The Life of Jesus in OrderA Harmony of the Four Gospels

Four Witnesses and One Life

Four men wrote down the life of Jesus Christ, and the church has kept all four. Matthew and John followed him from Galilee to the cross. Mark wrote what Peter preached. Luke gathered his account from those "which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word", and he opens his book by saying what he set out to do.

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.

Luke 1:1-4
KJV

Luke calls the earlier accounts a declaration¹, a recital of what had happened, and he promises to write to Theophilus in order². The Greek word means one thing after another; Luke uses it again in Acts, where Peter "expounded it by order unto them" (Acts 11:4). Matthew Henry drew the plain lesson from the preface: "When things are put in order, we know the better where to find them for our own use, and how to keep them for the benefit of others."

Yet the four do not always tell the same events in the same sequence. The church noticed this from the start. Papias, early in the second century, recorded what an elder had told him of Mark's Gospel: "Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ." Augustine, who wrote a whole book on the agreement of the evangelists, answered the question this raises. On the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, which Matthew places after the Sermon on the Mount and Mark and Luke before it, he asked: "But what matters it in what order the events are told, whether something omitted before is brought in after, or what was done after is told earlier, so long as in the same story he does not contradict either another or himself?"

A harmony of the Gospels lays the four accounts side by side in one order, so that a reader can follow the life of Christ from Bethlehem to the mount of Olives and see at each step which Gospels record it. The church has made harmonies since Tatian wove the four into a single narrative in the second century. The tables below give each major event with its passage in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; a dash means that Gospel does not record it. They follow the order of A. T. Robertson's A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ (1922), built on the earlier harmony of John A. Broadus and long used by students of the Gospels.

Faithful harmonies agree on the great outline: the birth, the baptism, a ministry centred in Galilee, the road to Jerusalem, the last week, the cross and the empty tomb. They differ on some details: where certain miracles fall within the Galilean ministry, how Luke's long account of the road to Jerusalem fits John's visits to the city, the evening of the anointing at Bethany, and the number of Passovers. Where Robertson made a choice on such a point, the tables follow it and the prose says so.

John's Passovers: The Length of the Ministry

Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the ministry as one movement: Galilee first, then the road south to Jerusalem for a last Passover³. John keeps a calendar of the feasts. He names the Passover three times in the course of the ministry: at the cleansing of the temple (John 2:13), at the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:4), and at the end, when "the Jews' passover was nigh at hand" (John 11:55). Luke gives the starting point.

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,

Luke 3:23
KJV

And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.

John 6:4
KJV

Between the first Passover and the second, John records an unnamed feast: "After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem" (John 5:1). If that feast was itself a Passover, the ministry held four of them and lasted some three and a half years; if it was another feast, the ministry lasted a little over two and a half. Robertson thought the longer reckoning more probable and weighed the matter with care: "All we can say is that we know that the ministry of Jesus was two and a half years in length with the probability of three and a half." He added that the question does not change how the Gospels are read: "it really does not matter as regards understanding our Lord's recorded history and teachings."

John's feasts are the fixed points on which every harmony hangs. The Passover of John 2 falls in the early ministry in Judaea; the feast of John 5 and the Passover of John 6 fall within the ministry in Galilee; the feast of tabernacles (John 7:2) and the feast of the dedication (John 10:22) mark the last autumn and winter; and the final Passover is the week of the cross.

Birth and Childhood

Only Matthew and Luke record the birth of Jesus, and they tell it from two sides. Matthew follows Joseph: the angel in his dream, the wise men, the flight into Egypt and the return to Nazareth. Luke follows Mary: Gabriel's message, her visit to Elisabeth, the shepherds, Simeon and Anna in the temple, and the boy of twelve among the doctors. John begins before creation, with the Word who "was made flesh" (John 1:14). Augustine noted where the second Gospel begins: "Note that Mark mentions nothing of the nativity or infancy or youth of the Lord. He has made his Gospel begin directly with the preaching of John."

