A Gospel harmony is an attempt to merge or harmonize the canonical gospels of the Four Evangelists into a single gospel account. Harmonies are constructed and studied by scholars to establish a chronology for the events of the life of Jesus depicted in the four canonical gospels to better understand how the accounts relate to each other, or to establish events in the life of Jesus.
The terms harmony and synopsis have been used to refer to approaches that aim to achieve Gospel harmony, although they are different approaches. Technically, a "harmony" weaves together sections of scripture into a merged narrative, merging the four Gospels, while a "synopsis" uses a tabular format with one column for each gospel.
The earliest known harmony is the Diatessaron by Tatian in the 2nd century and variations based on the Diatessaron continued to appear in the Middle Ages. The 16th century witnessed a major increase in the introduction of Gospel harmonies and the parallel column structure became widespread. At this time visual representations also started appearing, depicting the Life of Christ in terms of a "pictorial gospel harmony", and the trend continued into the 19th-20th centuries.
The gospels accounts show a great deal of overall similarity, but the scholarly process for constructing a detailed harmony is complicated and specific issues at times resists distillation into a single harmonized chronology, as the variety of readings that appear in multiple harmony efforts attests. However, the construction of harmonies remains an important element of biblical study and to gain a better understanding of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus.
Read more about Gospel Harmony: Overview, Early Church and Middle Ages, 15-20th Centuries, A Parallel Harmony Presentation
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