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The Gospel of Jesus Christ: The Harmony of the Gospel Accounts by Nigel Romany
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The Harmony of the Gospel Accounts
I RECOMMEND YOU READ THIS PREFACE
It is my belief that having a proper order of events is one of the keys in understanding the story of Jesus as told in the Bible.
On January 1st, 2001 I made a private personal decision to recommit myself to the Lord. As a result, I decided to start over at the very beginning by studying the gospel accounts. By February that year I had created my own chronological order of events of the gospel accounts – a harmony of the books of the gospel – and decided to put it into a book for myself and others to read as I believed this will enhance all Christians understanding of the gospel. At that time, I didn't know of any complete one that existed even though I suspected that someone must have obviously done what I already did. Access to resources was very limited then.
The original concept of my book meant merging all the parallel stories into one story and providing all background information on understanding the culture, times, artefacts, etc of the people of that time and more so to those presented in the gospel accounts. You can call it the gospel in chronological order with study helps.
This was much more work than I thought it would be in order to merge the stories without adding to them or subtracting from them. After six (6) years it became obvious that I wasn't able to complete it as I had hoped, so I abandoned that original idea, for now, and in November 2007 released, instead, a much watered down version of this book to a very selected few. Perhaps one day I may come back to this project and complete it as I original intended.
Since then I have made some improvements and will always be looking at improving this work. Now, I am releasing this book to the world!
How This Harmony Was Created
This harmony is very simple. Firstly, it is clear that Matthew, Mark, and Luke have similarities in stories and each having their own strengths and content not found in each other. Secondly, Mark, Luke and John clearly follow a chronological order of events (Luke 1:3). In comparing Mark and Luke to Matthew, It is easy to see that Matthew isn't written in chronological order. That means in order to create a harmony you start with synchronizing both Mark and Luke (as the base) and then revolving Matthew around them. That said, it is easy to create a harmony with just Matthew, Mark and Luke. Now you can see that Mark appears to be the heart of the three. This makes me recall 2 Tim 4:11 “Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry.” NKJV
Now, fitting John into harmony is the hard part since it's estimated 90% of John isn't in the other gospel accounts. Also, fitting John in correctly, will give you a proper timeline of events since John gives us major information (namely passovers) in helping us do so. Therefore, you first start by seeing which passages in John synchronizes easily with the other three. You'll discover John chapters 1-4, 6-7:1, and 11-21 are relatively easy to incorporate. The difficult part is where do you fit John 5 and Ch7:2 - Ch10!? Once you can figure that out your harmony is complete and you have a proper timeline to work with. And that is the major difference between this harmony and every other I've seen so far. Fitting these chapters correctly will give you a different picture than what, as far as I am aware, is the traditional harmony as well as a better understanding of the Bible account of Jesus. My reasoning of the placement of John 7,8,9,&10 is so simple and logical that it baffles me why other harmonies have not done so.
John 7,8,9&10 comprises two events – one the feast of the tabernacles John 7:2 – 10:21 and Hanukkah John 10:22-42. Because of the few months between them, and chapter layouts created hundreds of years ago, it appears that other harmonies have assumed that some stories from Luke 9:51-18:14 and their Matthew and Mark counterparts fall during and mainly in between these two events. This cannot be right. Luke 9:51-18:14 has a lot of content that is not included anywhere else in the gospel accounts. Recall, Luke follows a chronological order (Luke 1:3) and so does these nine or ten (9/10) chapters of Luke. Luke 9:51-53 specifically states Jesus mind was specifically set to go toward Jerusalem. Why? Luke 9:51 clearly states “when the time had come for Him to be received up”. Well reading Luke in context and without the influence of the other accounts it is clear that that means his final days or last time in Jerusalem. Luke 13:22 continues this journey by stating “And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem” NKJV Luke 17:11 states as he making his way to Jerusalem he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Luke 13:22 is clearly Perea and Luke 10:38 and 16:18 is Judea. So what is really happening is that Jesus is preparing Israel/Palestine for it's final teachings before his last days in Jerusalem in places he hadn't spent much time before and culminating with Jerusalem. Therefore, if you look at the chronology or staying in context of Luke you see that after beginning his ministry in Judea and spending much time in Galilee he then began to circuit the northern areas of Palestine – Decapolis, Iturea & Trachonitis, even as far as the coasts of Phoenicia. Then after his troubles in Jerusalem (John 7:2-10:42) he then according to Luke makes his final approach to Jerusalem by way of a circuit/s of Samaria, Perea and Judea. In summary, Luke is in chronological order (Luke 1:3) and thus when Luke 9:51 says this is the reason why then it is clear that John 7:2-10:42 comes before Luke 9:51 and therein is the simplicity and logic I was referring to.
Throughout this book I have added a number of “helps” to make it easier for you to piece the story together. Examples of such “helps” are locations, titles, paragraph spacing comparisons [when it comes to the longer sub-stories I think readers will love this one], bold font, location of Old Testament quotes, my own chapters and a few others. There are no references to any denomination or non-denomination sect of Christianity mentioned in this book.
This book is only a harmony of the gospel accounts in chronological order and is not meant to replace your normal reading of the gospel accounts. This is meant as an aid in the reader's study and understanding of the gospel and life and teachings of Jesus Christ as is recorded in the Bible. There are way too many people and religions that have the foundation wrong. I hope this book will aid in your understanding of the life of Jesus Christ as is recorded in the Bible and I invite you to study the “harmony chart” on page 11 carefully.
Nigel Romany
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