The Gospel of John served as both source and recipient of the influence of parallel passages in the four-gospel tradition of the New Testament. Yet, the extant manuscript data of the Fourth Gospel relevant to this assertion have to date not been systematically and fully quantified nor qualified to demonstrate the proportional activity of scribal harmonization with the Gospel of John as recipient of the influence of scribal harmonization from one or more of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This study therefore seeks to clarify on the quantity, quality, and probable relationship of influence of parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels upon the Gospel of John due to scribal harmonization in Greek manuscripts of the second to fourth centuries.
Recent research into the study of scribal habits in the Synoptic Gospels provides a background of understanding for the concept of scribal harmonization. Just as literary similarities and differences within the Synoptic presentation of Jesus traditions have demonstrably given rise to harmonized variant readings within and between the Synoptic Gospels, so too have literary similarities and differences between the Fourth Gospel and one or more of the Synoptics provided occasion for scribes to exert an harmonizing influence in the transmission of the manuscripts of John. Yet, the unique appropriation of these traditions in the Gospel of John had a noteworthy effect on the occasion available to scribes for harmonizing activity in their manuscripts. Thus, in this doctoral research, a total of twenty-six manuscripts dated to the relevant period are assessed, and the primary research question is posed: What was the quantity, quality, and likelihood of scribal harmonization with the Gospel of John as recipient of the influence of parallel passages in the four-gospel tradition of the New Testament in Greek manuscripts of the second to fourth centuries. In the dissertation, the concept and terminology of harmonization as a subset of scribal activity is examined from a text-critical perspective. Variant readings in the extant manuscripts of the Gospel according to John from the earliest period of textual transmission, whose origins are potentially attributable to scrabial harmonization, are catalogued and assessed for harmonization, and the individual manuscripts of interest serve as the starting point for identification and analysis of harmonization. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the manuscript data per century serve as a data sample of this scribal habit and lead to a determination of any synchronic and diachronic patterns of harmonization as both an event and as historical process in the excerpted transmission history of the Gospel of John in the context of the four-gospel tradition of the New Testament. The method and presuppositions of reasoned eclecticism, which adjudicates between variant readings in balanced consideration of both external and internal criteria, are utilized in text-critical analysis of all variation units in the dissertation. Hypotheses regarding the possible quantity and quality of harmonization in the Fourth Gospel have been generated and will be tested, the results of which will be published to provide a comprehensive analysis of the scribal habit of harmonization in the Gospel of John.