The Horizontal Chronology
of the Four Gospels

"I recently heard of a new Christian who avidly devoured the Bible and came to the conclusion after reading the four gospels that Christ had been crucified and resurrected four times. That kind of reader -- and many more mature students -- will benefit from the labours of the author..."
DK, Christian Week Newspaper book review.

"The author reorganizes the Gospels so that Jesus' life can be read in sequence from birth to ascension."
Bill Fledderus, book review section editor, Faith Today, Toronto ON, Canada

"Wow is the first word that came to my mind when I saw your book... it is obviously a tremendous task and the presentation is very, very good. It is impressive to say the least, I will certainly read it..."
A reader from Ottawa, ON, Canada.

"Thank you so much for the book, I don't think I ever saw an easier book to read. I hope you make it a course at the Link School of Ministries Inc...."
Rev. Art Mullin, President, CMFC, Mississauga, ON, Canada.

"I don't think I've seen a parallel treatment of the Gospels. The time line at the top of each page is certainly a very handy and convenient feature. I thought it was a good idea to bring 1 Corinthians 15:5-8 over to the Gospel resurrection accounts, due to the incredible importance of Paul's text. Likewise, adding Acts 1:6-12 to the ascension accounts was also timely, since that passage provides more detail than Luke's initial accounts in his Gospel..."
G. H. Prof., Dept of Philosophy & Theology, A US Christian university.

"A 'horizontal chronology' of the four gospels is quite a unique idea. Normally a harmony of the gospels is viewed with a side-by-side text. This is truly an indispensable aid to bible studies for those who wish to view the events of the four Gospels in an orderly fashion."
Dr. Cecil Johnson, President, Christian Bible College, Rocky Mount, N.C., USA.

"Horizontal Chronology of the Four Gospels will thrill and delight all who see in a single draft how the Son of God, the Master Teacher, carried out His mission".
Norman B. Rohrer, Director, Christian Writers Guild, Hume, CA, USA.

"This book is for anyone -- churched or unchurched -- who is interested to know more about the four Gospel writings."
D.M.Hoffmann, the Author.

Toronto, Canada - September 15/01. In one of his latest features, international journalist Dan Wooding of Assist Communications, Garden Grove, CA, interviews Diane M. Hoffmann, author of the "Horizontal Chronology of the Four Gospels".

Dan Wooding:How did you get the idea of writing "Horizontal Chronology of the Four Gospels?

Diane Hoffmann: I don’t remember exactly when or how, but I worked with a couple of harmonies of the gospels that are available in columnar forms as I studied throughout the years. Then I began to think that it would be nice to be able to read the discourse of the combined four gospels in chronological order that could be read like a book. And so I began the colossal work.

DW: What’s the difference between a "harmony" and a "chronology"

DH: I called it a "chronology" because my goal was not to "harmonize" every scripture or event between one gospel and another. I simply wanted to bring the events reported by the gospel writers together, in a chronological order so the ministry of Jesus could be read in one draft, from his pre-human existence to his ascension.

At times, I really had to struggle with bringing some of the events under a chronological order because some of the statements of Jesus reported by the gospel writers were told as from different locations. In other words, one writer would report the sayings of Jesus about a particular subject as having taken place in Judea and another would report the same event as from Perea.

In those cases, I couldn’t lift the event or subject matter out of its location so I left them there and added a cross-reference to the two reports. An example of this is the Lord’s prayer. In Luke 11:2 the event takes place in Judea, but in Matthew 6:9, this event takes place in Galilee, within the Sermon on the Mount discourse. Either Jesus said it twice or the writers each got a different remembrance of the event. Either way, it does not take away the truth of the prayer taught by Christ.

DW: How is the book organized?

DH: Headings of main subject matters are placed in chronological order as they appear in the Bible, followed by sub-headings within their main subject matters. Some events appear to be out of order in the biblical narrative, as I have already pointed out. These have been moved under the events they represent, if they were close enough or within the same location, or cross-referenced if the biblical narration seemed too far out of context, i.e. similar parables, topics and/or statements repeated at different seasons and places.

The sequence of the Gospel writers is arranged as they appear in the Bible, i.e.: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Where a writer did not record a subject matter, his name does not appear under the subject heading, thus the reader can see at a glance who reported an event and who didn’t.

Text in italic (except for editor’s notes) reflect the King James version of words that are not in the original text but have been added to construct the English sentences. Text has been taken from a variety of old Bible versions and verified with other contemporary work. It is to be used as an extra-biblical reading or study guide with one’s own personal version of the Word of God.

DW: In one of the book reviews, the reviewer referred to a new Christian who thought Jesus had been crucified four times. Tell us about that.

DH: Yes that was funny. He said that this new Christian avidly devoured the Bible and because he read the event of the crucifixion four times, he thought the crucifixion took place four times. Actually I heard a similar comment from a new Christian right here in my own town also who was confused about the four gospel renderings.

Many ask the question, "Why four gospels". I cover that at the beginning of the book on page v, where I placed four pictures, all from the same side of the same room. Depending on the angle of the camera shots from which the photographs were taken, different views of the contents have been captured.

If asked to describe each picture in detail by four different people, each person would describe his/her picture in variance with the others. All of them would be accurate, but different, according to each of the four personal viewpoints.

If one goes to a bookstore and picks up four books on the subject of business management by the four business authors, the message is essentially the same but each one brings new insights from each their own experiences.

In a similar way, each Gospel is described by each of the synoptists. Matthew comes from a Jewish point-of-view and presents Jesus as the Messiah who fulfills the promises and prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures. Mark, from a Roman point-of-view, presents Jesus as the Conqueror, a man of action who triumphs over Satan and sin. Luke, from a Greek point-of-view, presents Jesus as the comprehensive, intellectual, Perfect Son of Man. The gospel of John stands on its own, coming from a "believer" point-of-view and presents Jesus as God.

DW: Now, some unbelievers talk about discrepancies in the Bible. Do you find any?

DH: A lot of these alleged discrepancies are simply because these people don’t read the Bible. As it’s been said before, the Bible interprets itself. Sometimes, one may read something that raises questions in the mind of the reader, but the answer is found further on in another book.

We have to realize that the Bible is a volume of sixty-six books or letters, written by over thirty-five authors during a period of some fifteen-hundred years. The miracle is that the whole work is in perfect harmony with its message of redemption.

It is to be understood that wherever there are difficulties found in the Word of God, such, according to expert research and scholars, add up to only about 5% of the whole, in human terms, and have to do with transcripts and translations. However, none of it has anything to do with Salvation or the purpose of God’s Word which is to redeem all of mankind from sin — one individual at a time!

DW: What are some of the unique features about "Horizontal Chronology".

DH: The book contains several unique features. One of them is the map on each of the top left hand pages where the reader is kept informed of the approximate locations where Jesus moves along the stories. Another is the timespan at the top of each of the right pages that keeps the reader in the approximate time frame of the three years of Jesus’ ministry.

A very exclusive feature is an analysis of the synoptical patterns of the four Gospels shown at the end of the book. This was developed by adding the main events as reported by each Gospel writer, within each of the main divisions as presented in this chronology.

The result enables the reader or student to see at a glance which of the four writers has reported the most or the least of the information we now have on the main events that make up the complete Gospel story.

Other features are various chronological breakdowns of the approximate dates the New Testament books and the Gospels were written, popular words and miracles of Jesus, and parables of Jesus in chronological order, with their subject meanings.

--End of the interview.--

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