HARMONY OF zne GOSPELS. The narratives of the evangelists, and especially those of the first three, are in many things close repetitions of each other, and not unfre quently relate the same incident in words which are all but identical. On the other hand, they occasionally exhibit seemingly grave discrepancies, whether of facts or of circumstances; one relating an occurrence not noticed by another, or placing an occur rence at a time or in circumstances which it is hard to reconcile with the narratives of his brother-evangelists. At a very early period of Christian literathre this difficulty was felt, and with a view to its more complete and easy elucidation, the passages of the several gospels which bore upon each subject or incident were collected for the pur pose of comparison and of mutual illustration. The title under which the earliest com pilation of this nature, which dates from the second half of the 2d c., was known was Dlatessaron, because it consisted of extracts from the four evangelists. The author of this compilation was the heretic Tatian, and it is retnarkable that, in order to give a color to his own peculiar opinions as to the unreality of the flesh of our Lord, he omitted from his collection the entire history of the birth and childhood of Jesus as related by Matthew and Mark (Eusebius, Eed. Hist. iv. 29). St. Jerome states that a similar harmony was compiled about the same time by Theophilus of Antioch, although no trace of such a work is now discoverable; hut in the middle of the following century the celebrated Neo-platonist convert, Ammonius Saccas, undertook a new Diatessaron, which formed the basis of the well-known Tea Indexes, or canons, of the Harmony of the Gospels, in the Greek text, UV Eusebius, which were afterwards adapted to the Latin text by St. Jerome, and continued to be used as a key to the concordance of the
gospels by readers both of the Greek and of the Latin text, down to the 10th century.
he canons of Ensehius consist of ten tables. Of these, the first, which contains four columns, exhibits all the passages which are common to the four gospels; the second, third, and fourth contain three colunms, and show the passages which are found in any three of the gospels; the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth are in two col umns, and show the passages which occur in any two of the gospels; and the tenth contains the passages which' are found only in one of the gospel narratives. The con venience and utility of such a scheme are at once apparent, and it has led in later times to the numerous and compilations. Homan Catholic as well as Protestant, known under the name of Synopses of the Gospels, the best and most popular of which are enumerated by Tischendorf in the introduction to his own Synopses Eraoyeliecr, p. 9, and foil.