When, forty years ago, as a child of ten I began to feel the first awakening of what was to become my vocation as biblical scholar, I was greatly helped by a little book by Fr Marco Sales, a sort of Life of Jesus made up entirely of connected passages taken from the four gospels and arranged without paraphrasing or conflating the text. I am still grateful to Fr Sales for having by this method familiarized me with the actual words of the gospels, inspired words which have a special quality of their own booking no change or addition, and also for having made it easy for me to follow the unfolding of the story of Jesus with eager interest. The unified text of the gospels is not a Harmony for it avoids the mingling of phrases belonging to different gospels. As a rule each episode is described in the words of a single evangelist. It is only when some rather complex event is being described that the story is broken up so as to include the greatest wealth of detail from parallel accounts.