Gospel harmony

Common card · No. 482617

A gospel harmony is a compilation of the canonical gospels of the New Testament into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a synopsis, although the word harmony is often used for both. Harmonies are constructed for a variety of purposes: to create a readable and accessible piece of literature for the general public, to establish a scholarly chronology of events in the life of Jesus as depicted in the canonical gospels, or to better understand how the accounts relate to each other. Among academics, the construction of harmonies has been favoured by conservative scholars, though some scholars, for example, B. S. Childs, oppose this. Students of historical criticism see the divergences between the gospel accounts as reflecting the construction of traditions by the early Christian communities. Among modern academics, attempts to construct a single story have largely been abandoned...

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