Bock, Darrell L. Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002.
One of the challenges in writing a study of the Gospels is how to arrange one’s approach. On the one hand, maintaining the narrative integrity of each Gospel is important for understanding that Gospel. On the other hand, understanding the parallels among the Gospels is also important. Bock addresses this issue by designing the core of this book as a unique harmony of the Gospels. Unlike a traditional harmony that seeks to arrange the Gospels in some sort of chronological order with the parallels displayed, Bock tries to keep “the basic narrative lines [of each Gospel] intact” in the way he moves through the material. This means that some parallels are covered more than once as they occur in different contexts in different Gospels.
I used this book as a guide for reading through the Gospels. At the head of each section, Bock lists the references of Gospel passage(s) being considered. I would read these and then read Bock’s summary of the passage.
The final part of this book is a well-written theology of the Four Gospels.
I worked through this book slowly over the course of several years, and in that time a second edition came out. In addition, the theology in the back of the first edition was expanded into a separate book.