The gospel

The gospel or good news is a theological concept in several religions. In the historical Roman
imperial cult and today in Christianity, the gospel is a message about salvation by a divine
figure, a savior, who has brought peace or other benefits to humankind. In Ancient Greek
religion, the word designated a type of sacrifice or ritual dedication intended to thank the
gods upon receiving good news.

Octavian as the August

Divine Father, the savior in
ancient Roman gospel

The religious concept dates back at least as far as Greece's Classical era. Roman authors are
known to have adopted it toward the end of the 1st century BCE, and Christians somewhat
later. It is a central message of Christianity today, in which written accounts of the life and
teaching of Jesus Christ are known as Gospels.
Etymology
Gospel ( / ˈ ɡ ɒ s p ə l / ) is the Old English translation of Greek εὐαγγέλιον , meaning "good
news" [1] This may be seen from analysis of euangélion ( εὖ , eû , '"good"' + ἄγγελος , angels ,
'"messenger"' + -ιον , -ion diminutive suffix). The Greek term was Latinized as evangelium in
the Vulgate , and translated into Latin as bona annuntiatio

In Old English, it was translated as gōdspel (gōd, "good" + spel, "news"). The Old English term
was retained as gospel in Middle English Bible translations and hence remains in use also in
Modern English.

In Greek the term originally designated a reward or tip customarily paid to a messenger who
has delivered good news. The term then came to designate the good news itself, and also a
religious offering of thanks for good fortune.[2]

In Greek and Roman

religion

Classical Greece

A bull being taken to an altar of the

goddess Athena
In Ancient Greek religion the word εὐαγγέλια means a sacrifice offered for good tidings or
good news.[3] Like other Greek religious thanks-offerings, offerings took the form of animal
sacrifice, offerings of food and drink, and ritual dedications. News of military victory was
frequently celebrated with an offering. In the play The Knights by Aristophanes of 424 BCE,
the comic character Paphlagon proposes an excessive sacrifice of a hundred heifers to
Athena to celebrate good news.[4] This word in Greek has a double meaning: the singular
form means a reward paid to a human messenger who brings good news, and the plural form
means a thanks-offering to the gods for good news.[5]

Rome
The Roman Imperial cult celebrated the gospel of the August One or Divus Augustus, a
mythologized version of the first Roman emperor Octavian, also known as Augustus
Caesar.[6] Augustus was both a man and a god, "a savior who has made war to cease and
who shall put everything in peaceful order."[7] This period of peace is called the Pax Romana.
To celebrate the good tidings of peace with an unusually grand gospel offering, governor
Paullus Fabius Maximus suggested the ritual dedication of the calendar to Augustus, starting
the new year on Augustus's birthday.[7] This dedication to the August One served to
synchronize diverse local calendars across the Empire, and is the origin of the name of the
month August. The idea of dedication to a divine king's birthday later formed the basis of the
Julian and Gregorian calendars.

One implementation of this gospel calendar dedication is recorded the Calendar Inscription
of Priene. In it, the Koine Greek word for "good news" appears in celebrating the birth of the
god and savior Augustus, sent by Providence to bring peace. It announces the intention of the
city of Priene to change their calendar so that it begins on the birthday of Augustus, the first
day of the good news. The Priene inscription is the most famous pre-Christian use of the
concept of the gospel. Dated to 9 BCE, a few years before the birth of Jesus, the inscription
demonstrates that the gospel was used as a political term before it was applied to
Christianity.[8][9]
In the Bible and Christianity

Hebrew scripture
The ancient Hebrew noun ‫( ְּב ׂשֹוָר ה‬besorah) appears to carry the same double meaning as the
equivalent Greek word for gospel, used for both a messenger delivering good news and a
thanks-offering to a god upon receiving good news. The noun and verb forms are used
several times in the Hebrew Bible.[5]

Christian interpretation
Christian theology describes the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ not as a new
concept, but one that has been foretold throughout the Hebrew scripture (known as the Old
Testament in Christian Bibles) and was prophetically preached even at the time of the fall of
man as contained in Genesis 3:14–15,[10] which has been called the "Proto-Evangelion" or
"Proto-Gospel".[11][a][13][b]
New Testament

The Gospels

The Sermon on the Mount in which

Jesus commented on the Jewish Law
(author: Carl Bloch

A genre of ancient biographies of Jesus took on the name Gospel because they tell good
news of Jesus as the Christian savior, bringing peace and acting as a sacrifice who has
redeemed mankind from sin. The first four books of the Christian New Testament are the
canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In addition, a number of non-canonical
gospels exist or existed but are not officially included in the Christian Bible.