The two birth accounts fit together without strain. Luke's shepherds find the child in a manger; Matthew's wise men come later "into the house" (Matthew 2:11). Robertson places the visit of the wise men after the presentation in the temple, and reads Luke's note that the family "returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth" (Luke 2:39) as passing over the stay in Egypt that Matthew records. For the birth itself, see The Nativity: The Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

John the Baptist, the Baptism and the Temptation

Luke dates the beginning of the gospel by six rulers: "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar", with Pilate over Judaea, Herod over Galilee, and Annas and Caiaphas in the priesthood, "the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness" (Luke 3:1-2). Matthew, Mark and Luke then tell three things in the same order: John's preaching of repentance, the baptism of Jesus in Jordan, and the forty days of temptation in the wilderness.

John's Gospel does not narrate the baptism. It gives instead the Baptist's own testimony that he saw the Spirit descending and remaining on Jesus (John 1:32-34). Robertson places that testimony, with John's answer to the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem and his cry "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1:29), after the temptation, when Jesus had come back from the wilderness to the place where John was baptizing.

The Early Judean Ministry

The first three Gospels take up the public ministry in Galilee, and they mark when it began. Mark writes: "Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee" (Mark 1:14), and Matthew says the same (Matthew 4:12). Months had passed between the temptation and that day, and John's Gospel tells what happened in them. It says so in one short line.

For John was not yet cast into prison.

John 3:24
KJV

In those months Jesus gathered his first disciples from among John's followers, turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana, and went up to Jerusalem for the first Passover of his ministry, where he drove the traders out of the temple. John calls the wine at Cana the first of his signs: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory" (John 2:11). Nicodemus came to him by night; his disciples baptized in Judaea beside John; and on his way north he spoke with a woman of Samaria at Jacob's well. Robertson holds that Jesus cleansed the temple twice, once at this first Passover and again in the last week, since John dates his account to the one and the other three Gospels date theirs to the other.

The Galilean Ministry

The ministry in Galilee is the longest period and fills the most pages. Robertson divides it in two: the great ministry in Galilee itself, with Capernaum as the Lord's home, and the months that followed the death of John the Baptist, when Jesus withdrew again and again with the Twelve to teach them apart.

The great ministry in Galilee

Rejected at Nazareth, Jesus made his home at Capernaum by the sea. He called four fishermen, healed in the synagogue and in Peter's house, toured the towns of Galilee, called Matthew from the receipt of custom, chose the Twelve after a night of prayer, taught on the mountain, and spoke the parables of the kingdom from a boat. Here the arrangement of the Gospels shows most clearly. Matthew gathers the Lord's teaching into long discourses, the Sermon on the Mount the first of them, and his miracles into chapters 8 and 9. Mark and Luke keep closer to the sequence of days, and Robertson follows them. That is why the call of Matthew stands before the Sermon on the Mount in the table, though Matthew tells it after.

The Twelve taught apart

The feeding of the five thousand is the one miracle of the ministry that all four Gospels record, and John dates it: the Passover was near. After it the crowds wanted to make Jesus a king by force, and many turned back when he called himself the bread of life. He withdrew with the Twelve to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, to Decapolis, and north to Caesarea Philippi, where Peter confessed him the Christ. From there the Gospels turn toward the cross.

From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.

Matthew 16:21
KJV

About a week later Peter, James and John saw him transfigured on a high mountain; see The Transfiguration of Jesus.

The Later Judean and Perean Ministry

Luke marks the next turn with a sentence that governs the rest of his Gospel.

And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,

Luke 9:51
KJV

From here to his nineteenth chapter Luke records much that is found nowhere else: the seventy sent out, the good Samaritan, Martha and Mary, the lost sheep and the lost son, the rich man and Lazarus, the ten lepers, Zacchaeus. Luke arranges this section largely by teaching, and he names few places in it, so this is where harmonies differ most. John supplies the dates. Jesus was in Jerusalem at the feast of tabernacles in the autumn and at the feast of the dedication, "and it was winter" (John 10:22). Then he went away "beyond Jordan" (John 10:40), the land east of the river that harmonies call Perea, until word came that Lazarus was sick.

Robertson reads the first part of Luke's section (to Luke 13:21) as the ministry in Judaea between those two feasts, and the rest as the ministry beyond Jordan, broken by the raising of Lazarus at Bethany. After Lazarus the council took counsel to put Jesus to death, and he withdrew to a city called Ephraim (John 11:54) before going up for the last time by way of Jericho.

