Four Voices One Gospel The Synergistic Gospel of the New Testament King James Version
On the occasion of my first birthday, my father presented to me the gift of a small edition of the New Testament in which he had written the words: "May you observe diligently all things contained in this book. During the course of my life, I have been frequently reminded of this wisdom, and have tried, with varying degrees of success, to read and know the contents of the gospels. However, like so many others who have approached the reading and study of the New Testament, my experience has been to know and share the frustration which occurs relative to reconciling the differences between the separate accounts of the gospels. These differences exist in the context of the gospels' structure, chronology, sequence, language, and description of events which center around and about the life of Christ. In order to facilitate a personal study of the gospels, the awesome and burdensome task of producing "FOUR VOICES" - ONE GOSPEL was undertaken. In so doing, my intent was to reconcile as much as possible those differences which are found to exist between the four individual gospels and to organize and correlate the apparent fragmentation which seemed to characterize the historical gospel record and testaments about the historical Jesus. Many who attempt to read the four gospels soon abandon their effort when faced with the following type of obstacles: The gospels seem fragmented and lacking in unity. Variations exist in chronologies and sequence of events. Accounts of same episodes are described differently. Content and themes vary widely among the gospels. Apparent contradictions exist between some gospel texts. Separate gospels are difficult to compare and reconcile. Events described in some gospels are omitted in others. Although many efforts have been made to address some of these problems through publication of various type of "Bible Harmonies" and "Parallel Gospels," the reader and student of the gospels using these works continue to be faced with the complicated and difficult task of comparing and interrelating the events and language of the individual gospels. Other publications which purport to present the story of Christ as a continuous "gospel" narration based on the four gospels are equally frustrating to use. On review, they are found to be only simplified narrations created from parts of the gospels. These summary narratives fall short of their intended purpose and emerge as weak anemic paraphrased accounts of the gospels and they leave out important language, commentary, detail and entire events which are described in the gospels. They are not continuous gospel texts, nor do they truly represent the original gospels. In no instance do these summaries use the actual and entire language given by the four evangelists to record the story of Christ. Thus, for the reader of those works, the full richness and vitality of the gospels is diluted and missing. Like the "harmony" and "parallel gospel" expositions, these works as paraphrased summaries may have some value in assisting the reader to understand the general story of the New Testament; nevertheless, they fall short of their purpose in representing the gospels as a continuous narrative text, in that they do they use the actual and complete language as presented by the evangelists themselves. In the "FOUR VOICES - ONE GOSPEL" the combined and unified merged text of the four gospels is represented by "THE SYNERGISTIC GOSPEL," which fully presents as a continuous text the entire language of the four gospels as a chronological narrative sequence which describes the life of Jesus Christ. (Continued).