Untitled Sermon (7)

It is important to read the Gospels on their own terms, following the progress of each narrative from introduction to conflict, to climax, to resolution. Reading this way has been called reading vertically, following the story from top to bottom—that is, from beginning to end. The alternative to such a vertical reading is a harmonistic approach, which brings the four gospels together as one story. The danger of a harmony is that it risks distorting or obscuring each gospel’s inspired and unique presentation.

Mark L. Strauss

One may subdivide redaction criticism into two complementary tasks: reading horizontally and reading vertically.71 Reading horizontally involves looking across a gospel synopsis to compare the differences among parallels and to determine how later writers altered their sources. Reading vertically refers to looking down the given column of a synopsis (and hence throughout the larger context of a specific Gospel) to see what themes and other editorial distinctives repeatedly recur and whether or not they are paralleled in the other Gospels.

Craig Blomberg