Text within the Patchwork Gospels and Evolution series is color-coded to reflect the date in which it was written. This visual aid helps tremendously in understanding how current-day gospel text has been worked on and edited by different authors over the first few centuries. One can literally watch the text evolve over time. The end result looks much like a patchwork quilt, hence the title of this book.

First century original statements of sayings and events are in red; any writer up to about Ignatius of Antioch in ~107 is considered a first century writer. Second century writers are in blue. The third century color, represented mainly by Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, is magenta. A few sayings from the fourth century are in light blue; anything from the fifth century is in orange. And sayings from heretical gospels or other writings are in green.

So the gospel text is colored according to its earliest known source: