Harmony of the Gospels Revisited
Jim West
jwest at Highland.Net
Sat Jul 4 18:05:38 EDT 1998
At 05:10 PM 7/4/98 -0400, you wrote:
> The
>reader bounces back and forth from one gospel to the next, following the
>highlighted material, and thus reads an entirely chronologically
>inclusive presentation of the text. Fairly clever, I think.
Just a word of clarification- such "harmonies" offer some editor's
reconstruction of a possible chronological order. It may be a tad too much
to claim that if one follows a highlighted path, one will find an accurate
roadmap to the chronological life of Jesus.
One tiny example may suffice:
In this harmony (which I have never seen)- how is the following problem handled:
John has the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus' minsitry
while the synoptics have it at the end. Now either it happened twice (a
fact which NONE of the Gospels indicate); or it happened at the beginning of
his ministry; or it happened at the end. Which is it? Again, how does this
harmony handle it?
So, you see, even in the smallest of matters, editorial discretion sometimes
takes precedence over historical reconstruction!
Best,
Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Pastor, Petros Baptist Church
Adjunct Professor of Bible,
Quartz Hill School of Theology
jwest at highland.net
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list