Lightfoot himself to tell the story.
"Victor, who flourished about A.D. 545, happened to stumble upon an
anonymous Harmony or Digest of the Gospels, and began in consequence
to investigate the authorship. He found two notices in Eusebius of
such Harmonies; one in the _Epistle to Carpianus_ prefixed to the
canons, relating to the work of Ammonius; another in the
_Ecclesiastical History_, relating to that of Tatian. Assuming that
the work which he had discovered must be one or other, he decides in
favour of the latter, because it does not give St. Matthew
continuously and append the passages of the other evangelists, as
Eusebius states Ammonius to have done. All this Victor tells us in
the preface to this anonymous Harmony, which he publishes in a Latin
dress.
"There can be no doubt that Victor was mistaken about the
authorship; for though the work is constructed on the same general
plan as Tatian's, it does not begin with John i. 1, but with Luke
i. 1, and it does contain the genealogies. It belongs, therefore,
at least in its present form, neither to Tatian nor to Ammonius."
[153:1]
How this reasoning would have fallen to the ground had the Harmonist, as
he might well have done in imitation of Tatian, commenced with the
words, "In the beginning was the Word"! The most instructive part is
still to come, however, for although in May 1887 Dr.
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