In the Pauline epistles

Paul the Apostle gave the following summary, one of the earliest Christian Creeds, (translated
into English) of this good news (gospel) in the First Epistle to the Corinthians:

Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel which I preached to
you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you also are
saved, if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you
believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also
 received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He
was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

— 1 Corinthians 15:1–4[15]
Paul describes the gospel as being powerful and salvific:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God

that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then
to the Gentile. Romans 1:16[16]

In Acts
The good news can be summarized in many ways, reflecting various emphases. C. H.
Dodd[17] has summarized the Christian good news as taught by the apostle Peter in the Acts
of the Apostles:[18]

The age of fulfilment has dawned;

This has taken place through the
ministry, death, and resurrection of
Jesus;
By virtue of the resurrection, Jesus has
been exalted at the right hand of God
as messianic head of the new Israel;
 The Holy Spirit in the Church is the sign
of Christ's present power and glory;
The Messianic Age will shortly reach
its consummation in the return of
Christ.

In various Christian movements

"The certain mark by which a Christian

community can be recognized is the preaching
of the gospel in its purity."—Martin Luther[19]

The good news is described in many different ways in the Bible. Each one reflects different
emphases, and describes part or all of the biblical narrative. Christian teaching of the good
news—including the preaching of the Apostles in the Book of Acts—generally focuses upon
the resurrection of Jesus and its implications. Sometimes in the Bible, the good news is
described in other terms, but it still describes God's saving acts. For example, the Apostle
Paul taught that the good news was announced to the patriarch Abraham in the words, "All
nations will be blessed through you." (Galatians 3:6–9;[20] c.f. Genesis 12:1–3).[21]

Liberation theology
Liberation theology, articulated in the teachings of Latin American Catholic theologians
Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Gutiérrez, emphasizes that Jesus came not only to save
humanity, but also to liberate the poor and oppressed. A similar movement among the Latin
American evangelical movement is the integral mission, in which the Church is seen as an
agent for positively transforming the wider world, in response to the good news.[22]

Christian mission

Missionary preaching in China using

The Wordless Book

The Christian missions movement believes the Christian good news to be a message for all
peoples, of all nations, tribes, cultures and languages. This movement teaches that it is
through the good news of Jesus that the nations of humanity are restored to relationship with
God and that the destiny of the nations is related to this process. Missiology professor
Howard A. Snyder writes, "God has chosen to place the Church with Christ at the very center
of His plan to reconcile the world to himself".[23][24]

Another perspective described in the Pauline epistles is that it is through the good news of
Jesus' death and resurrection, and the resulting worship of people from all nations, that evil is
defeated on a cosmic scale. Reflecting on the third chapter of Ephesians 3,[25] theologian
Howard A. Snyder writes:

God's plan for the church extends to the fullest extent of the cosmos. By God's
'manifold wisdom' the Church displays an early fullness of what Christ will
accomplish at the conclusion of all the ages. The spectacle is to reach beyond
 the range of humanity, even to the angelic realms. The church is to be God's
display of Christ's reconciling love.[26]

See also

Evangelism

Notes

a. "Messianic prophecy has its origin in

Genesis 3:15, which has been called the
"protevangelium," the first Gospel
promise. It was spoken by the LORD God
(‫ )ְי הָו ה ֱא ֹלִה ם‬to the Serpent, used by Satan,
in the hearing of Adam and Eve."[12]

b. "After the Fall of man (Gen. 3) and its dire

results, the loss of Paradise (3:23f.), death
by sin (3:3; Rom. 5:12), and the cursing of
the ground (3:17), preceded by the
Protevangelium (3:15), the first revelation
 of the missio Dei, the Scriptures continue
with the generations of Adam and the
names of all the patriarchs from Adam to
Noah..."[14]

Footnotes

1. Woodhead 2004, p. 4.
2. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert
(1940). "εὐαγγέλ-ιον" (http://www.perseu
s.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:tex
t:1999.04.0057:entry=eu)agge/lion) . A
Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.

3. "εὐαγγέλια" (https://lsj.gr/wiki/%CE%B5%
E1%BD%90%CE%B1%CE%B3%CE%B3%C
E%AD%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B1) . Liddell,
Scott, Jones Ancient Greek Lexicon (LSJ).
4. Jim, Theodora Suk Fong (2012). "Naming
a Gift: The Vocabulary and Purposes of
Greek Religious Offerings" (https://grbs.lib
rary.duke.edu/article/viewFile/13901/375
1) . Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies.
52: 310–337.

