Gospel Parallels Study

Background Colours: Each section of text has been coloured in English based on word by word comparisons of the Greek text. Each gospel has its own unique constant colour (Mark dark blue, Luke light green-blue, Matthew pink, and John gray). In most cases, one could confirm the coloring from reading the English (RSV) since the words that are the same in English reflect words and phrases that are the same in the Greek. In rare cases, the English of two gospels is the same but the Greek different. Even more rare: the Greek words are the same but the English different. It seems that the RSV translators were very careful in choosing different words in English when the Greek was different. The framework could be applied with relative ease to a Greek source.

In each section, the presence of another gospel's colour means the root, word, phrase, or sentence so coloured is the same as that used in the other gospel. I began by colouring Mark. Mark shows white spacing where word order varies with the other gospels. When I coloured Luke and Matthew, I let them bear their own colour as the spacing colour. Coloured spacing means that the words are in a different order in the gospels being compared (even though the English word order may be identical).

Foreground Colours: Foreground colours and typefaces indicate a structure in the text. Such structures may be in one pericope or spanning several. They may also be nested. For example, John 1:1 is a sequential parallel of the form A B C, A' B' C'. John 5 is a chiasm or concentric structure of the form A B C D C' B' A'. I look for confirming criteria for such structures such as concept, rare or multiple repeated words, and a meaningful centre. John 5 has two chiasms with contrasting centres: belief and unbelief. John 9 is a sequence of 7 scenes each with a dialogue between two characters. The character pairs themselves could be seen as chiastic though complete circles are not evident (the outer circle pairs are not the same) and the centre of the dialogue between the parents and the Pharisees does not seem to be particularly relevant. The aspect of the growth of the man born blind is highlighted with italics.

Contents Pages: The Complete Gospels and the largest combination (the synoptics) each contain a full table of contents, one link for each major section and for each pericope reachable from that gospel. Within each pericope, you can link to a bookmark where that verse can be found in its primary sequence for each gospel. So with two clicks you can get to any pericope. Within each section, for each pericope, one additional click takes you to a major and minor parallel passage in its context. In the contents pages, a colour-coded table of percentages gives you a sense of the content of the pericope at a glance. So for example in the table of contents for Ioannes Baptista praecursor Domini, (pericope #13), you will see this annotation:

The table reads as follows: Mark's version is 18% Mark, 9% Luke, 34% Matthew, 39% all. Luke's version is 80% Luke, 6% Matthew, and 14% all. Matthew's version is 12% Mark, 9% Luke, 59% Matthew, and 20% all. John's version is 92% John, and 8% all. There are as many sections beginning with a cell named % as there are gospels being compared in the pericope. The leading % links to a full list of percentages, word-counts, and the longest phrase from another gospel in the host paragraph:

Percentages and Word-Counts

Mark in Matthew, Luke, and John

Luke in Mark, Matthew, and John

Matthew in Mark, Luke, and John

John in the synoptics

Common in all four gospels

Longest Phrases

Matthew and Luke without Mark	Matthew and Luke with Mark
Matthew and Mark without Luke	Matthew and Mark with Luke
Luke and Mark without Matthew	Luke and Mark with Matthew

(See also Jim Deardorff's study at http://www.tjresearch.info/priority.htm.) The percentage tables are organized as follows.

Section	Title	% Mark	% Luke	% Matthew	% All	Word count	Longest Phrase - other author
13	Ioannes Baptista praecursor Domini	18	9	34	39	106		10	13
			80	6	14	152			6
		12	9	59	20	109	5	7
14	Ioannes paenitentiam praedicat		16	84		92			55
			81	19		95		55
14	Ioannes paenitentiam praedicat		15	85		72	Counts in Greek From Kloppenborg Verbin - Excavating Q P56
			80	20		76	Counts in Greek From Kloppenborg Verbin - Excavating Q P56

The line beginning 13 is part of the triple tradition - hence has 3 lines, one for each of the synoptics, the words are distributed in Mark's version (blue line colour) as 18% Mark (blue column), 9% overlapped with Luke (light blue colour), 34% overlapped with Matthew (pink column) and 39% common (yellow column). There are 106 words (Mark's line colour) in the English coloured text and the longest phrase in Mark from Luke (light blue column) is 10 words, from Matthew (pink column) 13. (The gospel sections are always in the order Mark, Luke, Matthew, John - That's what happens when you begin with Mark and are biased towards the underdog, Griesbach.)

The second line reads that Luke's version (light blue line colour) has no content from Mark apart from the common 14%, 80% Luke, and 6% overlapped with Matthew. Matthew's longest contiguous phrase is 6 words. (Note I only coloured word order as contiguous in the English if it is contiguous in the Greek.)

The third line reads that Matthew's version (pink line colour) has 12% overlap with Mark, 9% with Luke, 59% Matthew, 20% common, 109 words; longest phrase from Mark is 5 words long and from Luke is 7 words long.

