Gospel harmony

A Gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the Christian canonical gospels into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a "synopsis", although the word 'harmony' is often used for both. Harmonies are constructed to establish a chronology of events in the life of Jesus depicted in the canonical gospels, to better understand how the accounts relate to each other, or to establish events in the life of Jesus.

The construction of harmonies has always been favoured by more conservative scholars. Students of higher criticism, on the other hand, see the divergences between the Gospel accounts as reflecting the construction of traditions by the early Christian communities. In the modern era, attempts to construct a single story have largely been abandoned in favour of laying out the accounts in parallel columns for comparison, to allow critical study of the differences between them.