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Document Details :

Title: Nathanael, 'the Scribe of Israel'
Subtitle: John 1,47 in Ephraem's Commentary on the Diatessaron
Author(s): BAARDA, T.J.
Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
Volume: 71    Issue: 4   Date: Dec. 1995   
Pages: 321-336
DOI: 10.2143/ETL.71.4.504867

Abstract :
“Nathanael scheint im Diatessaron als Schriftgelehrter bezeichnet worden zu sein”. With these words Walter Bauer introduced Nathanael in his survey of the “Apostles” in the old Hennecke. In his well-known book on the “Life of Jesus in the Period of Apocryphal Literature” Bauer had already made this observation. In that earlier book, however, he did not rule out the possibility that it was the Diatessaron commentator Ephraem rather than the author of the Diatessaron itself who was responsible for the identification of Nathanael as Scribe. Several years earlier, in 1896, A. Resch had already made mention of the variant reading in Ephraem’s Commentary. He assumed that the addition of “Scriba” was an extra-canonical reading, apparently present in the early Hebrew source. He said that he would not have paid attention to it if it had not confirmed his earlier conviction that Nathanael was the Hebrew equivalent of the Graeco-Aramaic name Ματθαῖος. In his view, one should not interpret the assumed word סופד “Scribe”, but as “the Author”, the author κατ` ἑξοχήν among the apostles, i.e., Matthew.

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