In The Journey, we will be going through the four gospels concurrently - all four at the same time, reading parallel passages side by side. But here's the tricky part: No gospel writer ever claimed to be putting down the story in a strictly chronological order. The gospels are not, for the most part, chronological narratives, but they are anecdotal compilations of the things Jesus said and did. In other words, it's like the way you might tell people about your vacation - you don't start at the beginning and tell the whole story at once, beginning to end. You tell individual stories about things that happened, and one story reminds you of the next, even if they didn't happen one right after the other. For the gospels, the thread through them is theological and thematic, not strictly chronological. Of course there are things that happen at the beginning (Jesus' birth, baptism, temptation) and there are things that happen at the end (his passion, resurrection, post-resurrection appearances). But in between that, it's more thematic. Having said that, the closest thing we get to a chronological narrative is the Gospel of John, with a ministry that covers what appears to be 3 years, or going through 3 Passovers (the other gospels present the story in a kind of compressed form as if the whole story is Jesus on the way to Jerusalem for his passion).
So we are going to follow the rough chronology in the Gospel of John, putting the other gospel sections into the chronology where they would go in a "beginning-to-end" story, which means the stuff from Matthew, Mark, and Luke will often not come to us in the order they give it to us. But trust me, it will all make sense as a historical narrative. So a high level outline for the gospels will look something like this, and these are the sections we will follow through:
1) Prologue to Jesus' ministry (up through his temptation)
2) Year 1A: Galilee
3) Year 1A: Judea (ends with the arrest of John baptizer - Jesus leaves Judea)
4) Year 1B: Galilee
5) Year 1B: Judea (ends with the execution of John - Jesus leaves Judea)
6) Year 2: Galilee
7) Year 2: Judea (ends with Jesus finding out there's a price on his head, and - you guessed it - Jesus leaves Judea - it's not time for his passion yet)
8) Year 3: Jerusalem (including the passion, resurrection, etc.)
Down the road, when we finish the gospels, we will go through the book of Acts, interspersing the New Testament letters into the story chronologically, so we'll go through the rest of the NT (and beyond) chronologically by year, based on what we know about the early Church. And that's the plan!
Dear friends - Please take 10 minutes to watch this personal update from me:
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
As you all know, I'm shutting down this platform on Saturday.
So just a reminder, I hope you all will keep in touch. If you don't' already have an email for me, keep this one:
Thanks,
Jim
Hi folks,
When I was putting together my list of how to read the rest of the NT chronologically, I now realize that I left out the Letter to the Hebrews!
As you know, in the early and medieval Church there was a debate over whether St. Paul wrote this, and whether it should be included among his letters. Since most scholars do not include Hebrews among the letters of Paul, I had left it off my chronology of Paul's life. If he did write it, we don't know when - but I suspect that if he wrote it, it would have his name on it. In any case, it has to have been written before 70 AD because it speaks of the temple sacrifices as ongoing, and Clement of Rome quotes it in 1 Clement a couple decades later. So I would put Hebrews either with James (after the prison epistles of Paul) or with Peter's letters (after the pastoral epistles of Paul). I'm not saying that I think James or Peter wrote it, but they would be interesting candidates for authorship.
And if you want a couple short, but ...
Hi Folks,
I'm planning to shut down the platform this Saturday. It will be 3 years almost to the day since we started. It's been a lot of fun, and I hope we keep in touch.
Stay subscribed to my YouTube channel for all the upcoming episodes of The Way of the Fathers podcast. The second episode on St. Thomas Aquinas will air on the 29th, and in November we're jumping out of the chronological sequence to talk about the newest doctor, St. John Henry Newman! (And I will be taking December off, getting back into it with St. Catherine of Siena in January.)
And make sure you're on the email mailing list, so you'll know about new books and future pilgrimages (HINT: Mike Aquilina and I are already planning ROME 2026 - probably right about a year from now - so stay tuned...). You can sign up for the email list, which comes no more than once a month, at my home page: https://jimpapandrea.wordpress.com/
Thanks again for all your support!
- Jim
