GOSPEL PARALLELS

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When I was a senior in college I developed an intense interest in the historical Jesus. I read many accounts of the “Quest for the Historical Jesus,” and decided to embark on my own quest. I embarked upon an intense study of the Gospels which lasted until I graduated from law school and began to practice law. Even after that time I still would engage in sporadic bouts of Bible study, and I have amassed two thick books containing notes of my studies.

 

One thing that I was especially intrigued by was the Synoptic Problem—an attempt to explain why the first three Gospels were so similar while at the same time being so different. I read as much as I could about the Two Document Hypothesis, the Four Document Hypothesis, the elusive Q Gospel, Proto-Luke, and many other theories of how the Gospels came to be. I examined several Gospel harmonies and Gospel synopses; and I decided I could distill the various harmonies and synopses into a more harmonious synopsis of my own. I worked on this synopsis for several years and made many false starts toward producing a manuscript of my synopsis. Since most of my work was done in the years BCE (Before the Computer Era), I found the project rough sledding as a spare-time project.

 

Now that we are firmly in the CE (Computer Era), and I have retired from full-time employment, I have decided to publish a manuscript of my synopsis. You might ask, “Why another synopsis (or harmony) of the Gospels. Aren’t there enough already? My answer is, “Yes, there are many, but I find none of them entirely satisfactory.” In harmonies, the authors try to interweave the Gospel of John in among the Synoptics. Given the wide differences between John and the Synoptic Gospels, this is a very difficult task which renders unsatisfactory results. In most synopses, the passages from John are either ignored or consigned to footnotes, another unsatisfactory treatment. Among the synopses, the pseudepigraphal gospels are usually ignored. Throckmorton’s is different in that his synopsis puts pseudepigraphal passages in footnotes.

 

I wanted a synopsis which moved John’s parallel passages out of the footnotes and into the main text. I also wanted the main text to include passages from what I consider the two most important pseudepigraphal gospels, Thomas and Peter. Although they are far inferior to the Canonical Gospels, they are far superior to all the other pseudepigraphal gospels which I have read, and they just might contain a small amount of authentic material.

 

The Synoptic Gospels contain many of the same stories in almost precisely the same order. These stories are called parallels. Although we see many sequential parallels in the Synoptics, many of the parallels are non-sequential. For example, Matthew and Luke report that when Jesus first enters the Temple during the Passion week, he immediately cleanses it. Mark says he just looks around and returns the next day to cleanse the Temple. Then there are doublets—stories which sound a lot like other stories but are sufficiently different to cause the reader to be in a quandary as to whether they are telling different versions of the same story. For example, Matthew reports the exorcism of two Gergesene demoniacs; but Mark and Luke say that Jesus exorcized one Gadarene demoniac. Then we have doublets, which tell very similar stories but are sufficiently distinct details that they are likely different incidents. For example, all three Synoptics tell the story of Jesus healing a leper, but Luke also tells a story about Jesus healing ten lepers. Then there are passages that I call analogs: they tell similar stories, but the stories are very different. For example, Luke’s Parable of the Prodigal Son is similar to Matthew’s Parable of the Two Sons, but they are so dissimilar as to be two different stories. Likewise, the Parable of the Sower, which appears in all the Synoptics, has an analog in Matthew’s Parable of the Weeds.

 

How do we prepare a synopsis which melds all these different types of stories into one harmonious whole? I have tried to accomplish this task by putting the sequential parallels in boldface and arranging them in parallel columns. The non-sequential parallels are included with the sequential parallels, but they are not in boldface. They may be put in parallel columns, or they may be set out below the sequential parallels. I have treated the doublets and analogs the same as non-sequential parallels, but they are usually placed below any non-sequential parallels. The bottommost entries in each section are the pseudepigraphal parallels and doublets.

 

In arranging the stories, I have tried as much as possible to adhere to the numbering system worked out by Albert Huck and Hans Leitzmann.  I have also tried as much as possible to have each story confined to a single page. Where it is not possible to get all the information on one page, I have subdivided the stories and added letters to the section numbers. For example, Luke’s Discourse against the Pharisees is in Huck’s Section 154, but I have subdivided it into 154A-F. When I can’t get all the non-sequential parallels, analogs, and doublets on a single page, I have also subdivided the sections and given them trailing letters. For example, Luke’s story of Sending out the Seventy is placed in Section 139A. The additional material is in Section 139B.

 

Sometimes this system breaks down, as in the story of Peter’s Denials. The parallels are not sequential, but making separate sections for each of the non-sequential parallels would have been tricky, so I put them all in a single section and set them out in boldface despite the fact that they weren’t truly sequential.

 

Throughout the synopsis I have used public domain translations of the texts. The main text will come from the WEB Bible, which is available online at Biblegateway.com. Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas come from Mark M. Mattison’s The Gospel of Thomas: A Public Domain Translation. Quotations from the Gospel of Peter come from M.R. James’ The Apocryphal New Testament.

 

You will encounter some unfamiliar words in the pages of this synopsis. I have appended a glossary of those words at the end of the book. One word which ought to be defined at the outset is “pericope.” It is a technical term used by Bible scholars which means “Bible story.” Thus, the Parable of the Prodigal Son is a Gospel pericope, as is the story of the baptism of Jesus.

 

Regrettably, the text of this book is single-spaced without spaces between the paragraphs. Although it makes reading somewhat more difficult, doing otherwise would have made the book a great deal longer and more expensive.