Harmony of the Gospels
A line-by-line comparison of the gospels.
Off-and-on over the past few years, my wife and I have been watching the series, “The Chosen,” about Jesus and His disciples. The series is an engrossing depiction of Jesus’ time on earth. Though the first season is a bit slow, the pace picks up and is more engrossing in following seasons. I think the series does an amazing job of showing Jesus’ love for people, and His disdain for religious zealots. Yet, there are also episodes where the viewer is left wondering why Jesus acted in the way He did (or was portrayed to act a certain way), and we’re left only with a sense of “God’s ways are not man’s ways.” So it is to be a human at times, I’m afraid.
Over that same period, I set out to read each of the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and compare how each of them recorded the events of that time. It’s been a wonderful exercise—both insightful, and at times confounding. Believe it or not, four different people don’t always record the same event occurring the same way; yet, for the most part, they are very similar accounts. For this project, I broke down each line of each gospel and compared them side-by-side.
The attached document is the result of that work. You could call it a comparison of the gospels, but the word harmony is more apt, and more commonly used.
The arrival, or advent, of this document aligns, quite by accident, with the remembrance of the advent of Jesus’ birth. If you’re interested in reading some of the comparisons during this Christmas season, you could start with section five, though really, the first four sections aren’t long.
Organization of the document
Vertically, the document is sorted chronologically, then separated and numbered into 250 sections based on events or themes. Then, within those sections it is broken into paragraphs by key ideas or different speakers. And within those paragraphs it is broken up by phrases. I did this in English, so I’m aligning English phrases, which are translations from the original Aramaic or Greek. True scholars have created documents aligning the actual Greek phrases—you can find some of those in the Resources section below.
Horizontally, the phrases are then aligned across the gospels where they seem to match. If you were to draw a horizontal line anywhere across the text in the four columns, you should find matching text, at least in theme, if not exact wording. Here’s an example of three columns from section 96 in the document, where Jesus feeds five thousand:
A few items to note
I am by no means a Biblical scholar, this is just my line-by-line comparison of like-phrases in the gospels. I’m sure I made some mistakes.
I always tried to keep lines in order as presented in the Bible; if I did move them around to make them align with another author’s account, then it is noted and the text is colored orange.
Where there were major differences between two authors’ accounts, I colored the text red.
Matthew, Mark and Luke are considered synoptic gospels in that they are seen together and most similar to one another. This becomes much more evident in this document; especially when you see John’s account of events.
Again, I am no Biblical scholar, so I’m sure I’ve messed up in areas, and the alignment of key phrases is simply alignment, as I see it, of one particular English translation of Aramaic or Greek text.
The Bible translation I used was the New American Standard on BibleGateway.com.
Resources
I am not the first person to ever do this; you can find other documents and books like this online and in print—each differs a bit, either in the translation they use or how they divide up sections. However, most of them compare paragraphs, instead of a line-by-line comparison as I have done.
Here are just a few of them:
NET Bible Synopsis of the Four Gospels by Gregory White
Matthew Mark Luke & John: Side by Side Parallel Gospels in Harmony – by David Reed (printed book)
Parallel Gospels in Harmony by David Reed (web version)
Parallel Gospels by Books for Living, Inc
Gospels Side By Side: A Harmony of the Gospels by Chronology and Topics by Rose Publishing
A Four-column Parallel and Chronological Harmony of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by Robert Sutherland
Harmony of the Four Gospels - I used this outline for my project, but will likely go back and compare it to the others above to see how much they all differ, and if adjust mine if needed.
Final thoughts
As this two-year, near-daily project ends, I’m going to miss the enormity, and detail, of it all. It was a project without any real timeline, other than to try and work on it a little each day. There was no pressure to meet a deadline, which made the process enjoyable—it was more like strolling along a trail than climbing a mountain. I could stop, admire certain passages, be confounded by others, do research on geography and history, and enjoy the routine of it all. At the end of it, I'm left with even greater awe of Jesus’ ministry, message, and majesty, and the hope he brings to this world.
Have a great week, and Merry Christmas!
The Curator
Two resources to help you be a more discerning reader:
AllSides - https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
Media Bias Chart - https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
Caveat: Even these resources/charts are biased. Who says that the system they use to describe news sources is accurate? Still, hopefully you find them useful as a basic guide or for comparison.