four-Gospel canon to the first half of the second century. Scholars have cited Theophilus’s putative harmony not only as evidence that Theophilus himself held to a four-Gospel canon but also, through an argument from analogy, that Tatian’s Diatessaron reflects the same already-established canon. The evidence for Theophilus’s harmony, however, cannot bear this argumentative weight. The alleged reference in Jerome, interpreted in light of the other evidence for Theophilus’s oeuvre , almost certainly refers to a philological treatise On the Gospel , while the Book of Saint James refers to something else entirely. The evaporation of Theophilus’s illusory harmony has important implications for the history of the New Testament canon. If the Ebionite Gospel According to the Hebrews is, instead, considered the closest analog to Tatian’s Diatessaron , the same argument from analogy suggests that Tatian did not accept his sources as sacrosanct authorities.