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The Single Gospel: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John Consolidated into a Single Narrative
The life of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian faith, and is one of the great works of Western literature. This book presents the story in a new form, more accessible than ever before. It weaves the four separate gospel accounts into one continuous story. And it presents the story in a new traditional, but clear. Here the reader can find the episodes laid out in proper chronological order. The nativity at Bethlehem is followed by the visit of the three wise men. And for each scene the rich details are collected from all the gospel accounts, giving a complete picture of complex events like the Sermon on the Mount or Jesus' climatic encounter with Pilate. The new language is clear as well. It is traditional scripture inconspicuously updated for modern readers, supplemented with contemporary language for difficult concepts, and using the grand and familiar language of the King James where appropriate. Low-key explanations fill in the details. Short footnotes explain the key concepts, and longer endnotes provide additional depth. This book opens the gospels to everyone--Christians who want to better understand their faith, and general readers who want to rediscover a great work of literature.
- GenresReligion
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2015
65 people are currently reading
269 people want to read
About the author
Neil Averitt
1 book6 followersMy book, The Single Gospel, grows out of my own spiritual travels.
Like many Americans today, I grew up with religion playing very little part in my life. This was a change from family tradition, because my ancestors had always had a strong Christian bent. My own childhood, however, was largely devoid of religious education. I was once asked whether I understood the meaning of Easter, and I replied that I certainly did. It was the day, I explained, when they nailed George Washington to the cross.
As I moved into adult life, however, it became increasingly clear that our contemporary world was missing something that had been central to successful cultures and to successful individual lives in the past. One alternative began to appear when I first encountered a true community of faith, and saw what lives lived in Christian understanding might look like. In my case this happened on a visit to a place in Greece called Mount Athos.
Mount Athos is in Greece but not really of it. It is a self-governing, largely autonomous monastic republic in the northern part of the country, literally a piece of the old Byzantine Empire, a part of the doubly unfamiliar world of the Eastern Orthodox churches. It occupies a remote, mountainous peninsula that reaches thirty-five miles out into the Aegean, terminating in the steep-sided peak of Mount Athos itself, which rises seven thousand feet directly out of the ocean. Scattered across this isolated landscape are twenty large monasteries, a few small towns, innumerable farmhouses and hermitages, and about 2000 monks. The monasteries sometimes stand near the sea and sometimes cling to crags a thousand feet above it. The entire community functions as a religious republic – a sort of “Christian Tibet” – under a charter granted by the Byzantine Emperor in the year 972. For the first-time visitor like me, the experience was as strange as being suddenly dropped down on Mars.
Once there, however, I found lives lived by values that I had not seen before. For one thing, the monks did not have, as one might have expected, a dour and burdened attitude toward their austere lives. Instead, the life they had chosen for themselves seemed to have made them calm and cheerful, and at peace with the world. The country lanes around some of the monasteries were so quiet that you could hear the sound of birds’ wings and of bees in the trees, and a sense of age-old peace lay over the land. One of the monks recommended to me a line from the Psalms, “Be still and know that I am God.”
I had come to realize that I wanted to know more about Jesus and his life. And as I came to learn more, I found that my own truths had changed.
I found a different way of looking at all the practical dealings of daily life. It made it suddenly clear that it is possible to live in the world by different values, and to perceive both troubles and opportunities in ways very different from our society’s customary practices. A follower of Jesus might “live in this world but be a citizen of heaven.” The Seventh Century church father, St. Isaac the Syrian, expressed this connection well:
"Be at peace with your own soul; then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, and so you will see the things that are in heaven; for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within your own soul. Flee from sin, dive into yourself, and in your soul you will discover the stairs by which to ascend."
And so, at long last, I had relearned what had once been so well known in my family that it seemed to be in our DNA. And I had come to feel that the gospel story was something that I needed to work through, absorb, put into more understandable form, and make available to a general readership; and thus this book.
