In the year 1836, there was published by the Armenian convent at St. Lazaro, near Venice, a work which professed to contain writings of St. Ephraim, the great Syrian Father. There were four volumes of printed matter, in a language (Armenian) that almost no one among Western scholars of that day could read, so that it is not surprising if the books fell flat on the market. As far as we remember, one solitary voice observed that there was, amongst the newly edited matter, a commentary upon a Gospel Harmony; yet, even hedid not follow up the clue; one would have thought that the suggestion of a Fourth century commentary by the greatest of the Syrian doctors upon a harmony of the Four Gospels would have made patristic students open their eyes wide with wonder and with expectation.

Did the monks of St. Lazaro know what they were publishing? Did they suspect that under the ill fitting disguise of an Armenian text and commentary, there was masquerading the lost text of Tatian, the Gospel Harmonist par excellence of the Second century? They were interested in their find, but apparently did not recall what the Syrian Fathers could have told them, that Ephraim had commented on the Diatessaron of Tatian. So we may assume that it was Ephraim that first attracted them and not Tatian who is the real magnet. While the book was passing through the press a second copy of the same commentary, of the very same age,came to light, written by the hand of the Archbishop Nerses of Lampron, and it is natural to assume that the second copy, in the handwriting of so famous an ecclesiastic, accentuated the scholarly interest provoked by the first. So the Mechitarist monks, through their greatest living scholar, John Baptist Aucher, prepared a translation of the Armenian text into Latin. This translation was made in 1841.

This translation drew the attention of Dr. Georg Mosinger of Salzburg, who obtained the permission of the convent to publish it in 1976. Then the secret was out and, ever since, scholars all over the world have been reconstructing the text of Tatian's Harmony and estimating its effect upon our New Testament criticism and Gospel origins. The second of the manuscripts from which the Mechitarist fathers printed the commentary of Ephraim upon the Gospel contained more matter ascribed to the same Syrian father, and it is natural to inquire whether there may not be further interesting documents to be obtained from a mine which had already yielded up such rich treasure.

Professor Burkitt alluded to the existence in the Armenian volume of another work ascribed to St. Ephraim under the title "An Exposition of the Gospel." This text was especially important. In this text Ephraim details the doctrine of Tatian. Having been the first person to compile the Gospels into a Harmony, Tatian was certainly privy to the nuances of the earliest Christian doctrines. In this book, the theology of the man who made the Gospels available for the first time is clearly revealed.