One exceptional exhibit in the Chester Beatty Library is an early fourth-century vellum manuscript by Ephraem, a Syrian scholar. Ephraem quotes extensively from a second-century work called the Diatessaron. In it the writer Tatian merged the four Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ’s life into a single harmonious narrative. Later writers made reference to the Diatessaron, but no copies of it have survived. Some 19th-century scholars even doubted its existence. In 1956, however, Beatty discovered Ephraem’s commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron​—a discovery that added to the existing evidence of the Bible’s authenticity and truthfulness.

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Ephraem’s commentary on Tatian’s “Diatessaron” reinforces the authenticity of the Bible