THE HARMONY of the GOSPELS

THE HARMONY of the GOSPELS

Most Christain bookstores sell what is known as "harmonies of the gospels." These books purport to put the contents of the four gospels into one continuous account. this is supposed to serve two purposes: one, to be a sort of "reader's digest" fo the gospels for people who have little time to read; two, to smoothe out, or "harmonize," the contradictions among the gospels.

Although several dozen of these harmonies are currently available, new ones continue to be written in the hope that someone will finally determine what "really" happened in the gospel stories. But this is a vain hope, because back in the middle of the second century A.D. the gospels already contradicted each otehr. And if they were not the origianl manuscripts, they were certainly very early copies of them.

So about the year 160 a Christian writer called Tatian compiled the very first "harmony of the gospels." He picked out the events and sayings that appealed to him and left out the rest. But other Christians did not agree with his choices, so they have been playing the same, old, no-win game of "harmonizing the gospels" ever since. The gospels can not be harmonized becuase they have contradicted each other from the very beginning.

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