Four Gospels - One Story: Palm Sunday

Sometimes when I do a Bible study in the Gospels, I like to put together all the accounts to get an overall view of what was happening.  That was no different with my reading today... I wanted to see all four accounts of Palm Sunday.

To do this, I copy the text from all four into different documents.  Then I color each one in a separate color.  Then I work them together into one story, using each telling to its fullest.

(I have no idea why the wonky formatting... just Blogger being Blogger, I guess!)

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Palm Sunday

Matthew      Mark      Luke     John

And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.  The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a a donkey tied, and a colt with her, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it to me.  If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.  and he will send them at once.”  And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it.

 ⁴ This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

“Say to (Fear not,) the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.  and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, just as he had told them.  And they went away and they untied it.  And some of those standing there (its owners) said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. 

They brought the donkey and the colt to Jesus and put on them (it) their cloaks, and he sat on them. 

 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the palm trees and spread them on the road to meet him.   As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen.  And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”  And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”

And he entered Jerusalem and Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.  But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies
    you have prepared praise’?”

And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there with the twelve.