Tatian (born 120 ce, Syria—died April 173) was a Syrian compiler of the Diatessaron (Greek: “Through Four,” “From Four,” or “Out of Four”), a version of the four Gospels arranged in a single continuous narrative. In its Syriac form, the Diatessaron served the biblical-theological vocabulary of the Syrian church for centuries; its Greek and Latin versions influenced the Gospel text. Tatian also founded, or at least was closely associated with, the heretical sect of the Encratites, a community integrating a severe asceticism with elements of Stoic philosophy.
Tatian became a pupil of the 2nd-century Roman theologian St. Justin Martyr and converted to Christianity. He rejected the classical literary and moral values of the Greeks as corrupt and repudiated their intellectualism, preferring instead the “barbaric” Christian culture. He embraced a vague synthesis of Judeo-Christian monotheism with the Stoic concept of an intermediary logos (Greek: “word”), creating the rational and purposeful cohesion of the universe; the personal dimension was provided by belief in the fallen soul’s ultimate return to the cosmic pneuma (Greek: “spirit”) whence it came.
After Justin’s martyrdom, Tatian broke with the Roman church, returned to Syria about 172, and became associated with a school and religious community of the Encratites in order to incorporate his amalgam of religious philosophy. During this period Tatian produced the two works that still survive, the Diatessaron and his Discourse to the Greeks. The latter, a virulent polemic against Hellenistic (Greek) learning, presented a Christian cosmology and demonology in which Tatian negatively compared Greek polytheistic theology with the Christian concept of a unique deity whose sublimity transcended the foibles of Greek idols. Tatian submitted that the Judeo-Christian tradition furnished Greek moral philosophy with everything it contained of value; the former, however, exhibited a selflessness that was markedly absent from the latter. For this defensive work, he is sometimes counted among the Christian Apologists of the 2nd century. Tatian’s other writings, listed by the 4th-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea, have been lost.