Since the earliest centuries, Christians have been interested in the question of how to reconcile what seem to be discrepancies in the four Gospels. Especially around Holy Week and Easter, Christians are keen to understand on which day each event of the Passion took place. Was the Last Supper on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday? Could it be considered a Passover meal or a prequel to the Passover proper? But often, once our Easter feasts have been digested and the world moves on, these questions withdraw to foreign pastures where we forget them.
The Resurrection, however, was not the last event of Christ’s earthly life, and more events followed it. And so, while the chronology of the Passion is a fascinating question in and of itself, and one I’ve devoted time to over the last years, I’ve recently been especially interested in the Resurrection and post-Resurrection events, and how they fit together.
This “alignment” of the four Gospels has often been called “harmonization,” and RT France comments that this is a helpful and fitting designation. For, harmony “is what is created when a number of voices sing their own different parts at the same time. It is not the same as unison, where all sing the same notes. Because the voices are different there is a greater richness than in unison, but because they sing together under the direction of a single composer, what we hear is not a collection of discordant notes, but a richly satisfying harmony.”a Indeed, each Evangelist highlights different things he is interested to communicate, while passing over other things that the others deem more important. And in reading them together, these themes ought to come together so that they can be read in one key, time signature, and tempo.
(more…)- R.T. France, “Chronological Aspects of ‘Gospel Harmony’,” Vox Evangelica 16 (1986): 57. (back)
And we know that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. He is ruling and reigning from his heavenly throne. The Father has given him the kingdom (Psalm 2), and now he is preserving, progressing, and perfecting his kingdom. He is bringing all things under subjection (I Cor. 15:24-26).
