GOSPELS FOR HISTORICAL STUDY AN ANALYTICAL SYNOPSIS OF THE FOUR GOSPELS BY WM. ARNOLD STEVENS AND ERNEST DE WITT BURTON NEW YORK THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 22611 PREFACE. THIS Harmony, like the small Outline Handbook of the Life of Christ which preceded it, is intended to promote and facilitate the historical study of the gospels. The Life of Christ is now engaging the attention of Biblical scholars to a remarkable degree. In the decades that followed the publication of Strauss's Life of Jesus in 1835, the literature of the subject was chiefly controversial. An apologetic motive was manifestly dominant in the powerful works of Neander, Ebrard, and Lange. At present it is the subject itself that commands attention. There is a deepening conviction that in Biblical science, and indeed in Christian theology as a whole, the study of the Life of Christ should be made primary and central. Books upon the subject are increasing in number. But it is to be remembered that the principal text-book is the fourfold gospel. The study of the Life of Christ is primarily the historical study of the four gospels, which implies the tracing of the events they narrate in their chronological sequence and in their organic connection. For this purpose a constant comparison of the four narratives is necessary, and a synopsis or harmony becomes in the very nature of the case indispensable. In accordance with current usage we have used the title "Harmony," although, as frequently happens with technical terms, it is likely to convey to the general reader a sense not intended. To some it may perhaps require explanation that the proper object of a harmony of the gospels is not to harmonize them, if by that is meant bringing them into agreement. It is simply an arrangement by which the corresponding parts of different documents may be brought together before the eye and compared a method not peculiar to Biblical study, but familiar to all students of literary and historical documents. Accordingly we have made no attempt to harmonize what is not harmonious, but simply to exhibit the facts. Whatever discrepancies the four narratives contain, we have preferred to let the printed page display them equally with the agreements, rather than adopt an arrangement or a dissection which should withdraw them from view. Wherein the four writers differ, and how they differ, is precisely what the intelligent reader wishes 1085552 |