the parallel Gospels

We look at the Gospels in parallel to see what's the same and what's different.

a hill outside my apartment window in Grenoble

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Below is a fairly comprehensive list of the Gospels in parallel. A title in gray means it is a group heading. If there are no Scripture passages it is because it is a group heading, the reference is outside the Gospels (such as Jesus appearing to James), or a reference should exist but there is none. Square brackets means the verse or passage is doubtful. Strongly indented items mean they are a subset to the group item. That is done to highlight an event or teaching without creating a duplicate count of the verses.

The orange bars show the weight of cross references found in the NIV study Bible. Those cross references are not intended to be exhaustive, but they are a fair representation of how often a passage is referenced within the Gospels, and used as a study help outside the Gospels. If there is no orange bar it might be because the passage is a subset of the group reference, so the orange bar on the group reference pertains to all in the set (such as John 1:5-18).

The typical way of arranging the gospels in parallel is chronologically. This list is mostly chronological but some parallel teachings have been placed to fit with the other gospels, even if the internal chronology places it somewhere else. The point is to find similarities, not create a strict chronology. If the difference is noteworthy, such as the cleansing of the Temple in John, the difference is retained.

John is very different from the other gospels. It is not an exaggeration to say there are more differences than similarities.

One peculiarity to John that is not immediately clear from the list is the length of the stories and teachings. Below is a chart made from the list, showing the length of each event or sermon. Matthew, Mark, and Luke follow a common pattern with most pericope lengths between 3 and 15 verses. John's Gospel is very different. There are relatively few shorter pericopes and conversely longer accounts of events and sermons: 30, 40, and 45 verses. This style of writing is found in the epistles, where the author is writing his own thoughts rather than quoting the words of Christ or recounting Old Testament prophecy.

The chart is from the list. The length of full events and sermons is much longer, both for John and the Synoptics. The Sermon on the Mount, for example, takes 3 chapters: Matt 5 6 7: 110 verses. That is the outlier in the Synoptics. In John the chapter breaks usually signal the end of a sermon. The longest sermon runs for 5 chapters: chapter 13 through 17: 158 verses.

The length of the sermons in John is also noteworthy because often there is no clear delineation between the words of Christ and the teaching of John. This, again, does not happen in the Synoptics. The words of Christ and others are always assigned to the speaker.

Another characteristic of John that that he is strongly involved in his Gospel. He places himself in the story and uses himself as the guarantee that what he is writing is true. The other Gospel writers do not do this.

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I will try to find a way to put the entire spreadsheet online, including the references outside the Gospels, and buttons to shorten the outline and to filter the list.