The Use of the Peshitta of Isaiah in Rendering Isaiah Quotations in the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels

Previous research has argued that the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels tend to follow the Old Testament Peshitta to render Old Testament quotations, a practice that supposedly goes back to Tatian’s Diatessaron. This article argues that this conclusion should be reconsidered. At least in the rendering of the Isaiah quotations, the Old Syriac, and especially the Peshitta version of the Gospels, tends not to depart from the Greek text, but rather to render its sense as faithfully as possible. Even in the few cases where the dependence on the Peshitta of Isaiah appears to be verifiable, the phenomenon does not need to be explained as a result of influence from Tatian’s harmony.