I have verified the counts and percentages from the Greek in a few cases. The English percentages are very close. I expect word counts are about 20% higher than the Greek due to the lack of conjugation and declension in English. E.g. Kloppenborg, Excavating Q, page 56 gives the word counts and percentages for #14, above as 15%-85%-72 words for Luke's line, 80%-20%-76 words for Matthew's line. So we are within 1 percentage point. (And I included the plural-singular fruit/fruits in my counts).

	The links below show pericopae unique to each gospel and to the gospels taken 2, 3 and 4 at a time.
		In Sequence	Excluding Sequence	Accounting for the change in count
				5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
1	Matthew	82	22 %	1	28	1				26		2		2
2	Mark	8	6 + 7.31 Epheththa) %							2
3	Luke	98	41 %		29		2			21		1		4
4	John	57	53 %								1	1		2
5	Matthew and Mark	26	11 %	1						13	1			2
6	Matthew and Luke	6	63 %		57
7	Matthew and John	1	1 %			1								1
8	Mark and Luke	22	8 %				2			15				1
9	Mark and John	0	0					0
10	Luke and John	1	1 %						0
11	Synoptics	36	111 %							77				2
12	Matthew, Mark, John	4	4 %								2			2
13	Matthew, Luke, John	1	4 %									4		1
14	Mark, Luke, John	0	0										0
15	All four	22	39 %											17
(Totals 364 excluding Narratio Pauli)

Each line above shows how the counts are redistributed if we exclude sequence as an attribute of uniqueness. The red numbers subtract from the differences in the first 4 rows and 4 columns; and the black numbers add. The black numbers are the sum of the red numbers vertically. So what does it tell us? Here is an explanation of the line numbered 3: Matthew has 82 pericopae unique in sequence and 22 unique left when we see the parallel passages in other sequences. The difference of 60 is accounted for as follows: 1 is added to the Matthew and Mark unique collection; 28 become unique to Matthew and Luke together; 1 is added to Matthew and John together; 26 are added to those in common among Matthew, Mark, and Luke; 2 are added to those in common among Matthew Luke and John; and 2 are added to those in common among all four books. The sum of these is of course exactly 59. Every line and column should reconcile. The net of columns 5 to 15 accounts for the difference in columns 3 and 4.

Note how Matthew-Luke (line 6) is the only two gospel pair to increase when sequence is removed as an attribute of uniqueness. And Matthew-Luke is the only two gospel pair that does not lose any to a three or four gospel combination.

For a single gospel: a pericope is unique in sequence if it is in the sequence of that gospel and not in the same sequence in another gospel. It remains in the count if it has no major parallel in any other gospel. Click on the link in column 4 to see the unique sections in a single gospel.

Taking the gospels in pairs: A pericope is unique in sequence if it is in the primary sequence of both gospels. It remains in the count of that pair excluding sequence if it has no other parallel in another gospel (of the remaining 2).

Taking the gospels in threes: A pericope is unique in sequence if it is in the primary sequence of all three gospels. It remains in the count of that trio excluding sequence if it has no other parallel in the remaining gospel.

Line 15 shows that the fourfold gospel has 22 pericopae that are in the same primary sequence in all four gospels. An additional 17 are added (the sum of the red numbers in column 15) to give 39 sections that are common to all four gospels. Click on the link in column 4 from row 5 to 15 to see the unique items that are shared by more than one gospel at a time.

Overall Structure: The table below shows the counts of pericopae for each gospel section.

Section	Title	Mark	Luke	Matthew	John
I	PRAEFATIO	1	1	1	1
II	EXORDIUM		9	5
III	PRAEPARATIO	4	8	5	3
IV	INITIUM MINISTERII PUBLICI				9
V	MINISTERIUM IN GALILAEA	17	17	4	3
VI	SERMO IN MONTE			27
VII	SERMO DOMINI		7
VIII	MINISTERIUM IN GALILAEA	29	18	57	5
IX	PASSIO IMMINET	10	8	15	2
X	ITER IN JERUSALEM		64
XI	INFESTO SCENOPEGIAE JERUSALEM				13
XII	MINISTERIUM IN IUDAEA	8	7	9	7
XIII	ULTIMUM MINISTERIUM IN JERUSALEM	14	11	14	1
XIV	SERMO ESCHATALOGICUS	8	7	7
XV	CONCLUSIO TEMPORIS ANTE PASSIONEM NARRATI		1	5	3
XVI	PASSIO	23	24	25	31
XVII	RESURRECTIO	3	3	3	4
XVIII	EPILOGUS	2	1	1	2
	Totals	118	186	178	86

Sources: Synopsis of the Four Gospels, Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangelium, Edited by Kurt Aland (6th edition). | http://www.greeknewtestament.com/ | http://etext.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html | Author Home

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee the accuracy of my colouring - it is for fun and for learning. There are insights to be gained but they are not in the area of proving what must be believed, for such is impossible. Read and enjoy. Use your power with gentleness. See structure and complexity. Imagine the life of the authors and their contemporaries. And may you be blessed, taught, loved, and loving in your doing.

Validation of the word counts to date has shown up some issues of judgment or oversight in colouring. I check or repair these as I discover them.

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