The Bible’s four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—emphasize the life of Jesus from each of the Gospel writer’s unique perspective, focusing at times on similar events and teachings by Jesus and on dissimilar descriptions at others. A typical harmony of the Gospels lays out all the events and lists Bible passages in parallel.

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, What Are the Gospels?]

Analytics consultant and creator of Viz.Bible (@bibleviz)—a website dedicated to collecting data on biblical passages, people, places, and periods—Robert Rouse has created the above chart from a different approach: by comparing the broader topics illuminated by those verses. He explains that the sides of each cross vary according to how often each writer discusses a topic (as a percentage of the total number of verses in the book). The right side represents Matthew, the top is Mark, left for Luke, and the bottom line goes with John. The topics and verse references are from a mashup of Nave’s Topical Bible concordance and Torrey’s New Topical Textbook.

The above chart by Robert Rouse is used by permission of Robert Rouse. http://viz.bible/a-visual-harmony-of-the-gospels/. All rights reserved.