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Harmony Of the Gospel - Thoughts On
Harmony of the Gospels
The first one known is the work of Tatian in the late 100's called the Diatessaron. The root meaning of the name is "through four". There have been many other such works since then. J. W. McGarvey produced his "Fourfold Gospel" which was the first harmony that I read after becoming a Christian. In our daily reading, LaGard Smith has produced yet another such harmony. [There is a list of some of the ones I have become familiar with at the end of this article].
Several points need to be kept in mind as we read any harmony of the gospels. The writers of the gospels wrote in the accepted historical style of the first century and not in the style of 21st century American historians and biographers. They arranged their material rather than following a strict chronological approach. Hence to produce a chronological harmony there simply are a lot of guesses made as to when events took place.
Also, by combining the four gospels you necessarily loose the defining aspect of each of them. The style and emphasis in effect gets neutered. The excitement that is there in the reading of Mark as he joins story after story with 'immediately… '. The Jewish emphasis that one reads in Matthew gets joined to the emphasis that Luke gives to the gentiles, women, poor, and outcasts of society. The picture of Jesus you get from reading a harmony will be different than the picture you get from the reading of any one gospel. There will be a lot of similarities but you lose the nuances and colorings of the individual writers.
The harmony of the gospels, by combining the descriptions and details in all four gospels, does help fill in some questions that you get from reading a single gospel. They do complement each other in their telling of the life of Jesus. Yet at the same time they bring up questions about the differences that one encounters.
There are other points that could be made but I would suggest that you not take too seriously the order of the events as they are 'not gospel' (pun intended). I would also suggest that you give time in your bible study to studying each writer individually. Hugh DeLong