Like many Americans today, I grew up with religion playing very little part in my life. This was a change from family tradition, because my ancestors had always had a strong Christian bent. My own childhood, however, was largely devoid of religious education. I was once asked whether I understood the meaning of Easter, and I replied that I certainly did. It was the day, I explained, when they nailed George Washington to the cross.
As I moved into adult life, however, it became increasingly clear that our contemporary world was missing something that had been central to successful cultures and to successful individual lives in the past. One alternative began to appear when I first encountered a true community of faith, and saw what lives lived in Christian understanding might look like. In my case this happened on a visit to a place in Greece called Mount Athos.
Mount Athos is in Greece but not really of it. It is a self-governing, largely autonomous monastic republic in the northern part of the country, literally a piece of the old Byzantine Empire, a part of the doubly unfamiliar world of the Eastern Orthodox churches. It occupies a remote, mountainous peninsula that reaches thirty-five miles out into the Aegean, terminating in the steep-sided peak of Mount Athos itself, which rises seven thousand feet directly out of the ocean. Scattered across this isolated landscape are twenty large monasteries, a few small towns, innumerable farmhouses and hermitages, and about 2000 monks. The monasteries sometimes stand near the sea and sometimes cling to crags a thousand feet above it. The entire community functions as a religious republic – a sort of “Christian Tibet” – under a charter granted by the Byzantine Emperor in the year 972. For the first-time visitor like me, the experience was as strange as being suddenly dropped down on Mars.
Once there, however, I found lives lived by values that I had not seen before. For one thing, the monks did not have, as one might have expected, a dour and burdened attitude toward their austere lives. Instead, the life they had chosen for themselves seemed to have made them calm and cheerful, and at peace with the world. The country lanes around some of the monasteries were so quiet that you could hear the sound of birds’ wings and of bees in the trees, and a sense of age-old peace lay over the land. One of the monks recommended to me a line from the Psalms, “Be still and know that I am God.”
I had come to realize that I wanted to know more about Jesus and his life. And as I came to learn more, I found that my own truths had changed.
I found a different way of looking at all the practical dealings of daily life. It made it suddenly clear that it is possible to live in the world by different values, and to perceive both troubles and opportunities in ways very different from our society’s customary practices. A follower of Jesus might “live in this world but be a citizen of heaven.” The Seventh Century church father, St. Isaac the Syrian, expressed this connection well:
"Be at peace with your own soul; then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, and so you will see the things that are in heaven; for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within your own soul. Flee from sin, dive into yourself, and in your soul you will discover the stairs by which to ascend."
And so, at long last, I had relearned what had once been so well known in my family that it seemed to be in our DNA. And I had come to feel that the gospel story was something that I needed to work through, absorb, put into more understandable form, and make available to a general readership; and thus this book.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 6, 2016
Anyone familiar with the four Gospels knows that each includes material that is not present in the other three. There is no Christmas story in Mark. Parts of the Sermon on the Mount appear only in Matthew. So if you want to teach the life of Christ to your Sunday school class, or read the Christmas story to your children, or read through the events of the Passion during Holy Week, you find yourself skipping from Gospel to Gospel, or simply choosing one account and ignoring the others. I speak from personal experience, having done all of these things, and this compilation is the answer I've been seeking.
Those of us who revere the Bible don't want someone to decide what to keep or omit, or to change language we love. Averitt has done a masterful job in this respect. He hasn't omitted anything. In the passages where the King James language is too beautiful and familiar to modernize ("Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy"), Averitt retains the King James version of Luke. In passages that are not frequently quoted, the clearer language of the Revised Standard version prevails. Where he made a decision regarding different versions of the same event, Averitt provides a footnote documenting his choice. There are 309 footnotes in all, and I found them fascinating. In addition to explaining decisions about the text, they provide helpful context, like the location of Galilee and its distance from Jerusalem.
I want my children to read the Gospels, and this is the version I want them to read. It provides the one complete, unabridged story, with section headers that inform us what is coming (e.g., John the Baptist is Beheaded, Resistance from Family and Friends, Denying Alliance with Beelzebub, Parables about the Kingdom of God). It is an ideal version for Sunday school teachers, teachers of the Bible as literature, and anyone who wants to understand the entire life and teachings of Jesus without having to read through four separate accounts. I will return to it often.
