Page 17 - The Gospel Chronicle - Parallel

Parallel: Introduciton

Parallel Introduction

The Parallel is the foundational part for The Gospel Chronicle; it is the beginning of the work,

Without its defined structure the Narrative and Redaction volumes would not exist. It is through the
parallel that the revelation of a chronological gospel was first explored. Its origin is rooted in a study
started many years ago to better understand the correlation between the separate gospel records of
Matthew, Mark Luke and John. This study was intended to last a few weeks to a few months at most but
quickly stretched into a year. Soon after that, the time boundaries for this study blurred. Finally it

ballooned into a nineteen-year project that is only now being finalized in 2017. Approximately fifteen
of those years have been dedicated to the collation of the Parallel portion alone. While a long time, it
has resulted in manifold treasures that have transformed my personal understanding of the Gospels.
One of those transformations being a realization that the Synoptic Gospel theory paired with two

millennia of gospel harmonization’s, is deeply skewing our perception of the four gospels and stealing
from us their chronological harmony.

The Parallel’s examination of the gospels starts by asking if harmonization is even necessary.

All extant gospel harmonies start with the premise of comparing the similarities found between each
gospel, which consistently results in a subjective rearrangement of the source gospels. On the surface
this approach seems valid, but it assumes that there is not a preexisting order linking the various
gospel events. The existence of a sequential timeline within the gospels is largely dismissed as
implausible. It is my belief that this is entertained because the Synoptic Gospel theory tells us we

should be looking for similarities of events rather than progression of events. Thus, every attempt to
harmonize the gospels examined during this study, dating back to Tatian’s Diatesseron of 160 A.D.
have subsequently focused on comparison rather than chronology, and missed a pure chronological
order that is present within our four narrative gospels. The Diatesseron being the oldest of all gospel

harmonies, has the least rearrangement and should be considered a respectful attempt to construct a
singular timeline, but alteration is still present, when it does not need to be. All subsequent gospel
harmonies have done likewise, but compounding the unnecessary rearrangement while only shifting
how the rearrangements are paired together. The result has been to view the gospels as a series of

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