Blended Digital Gospel Harmony of Palm Sunday Account at OpenBible.info

Blog article link

Stephen Smith at OpenBible.info has posted an interesting proof of concept tool showing what a blended digital gospel harmony might look like. As he notes, gospel harmonies have appeared in print either as parallel accounts (think Aland's Synopsis or Throckmorton's Gospel Parallels) or as blended harmonies of which Tatian's Diatessaron is the earliest known one.

Smith notes the limitations of print harmonies and has produced a digital one that is interactive and gives readers greater clarity regarding where material is being derived. It also lets readers choose to prioritize one gospel if they choose.

In his initial work, Smith shows what the Palm Sunday / Entry into Jerusalem text might look like. The reader has the option of picking one of the four Gospels as the base which is highlighted in red. He notes that it was surprisingly time-consuming to construct a single passage like this, so don't expect a full Gospel any time soon.

I think the most helpful thing about such a tool is that a person can more quickly compare two Gospels and simply note what turns to red or black. One can quickly see that differences, at least in this account, are minimal between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but switching to John as the base makes a considerable difference.

HERE is the blog article and HERE is a page where you can play with the blended digital Gospel harmony yourself.