Those of us who revere the Bible don't want someone to decide what to keep or omit, or to change language we love. Averitt has done a masterful job in this respect. He hasn't omitted anything. In the passages where the King James language is too beautiful and familiar to modernize ("Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy"), Averitt retains the King James version of Luke. In passages that are not frequently quoted, the clearer language of the Revised Standard version prevails. Where he made a decision regarding different versions of the same event, Averitt provides a footnote documenting his choice. There are 309 footnotes in all, and I found them fascinating. In addition to explaining decisions about the text, they provide helpful context, like the location of Galilee and its distance from Jerusalem.
I want my children to read the Gospels, and this is the version I want them to read. It provides the one complete, unabridged story, with section headers that inform us what is coming (e.g., John the Baptist is Beheaded, Resistance from Family and Friends, Denying Alliance with Beelzebub, Parables about the Kingdom of God). It is an ideal version for Sunday school teachers, teachers of the Bible as literature, and anyone who wants to understand the entire life and teachings of Jesus without having to read through four separate accounts. I will return to it often.
March 4, 2021
A good read
The author does a good job of presenting the 4 Gospels as a single structure. His footnotes are helpful in explaining difficult passages, and also in describing his take on difficult passages. I would recommend this to folks familiar with The Bible, and to those just getting started.
The author does a good job of presenting the 4 Gospels as a single structure. His footnotes are helpful in explaining difficult passages, and also in describing his take on difficult passages. I would recommend this to folks familiar with The Bible, and to those just getting started.
February 20, 2025
A wonderful academic harmonizing of the four gospels. The three synoptic gospels clearly provide the primary framework, however, the author does an excellent job harmonizing with the gospel of John. The author presents an ecumenical Christian narrative primarily from a Protestant hermeneutic leaning heavily on the King James translation, which is not always fully consistent with catholic teachings. If you are Catholic, or any other faith for that matter, do not let this dissuade you! This work provides a clear and fascinating chronology to the gospel and the life of Jesus. It need not be read as a work of faith, but can provide deeper understanding of the gospel canon, which have proven so foundational to western civilization.
Great footnotes providing context and historical perspective.
Five stars.
Great footnotes providing context and historical perspective.
Five stars.
August 6, 2025
A refreshing single narrative.
I have & will continue to re-read the Bible but I also intend to return to the Single Gospel for its clarity & continuity.
I have & will continue to re-read the Bible but I also intend to return to the Single Gospel for its clarity & continuity.
August 30, 2016
I am currently a youth pastor and a student studying ministry at Liberty University (Lynchburg, Va). The Single Gospel has been a blessing to me as I prepare messages and teachings for my students. The Single Gospel is a collaboration of all the gospels, written in such a way that anyone can understand the events of Christ’s life. The book captures all the details of the gospels while remaining simple enough to understand. The Single Gospel also assists me in my studies at Liberty University. Neal Averitt has accurately compiled the different recordings of Jesus’ life and compiles them together. This book saves me a lot of page flipping in my studies of the gospels!
August 30, 2016
I am currently a youth pastor and a student studying ministry at Liberty University (Lynchburg, Va). The Single Gospel has been a blessing to me as I prepare messages and teachings for my students. The Single Gospel is a collaboration of all the gospels, written in such a way that anyone can understand the events of Christ’s life. The book captures all the details of the gospels while remaining simple enough to understand. The Single Gospel also assists me in my studies at Liberty University. Neal Averitt has accurately compiled the different recordings of Jesus’ life and compiles them together. This book saves me a lot of page flipping in my studies of the gospels!
September 29, 2016
Mr. Averitt's contribution is outstanding. He presents a new coherence in the story of Jesus that can be difficult to achieve using the traditional books of the Gospel in their individual form. I recommend this to students of the Gospel at all levels of experience. -- Nigel Ogilvie
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews