HAVE YOU EVER TRIED to compare the prophetic passages in Matthew, Mark and Luke?  Or to find the Lord’s Prayer in more than one Gospel?  Or to work out the sequence of events surrounding Jesus’ birth or resurrection as related in the different Gospels?  The purpose of Parallel Gospels in Harmony is to help you do that, and so to encourage the reading and study of God’s inspired Word. 

A disciple in the garden of Gethsemane cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant according to all four Gospels.  But only John tells us the servant’s name, and that it was Peter who wielded the sword.  And only Luke tells us that Jesus healed the wound.  This book allows you to see all of this at a glance.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all record Jesus’ words concerning sin against the Holy Spirit, but only Mark explains that Jesus said this, “because...’”  (See page 76.)  Three Gospels warn against “the yeast of the Pharisees,” but only one of them explains what it is.  (See page 108.)  So, there is much that can be learned by reading the Gospels in parallel.

Why four Gospels?

Why do we have four inspired Gospels instead of just one?  According to early Church writers, the Apostle Matthew wrote his account first in Hebrew, the language of the earliest disciples.  Then Luke accompanied the Apostle Paul in his ministry to the Gentiles, and wrote his Gospel in Greek.  Later Mark wrote what he remembered hearing at the Apostle Peter’s feet.  And finally the aged Apostle John wrote his account to further bless the Church.  None of this was accidental, of course: we have four inspired Gospels because the divine Author of the Bible chose to record the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in this manner.

The four Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each present the life and teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from a different perspective.  But it is one story.  Mark’s account is fast-moving, Matthew’s emphasizes the fulfillment of prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, Luke’s speaks to a cosmopolitan Greek audience, and John’s stresses a close, personal relationship with Jesus.  But all four relate the same Gospel or “Good News.” 

Differences in the Gospel accounts

Why do the Gospels sometimes differ in the way they order the same or similar passages?  And why do Gospel harmonies or parallel Gospels occasionally differ in the sequence they assign to certain passages?  The main reason is that the Gospel writers themselves combine chronological presentations of events with topical arrangements of Jesus’ teachings.  They include occasional flashbacks (Compare Matt. 14:2, 3, 6.) and isolated anecdotes (“on another sabbath”—Luke 6:6; “on one of those days”—Luke 8:22, 20:1; “when he finished praying in a certain place”—Luke 11:1). 

We can only assume that the Divine Author who inspired the Gospels chose, in his wisdom, to leave us with some uncertainty as to the exact order of events.  Rather than be unsettled by this, I believe we should accept it in the spirit of Deuteronomy 29:29:  “The secret things belong to Yahweh our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”  Our job is not to puzzle out the things God has kept hidden from us, but rather to trust and obey.

Gospel harmonies and parallel Gospels

Some time around A.D. 170 a Christian writer named Tatian compiled his Diatessaron, a work merging the words of the four Gospels into a single narrative.  Less than a century later Ammonius the Alexandrian produced a copy of the Gospel of Matthew with corresponding passages from the other Gospels arranged alongside—according to Eusebius, who went on to build on that work a more complex system of cross-references.

About this book, and its use of brackets [ ]

The four Gospels are presented here in parallel columns, in roughly chronological order, with corresponding passages side by side.  I have not aimed for innovation, but have simply built on the work of countless