The Study of the Narrative Harmony of the Three Gospels

At the beginning of the New Testament, Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are composed by different authors in different times according to various sources, and the Three Gospels exist differences from the perspective of narration details. However, after the close reading of these three gospels, it is found that these gospels maintain a high inherent narrative harmony in terms of the narrator, protagonist, and theme. To some extent, this study of this thesis will help eliminate the long-standing misunderstanding among readers that the Three Gospels contradict each other.

Regarding these dissimilarities of readers, different scholars have made some explanations. Based on St. Augustine (61), he expounded the harmony of the three gospels from the perspective of theology. David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey and Donald Michie (15-23) proposed the possibilities to study the Gospels used the narration theory. They discussed that only when readers regarded the Gospels as a coherent work that could they sense the moving power of the Gospels. In 1983, Culpepper (127) adopted narrative critique method to conduct research on the Fourth Gospel. Jack D. Kingsbury (32) and R. C. Tannehill (107-116) studied on the First Gospels and Fourth Gospels respectively from the angle of literary narration. These studies paved a way for my further study of the Gospels based on narrative harmony.

The three Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke can be regarded as a narrative genre (Liang 59), which decides the existence of Narrator. In Matthew, it is the third person who narrates the story and plays a role of omniscient narrator. For example, there is a scene describing the dream of Joseph and in the dream, someone tells Joseph to marry Maria, who will give birth to Holy Spirit—Jesus (1:20-21). Clearly, the narrator of Matthew knew the content of Joseph’s dream. The accurate description of the narrator proves that he can come in and go out of the dream of figures easily, which emulated the God, who is well-known. Thus, it will make the narration genuine and believable even though the author of the Matthew tell stories from his value and behavior code. However, this omniscient narrator is not unique in Matthew, but also in Mark and Luke. In Mark, the narrator will tell readers the psychological behaviors of figures. For example, the narrator tells readers the thoughts of Jesus, who does not want to be noticed by others. Readers will find that there are no marks or signs indicating Jesus has such willing or thoughts. In fact, the psychological thoughts are the author of Mark. In Luke, the omniscient narrator is also employed during the process of narration. Like at the very beginning of the Luke, it depicts the panic and frightened mind of people. All these three Gospels used an omniscient view to tell stories, and each narrator of the Gospel is like God, who is ubiquitous, which makes these Gospels achieve the harmony from the perspective of narrators.

Besides, the protagonist is also a tool to achieve the harmony. It is certain that Jesus is the protagonist in all these three Gospels, and these Gospels value Jesus at a high status. In Matthew, it regards Jesus as the descendent of Abraham, the son of David and also a Christ (1: D). In Mark, it depicts Jesus as the Holy son and a starting point of Christ Gospel (1:1). This description neglected the birth and childhood of Jesus, but it highlighted the status of Jesus as a Christ, which is conformed to the content in Matthew. With the language differences in Luke, Jesus was be described as a young man who was strong, smart and be with the God. Despite the description differences of language, the author of Luke also emphasizes Jesus’ status as a Savior, the son of God. As the protagonist in these three Gospels, Jesus, connected all the events and made every single Gospel as a complete narration unit. Meanwhile, Jesus combined each narration not only because he took the role of the protagonist, but also due to its consistent character and image presented in these narrations. The harmony of the description of protagonist serves as another powerful providence to the harmony of the three Gospels.

Finally, these three Gospels expressed the similar theme. On the surface, the narrative details of these three Gospels exist differences. For example, in Matthew and Mark, they adopted parables to record the preaching of Jesus per day. In Matthew, it arranged the preaching details at the beginning part of the story while, in Mark, the preaching content of Jesus was put in the middle part of the story. However, when the deep structures of these three Gospels are analyzed, it can find the similarity that the destiny of Jesus who suffered for the sins of others and conducted salvations. This is also the common theme through all these three Gospels. In Matthew, Jesus knew clearly about his destiny, and he told his disciples that he was not served by others but aimed to serve others even at the cost of sacrificing life for salvation (2:1). Then he brought discipless to the cruelest Jerusalem and also made prophecies that he would be sentenced to death and sacrificed himself on the cross (2:3). The prophecy of Jesus is a perfect representation of Matthew’s theme. The progressing plot moved forward to this them and made readers realize the bleeding blood of Jesus was for others to be saved.

In Mark and Luck also recorded the contradictory lives of Jesus and the fights with Jews made him lose his life. All these three Gospels are concerned them that Jesus suffered for others in order to realize others’ salvation. They depicted the reception of baptism of Jesus and preaching activities of Jesus in Galilee. When the situation got worse in Galilee, Jesus cultivated twelve disciples with care and patience and then walked into Jerusalem. During a period of Jerusalem, expelling merchants was an important event so as to purify the Temple of God. After that, Jesus was hatred by Jews and betrayed by Judas and finally died on the cross. After the three days of Jesus’ death, the resurrection of Christ and Ascension happened.

In the frame based on the fixed theme, every author of each Gospel arranged his memory fragments and collected materials in line with certain narrative purpose.

Locations of some events in these three Gospels were not certain, as the place of Jesus to cure the sickness of patients or the place of supernatural incidents. But all these three Gospels told the birth, suffering and resurrection of Jesus, who used his innocent blood to forgive all the sins of human beings and made contracts with God to conduct salvation. Due to the theme harmony of these three Gospels, the purpose of writing these books can be sensed that the delivery of the good news of God to save the sins of secular people is not only on the basis of the Jesus’ preaching and his good works, but also lies in his sacrifice to realize the forgiveness of God to all human beings.

In conclusion, Gospel of Matthew, Mark, and Luck all adopted a perspective of the omniscient narrator with the same protagonist to present the same theme. These three works complement to each other and constitute an integral unit, which will show the events of Jesus in a comprehensive way. The harmony achieves in all three Gospels. The co-existence of three Gospels in the New Testament verifies the preaching of Jesus is the true gospel because there are at least three authors and three scriptures to illustrate it, and it also enhances the geniality of all three Gospels as a whole.

Works Cited

Augustine. The Harmony of the Four Gospels. Translated By Xu Yi. Beijing: San Lian Press, 2010: 61. Print.

Culpepper, R. A. Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983:127. Print.

Holy Bible (New Revised Standard Version). National TSPM & CCC, 2002. Print.

Kingsbury, J. D. Conflict in Mark, Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, 1989: 32. Print.

Liang, G. The Artistic Study of Narration in Bible. Beijing: Beijing Commercial Press, 2006: 59. Print.

Rhoads, D., Dewey & Michie. Mark as story: an introduction to the narrative of a Gospel (2nd Edition). Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999: 15-23. Print.

Tannehill, R. C. The Literary Form of Luke. Journal of Biblical Literature, 1991, 110 (1): 107-106. Print.