Comparing Similar Texts

If you read straight through the New Testament, you will find lots of passages that sound similar to each other. A parable sounds like one you know from another gospel, or an argument from Paul echoes something from another letter.

Looking at similar texts side by side, we can recognize each text's individual emphasis and themes more clearly, so students of the New Testament have developed tools and practices for doing close, comparative reading of similar passages.

Why Compare Similar Texts?

Overall, our objectives for comparing similar texts are:

to identify the voice and particular emphases of each author, and
to discover questions you would like to follow up on as you continue to study a text.

Comparing the Synoptic Gospels

"Eyes on your own paper..."
Some of us remember our elementary school teachers' exhortations to "keep your eyes on your own paper." The gospel writers were thankfully much more free when it came to getting by with a little help from their friends. In fact, Matthew, Mark and Luke are so much like each other in structure and content that we are pretty sure someone was copying from someone else's paper.

As we compare similar New Testament texts, Matthew, Mark and Luke are a special case. They all tell the story of Jesus' ministry, death and resurrection, and they do so in ways that are more like each other than like the gospel of John. In fact, they are so close to each other in structure and content that we are pretty sure someone was copying from someone else. In other words, one of these gospels was written first, then the others used that first one as a source for their retelling of the story.

So who had whose paper? We are guessing about this, of course, but after looking very closely at the relationships between the three books, most modern New Testament scholars believe that the gospel of Mark was the first of the three written, and that Matthew and Luke each used Mark as a source of material for their own telling of the gospel story.

The Inspiration of Scripture
A literary relationship between the gospels (meaning that someone had someone else's paper) does not exclude the idea of the gospels' having been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Couldn't the Holy Spirit have guided the work of the evangelists to edit and borrow from their sources?

You can read more about the synoptic gospels on the Introduction to the Synoptics page. For now, it's enough to recognize that the work we do to compare the synoptics is different from work we do with any other similar New Testament texts.

A synopsis of the gospels is a book in which similar texts from Matthew, Mark and Luke are published side by side. These are available in Greek, Greek-English and English versions. You can look at a sample synopsis page here, and you can find buying recommendations on the Print Resources page.

Online Tools

Some online synopsis tools are also available. My favorite online tool for comparing the gospels in English is The Five Gospels Parallels, edited by John W. Marshall. In a single browser window, you may open various combinations of texts, like (1) the three synoptics, (2) the four canonical gospels, (3) the four canonical gospels plus the gospel of Thomas. From there, you can click on links to make the biblical texts scroll to their parallel passages.

Comparing Pauline Texts

The New Testament contains thirteen letters that bear Paul's name. Some of these letters share common themes or passages that are quite similar to each other. We do not find significant verbatim agreement in the Pauline corpus, as we do when comparing Matthew, Mark and Luke to each other. It doesn't look like Paul use the "copy and paste" method of composition! Yet we do find similar themes and texts across the body of his writings.

Fred O. Francis and J. Paul Sampley have authored a book called, Pauline Parallels, which places many similar texts from Paul's letters beside each other for comparison. Perhaps the best resource for comparing Pauline texts, however, is the selection of footnotes in a reference study Bible. A study Bible's notes will cross reference texts that are like the one you are reading.

Comparing Other New Testament Texts

A few other close connections exist between passages of the New Testament. For instance, Acts sometimes offers parallels to stories that Paul tells in his letters. The advice to wives and husbands in 1 Peter 3:1-7 resembles material in Colossians and Ephesians. Parts of James and 1 Peter are alike. The lesson grid offers links to practice activities on these texts.

What's Next: More on the Synoptics

On the next three pages, we will look closely at comparing the synoptic gospels. After that, you may choose either to read about comparing other kinds of New Testament texts that are similar to each other, or to practice this skill using texts exclusively from the synoptic gospels.