Does Disharmony Prove Originality?

Article 11 of 27 in the series “When the Canons Collide.”

Parallel passages invite a simple story. If one reading agrees with another Gospel and a rival reading differs, perhaps a copyist imported the familiar wording. Exact assimilation is real and sometimes plain. Yet agreement can also come from the evangelists, a common event, oral tradition, liturgical use, or an earlier shared source. Difference can likewise arise from omission, paraphrase, bad correction, or accident. The surface contrast between harmony and disharmony cannot identify its own cause.

Controlling question: When does agreement show scribal assimilation, and when does a preference for difference assume what it needs to prove?

The Anti-Harmonization Canon

When two Gospels narrate the same event or preserve the same saying, scribes may conform one wording to the other. This is one of the most intelligible forms of intentional change. A copyist remembers Matthew while copying Mark. A marginal cross-reference becomes a substitute phrase. A lectionary tradition blends forms heard in worship. Accordingly, critics often prefer the reading that preserves verbal difference from a parallel.

Metzger includes this among transcriptional probabilities: verbal divergence in parallel passages is ordinarily preferable because scribes tend to harmonize.¹

Dabney attacked a cruder form of the rule as a preference for contradiction. His rhetoric needs correction. Verbal difference is not contradiction; inspiration permits selective narration, paraphrase, translation of spoken words, topical arrangement, and distinct emphases. A Christian doctrine of Scripture should not force the Gospels into wooden identity.

Yet the refined canon still faces Dabney's methodological question. How do we know that agreement arose from a scribe rather than from the evangelist?

Four Different Kinds of Agreement

The term harmonization often blurs distinct phenomena.

Exact verbal assimilation

One reading reproduces a distinctive string from a nearby parallel. This is the clearest case, especially if the borrowed wording is out of character in the receiving context.

Conceptual assimilation

A reading brings the sense closer without copying exact words. The causal link is harder to prove because the change may arise independently.

Grammatical assimilation

Tense, person, number, or word order is adjusted toward a parallel. Such small changes may also arise from ordinary copying or language habits.

Theological harmonization

A reading is said to reconcile two passages doctrinally. This is the broadest and most dangerous category. The more abstract the agreement, the less a specific textual dependence has been demonstrated.

A sound argument should identify which kind is alleged and name the source from which the wording entered.

Authors Also Harmonize

If one evangelist used another Gospel, exact or approximate agreement can be authorial. Even without direct literary dependence, stable oral tradition, common events, shared Old Testament texts, and the repeated teaching of Christ can produce agreement. An inspired author can intentionally use familiar words.

Source theories therefore interact with the canon. If Markan priority is assumed, a Matthean reading that matches Mark may be explained as authorial use of Mark, while a later Markan witness matching Matthew may be explained as scribal harmonization. In another model, the direction changes. The textual canon cannot silently borrow a source-critical conclusion and then present its result as purely transcriptional.

The issue is not that source criticism is forbidden. It is that borrowed premises must be disclosed and defended.

Scribes Also Create Difference

The anti-harmonization canon is often asymmetrical: agreement needs explanation, difference is treated as primitive. But scribes can create difference in several ways.

• An accidental omission removes the words shared with a parallel.
• A synonym enters from memory rather than from the written exemplar.
• A scribe avoids repetition or improves style.
• A local liturgical form replaces the broader familiar form.
• Word order changes without any intent to differentiate accounts.
• An error makes one narrative appear more distinct.

Thus difference, like difficulty, can be original or secondary. A non-harmonizing reading is not self-authenticating.

The Problem of Theological Direction

Some harmonization arguments assume that early Christians were chiefly anxious to remove discrepancies. Others highlight scribal alterations that intensify distinctive theology. Both behaviors are attested. A copyist may reconcile accounts, preserve a beloved local wording, heighten a title, remove an apparent conflict, or make no intentional change at all.

Theological effect must again be separated from motive. A variant that makes Matthew agree with Mark has a harmonizing effect. To call it a deliberate harmonization requires evidence that the scribe knew and imported the Markan form. The effect alone is insufficient.

Conversely, the presence of a difficult difference does not prove that an evangelist wrote it. An accidental loss may have produced the difference. The method must explain why intentional assimilation is more probable than accidental or independent divergence.

Inspiration as a Governing, Not Mechanical, Premise

A biblical doctrine of inspiration contributes two constraints.

First, it denies that genuine contradiction or error may be used as an unexamined mark of originality. Apparent discrepancies must be interpreted with the same care given to any ancient text, while honoring Scripture's own claims.

Second, it does not demand identical phrasing. The Spirit's superintendence works through the authors' vocabulary, selection, order, and purpose. A harmony that erases those distinctions can be as unfaithful as a criticism eager to multiply contradictions.

The proper confessional posture is therefore neither “the most alike reading must be original” nor “the least alike reading must be original.” It asks which wording belongs to the received text and how each inspired account speaks truly in context.

A Controlled Test for Harmonization

A claim of scribal harmonization grows stronger when:

1. a clear source passage contains the exact distinctive wording;
2. the receiving reading is weak or unstable in its own tradition;
3. the imported words disturb the receiving author's grammar, vocabulary, or narrative flow;
4. the relevant witness or scribe harmonizes demonstrably elsewhere;
5. multiple secondary forms show progressive convergence;
6. early and diverse evidence preserves the non-harmonized form;
7. there is no plausible omission mechanism producing the difference.

It grows weaker when “harmonization” is only conceptual, the shared wording is ordinary, literary dependence could be authorial, the allegedly non-harmonized form is mechanically explicable as an error, or the argument depends on calling truthful agreement suspicious.

A Canon That Can Reverse Itself

Consider a longer reading that agrees with a parallel.

• The brevity canon favors the shorter form.
• The anti-harmonization canon also favors the shorter form.
• But if the shorter form is grammatically rough because an eye-skip removed the parallel wording, the harder-reading canon may favor the same shorter form while the mechanical-omission exception favors the longer.

Now consider a shorter reading that agrees with a parallel because a scribe replaced a long unique phrase with a compact familiar one.

• The brevity canon favors the shorter.
• The anti-harmonization canon favors the longer.
• The harder-reading canon may favor whichever wording is less expected.

There is no fixed alignment. “Harmonized,” “shorter,” and “harder” are independent dimensions. The critic must construct a local story that orders them.

The Verdict on Disharmony

Documented verbal assimilation is real and sometimes decisive. A general preference for difference is not. The rule should be restated:

Treat close agreement with a parallel as a prompt to test literary and scribal dependence. Prefer the divergent form only when a specific history of secondary assimilation is better evidenced than a history of authorial agreement or secondary divergence.

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1. Metzger, Textual Commentary, 13*. ↩

This restatement preserves the historical insight and removes the hidden presumption that disharmony carries its own pedigree.

What This Article Establishes

• Exact verbal, conceptual, grammatical, and contextual agreement are different phenomena.
• A source passage, a distinctive borrowed phrase, and a disrupted receiving context strengthen a harmonization claim.
• Inspiration permits truthful verbal difference without making the least harmonious wording original by definition.

Conclusion

The anti-harmonization canon is most useful as a controlled test. It asks whether one passage supplies the exact wording, whether the receiving form is unstable or awkward, and whether early diverse evidence preserves the non-assimilated form. It fails when every agreement is called secondary and every difference primitive. The critic must prove a scribal act, not merely point to a resemblance.

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