Gospel Harmonies and the Genres of Biblical Scholarship in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Early modern Gospel harmonies have received little attention and are mostly studied as poor precursors to modern synoptic criticism. This article reassesses the harmony's significance by reconstructing its development ca. 1500–1700, reaching two conclusions. First, it argues that Gospel harmonies acted as a touchstone for critical intellectual developments such as the rise of scientific chronology. Second, it argues that the harmony's transformation over this period, influenced by multiple overlapping disciplines, resulted in it becoming one of the most creative scholarly genres by the late seventeenth century. This interdisciplinarity was simultaneously the prime attraction of the harmony and the reason for its eighteenth-century decline.