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A Gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the Christian canonical gospels into a single account.〔 This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a "synopsis", although the word 'harmony' is often used for both.〔 Harmonies are constructed to establish a chronology of events in the life of Jesus depicted in the canonical gospels, to better understand how the accounts relate to each other, or to establish events in the life of Jesus.〔 The construction of harmonies has always been favoured by more conservative scholars. Students of higher criticism, on the other hand, see the divergences between the Gospel accounts as reflecting the construction of traditions by the early Christian communities.〔.〕 In the modern era, attempts to construct a single story have largely been abandoned in favour of laying out the accounts in parallel columns for comparison, to allow critical study of the differences between them.〔.〕 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.〔 ==Overview== A Gospel harmony is an attempt to collate the Christian canonical gospels into a single gospel account.〔 Gospel harmonies are constructed and studied by scholars to establish a coherent chronology of the events depicted in the four canonical gospels in the life of Jesus, to better understand how the accounts relate to each other, and to critically evaluate their differences.〔〔 One approach to harmonizing consists of merging the stories into a single narrative, although as John Barton points out, it is impossible to construct a single account from the four Gospels without changing the individual accounts.〔John Barton, ''The Old Testament: Canon Literature and Theology Collected Essays of John Barton'' (Ashgate Publishing, 2013) page 59.〕 This approach, almost as old as the gospels themselves, has largely been abandoned in the modern era.〔 Another approach is that of rationalisation – attempting to show that inconsistencies between Gospel accounts are only apparent, an approach Barton says is associated, in the English-speaking world at least, with fundamentalism.〔 A major problem with harmonizing the accounts is that events are often described in a different order – the Synoptic Gospels, for instance, describe Jesus overturning tables in the Temple at Jerusalem in the last week of his life, whereas the Gospel of John only records a counterpart event towards the beginning of Jesus's ministry. Harmonists must either choose which they think is correct, or conclude that separate events are described. Lutheran Theologian Andreas Osiander, for instance, proposed in ''Harmonia evangelica'' (1537) that Jesus must have been crowned with thorns twice, and that there were three separate episodes of cleansing of the Temple.〔Graham Stanton, ''Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels'' (HarperCollins, 1995) page 8; John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, "Is There a New Paradigm?", in Horrell, Tuckett (eds), ''Christology, Controversy, and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole'' (BRILL, 2000), page 39.〕 A similar problem arises with the centurion whose servant is healed, at a distance. In the Matthew Gospel he comes to Jesus, in the Luke version he sends Jewish elders. Since these are clearly describing the same event, the harmonist must decide which is the more accurate description.〔Mark Allan Powell, ''Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee'' (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), page 12–13.〕 The modern view, based on the broadly accepted principle that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written using the Gospel of Mark as a source, seeks to explain the differences between the texts in terms of this process. For example, the Mark Gospel describes John the Baptist as preaching the forgiveness of sins, a detail which is dropped by Matthew, perhaps in the belief that the forgiveness of sins was exclusive to Jesus.〔Francis Watson, "Must the Gospels Agree?" in Stuart G. Hall, ''Jesus Christ Today: Studies of Christology in Various Contexts'' (Walter de Gruyter, 2009) page 72–73.〕 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 narrative, merging the four Gospels. There are four main types of harmony: ''radical'', ''synthetic'', ''sequential'' and ''parallel''.〔 A "synopsis", much like a parallel harmony focuses on key events and brings together similar texts or accounts in parallel format, usually in columns.〔Steven L. Cox, 2007 ''Harmony of the Gospels'' B&H Publishing ISBN 0-8054-9444-8 pages 3–4〕 Harmonies may also have a visual form and be undertaken to create narratives for artistic purposes, as in the creation of picture compositions depicting the Life of Christ.〔 To illustrate the concept of parallel harmony, a simple example of a "synopsis fragment" is shown here, consisting of just four episodes from the Passion.〔Steven L. Cox, Kendell H Easley, 2007 ''Harmony of the Gospels'' ISBN 0-8054-9444-8 pages 207–211〕 A more comprehensive parallel harmony appears in a section below. Unlike the example above, a textual approach to harmony does not use tables and columns but combines the verses in the gospels into a merged narrative, producing a piece of text longer than any individual gospel.〔Steven L. Cox, 2007 ''Harmony of the Gospels'' B&H Publishing ISBN 0-8054-9444-8 page 18〕 The gospels accounts show a great deal of overall similarity, but the scholarly process for constructing a detailed harmony is complicated by issues of text or the uniqueness of material in each Gospel.〔 Specific issues at times resists distillation into a single harmonized chronology, as the variety of readings that appear in multiple harmony efforts attests. An example is determining whether Jesus cursed the fig tree before or after the Cleansing of the Temple.〔 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.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gospel harmony」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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