Passion Week

Every Gospel slows down as it reaches the last week. Mark gives more than a third of his book to the days in Jerusalem, and John gives nearly half of his chapters to the last week and what followed it. John fixes the start of it.

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

John 12:1
KJV

The next day Jesus rode into the city on an ass, to the cries of the crowd. He cursed the barren fig tree and cleansed the temple; he answered the chief priests, the Pharisees, the Herodians and the Sadducees in the temple courts; and on the mount of Olives he told the disciples of the fall of the temple and of his coming. On the night of the Passover meal he washed their feet, gave them the bread and the cup, and went out to Gethsemane. He was taken that night, tried before the council, before Pilate and before Herod, and crucified the next day.

Two points of order are held differently by faithful Christians. The first is the anointing at Bethany. John tells of a supper at Bethany when Jesus arrived six days before the Passover, where Mary anointed him. Matthew and Mark tell of an anointing in the house of Simon the leper, after the Lord had said, "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover" (Matthew 26:2). Matthew Henry held that these were two suppers; he wrote, "I incline with Dr. Lightfoot to think them different". Robertson held them to be one anointing, and placed it where Mark does: "It seems better to follow the order of Mark here." The table follows Robertson. The second is the day of the crucifixion. The church has commonly held it to be the Friday, the day before the sabbath; some, reading the Lord's "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40), place it on the Thursday or the Wednesday. Robertson follows the Friday, as this harmony does. For the cross itself, see The Crucifixion of Jesus.

The Resurrection and the Ascension

All four Gospels tell of the empty tomb on the first day of the week, and in all four the women come to it first. After that each evangelist chooses his appearances: to Mary Magdalene in the garden, to the other women on the way, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, to the disciples in the upper room with Thomas absent and then present, to seven by the sea of Tiberias, and to the eleven on a mountain in Galilee. Paul names the appearance to Cephas, which Luke records in a single line (Luke 24:34), and adds two that no Gospel records: to "above five hundred brethren at once", and to James (1 Corinthians 15:5-7). Luke, in his second book, gives the length of the whole period.

To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

Acts 1:3
KJV

Luke's Gospel ends at Bethany, where the Lord "led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them" (Luke 24:50), and Acts adds that the disciples returned "from the mount called Olivet" (Acts 1:12). Matthew Henry, writing on John's note that Jesus did many other signs, gave the reason the evangelists chose as they did: the history "was written to bring men to believe, and enough is said to answer that intention". For the evidence of the rising itself, see The Resurrection of Jesus.

Four Accounts of One Lord

Laid side by side, the four Gospels agree in everything that matters to the story: the same Lord, the same disciples, the same miracles and sayings, the same week in Jerusalem, the same cross and the same empty tomb. Where they differ, it is in what each chose to tell and where he chose to tell it, and each had his reason. Matthew wrote to show the King in whom the prophets were fulfilled, and gathered the Lord's teaching into five great discourses (An Introduction to the Gospel of Matthew). Mark set down Peter's preaching, quick and spare, and gave his space to the road to the cross (An Introduction to the Gospel of Mark). Luke wrote an orderly account for Theophilus, and kept what others had passed over (An Introduction to the Gospel of Luke). John wrote last, filled in the Judean ministry and the feasts, and chose his signs so that his readers would believe (An Introduction to the Gospel of John).

Augustine saw in this the mark of honest witnesses. When the evangelists report the Baptist's words differently, he wrote, there is no difficulty "to him who rightly understands that the sense is essential to our knowledge of the truth, but the words indifferent." Four men who copied one another would agree in every phrase and every sequence; four witnesses who saw and heard for themselves agree in substance and differ in arrangement, which is what the Gospels do. For the four set beside one another book by book, see The 4 Gospels: A Side-by-Side Comparison; for why God gave four rather than one, see Why are There Four Gospels?

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

John 20:30-31
KJV

A harmony shows the sequence. It cannot show everything, and the last verse of the fourth Gospel says why.

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

John 21:25
KJV