5. Burrows, Millar (1925). "The Origin of the

Term "Gospel" " (https://www.jstor.org/sta
ble/pdf/3260047.pdf) (PDF). Journal of
Biblical Literature. 44 (1/2): 21–33.
doi:10.2307/3260047 (https://doi.org/10.
2307%2F3260047) . JSTOR 3260047 (htt
ps://www.jstor.org/stable/3260047) .

6. Carus, P (1918). Virgil's Prophecy on The

Saviour's Birth: The Fourth Eclogue.
London: The Open Court Publishing Co.
pp. 14–17.
7. Danker, Frederick W. (1982). Benefactor:
an Epigraphic Study of Graeco-Roman and
New Testament Semantic Field (https://ca
nvas.harvard.edu/courses/815/files/1197
66/download?verifier=Vw5v2yDsGJ0u7Rq
4rQsiUhsaJl3jbhcwCVJ6yE9Y&download_
frd=1) . St. Louis, Missouri: Clayton
Publishing House, Inc. p. 215-222.

8. Cross, F.L. (1958). "Gospel" (https://archiv

e.org/details/oxforddictionary0000flcr/pa
ge/572/mode/2up) . The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford
University Press. p. 573.

9. Murphy, Catherine. "The Priene Calendar

Inscription" (https://webpages.scu.edu/ft
p/cmurphy/courses/sctr027/artifacts/pri
ene-calendar.htm) . Santa Clara
University.
10. 3:14–15 (https://www.esv.org/Genesis+3:
14)

11. The Proto-Gospel, by R. C. Sproul. (http://

www.wayoffaith.org/protogospel.htm)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
081203153410/http://www.wayoffaith.or
g/protogospel.htm) 2008-12-03 at the
Wayback Machine

12. Luther and the Christology of the Old

Testament (http://www.wlsessays.net/file
s/SurburgChristology.pdf) Archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/2015012012392
0/http://www.wlsessays.net/files/Surburg
Christology.pdf) 2015-01-20 at the
Wayback Machine, by Dr. Raymond F.
Surburg, p14
13. The Lutheran Study Bible, p20, "3:15...This
points to Christ and His defeat of Satan
on the cross, and for this reason this
verse is often called the 'protevangelium'
(the first promise of the Gospel)"

14. Worldwide Mission: The Work of the

Triune God (http://www.wlsessays.net/file
s/PetersMission.pdf) Archived (https://w
eb.archive.org/web/20150120122113/htt
p://www.wlsessays.net/files/PetersMissio
n.pdf) 2015-01-20 at the Wayback
Machine, by Dr. Paul Peter, p3

15. 1 Corinthians 15:1–4 (https://www.bibleg

ateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthi
ans+15:1%E2%80%934&version=nasb)
16. "Bible Gateway passage: Romans 1:16 -
New International Version" (https://www.b
iblegateway.com/passage/?search=Roma
ns%201%3A16&version=NIV) . Bible
Gateway. Retrieved 2022-05-19.

17. What Does Kerygma Mean? (http://www.a

fn.org/~afn52344/kerygma.html)

18. The Apostolic Preaching and Its

Developments (https://web.archive.org/w
eb/20070223220610/http://www.religion-
online.org/showchapter.asp?title=539&C=
606)
19. Tappert, T.G., Selected Writings of Martin
Luther (https://books.google.com/books?
id=cHvf_xp6V8IC&dq=%22The+certain+m
ark+by+which+a+Christian+community+c
an+be+recognized+is+the+preaching+of+
the+gospel+in+its+purity.%22&pg=RA3-PA
325) , Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007,
p.325

20. Galatians 3:6–9 (https://bible.oremus.or

g/?passage=Galatians%203:6%E2%80%9
39&version=nrsv)

21. Genesis 12:1–3 (https://bible.oremus.or

g/?passage=Genesis%2012:1%E2%80%93
3&version=nrsv)

22. Padilla 2004, p. 20

23. Snyder 1999, p. 139
24. Ephesians 1:20–23 (https://bible.oremus.
org/?passage=Ephesians%201:20%E2%8
0%9323&version=nrsv)

25. Ephesians 3 (https://bible.oremus.org/?pa

ssage=Ephesians%203&version=nrsv)

26. Snyder 1999, p. 138

Sources

Woodhead, Linda (2004). Christianity: A

Very Short Introduction (https://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=0dFLBAAAQBA
J) . Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-
0199687749.

References

Dodd, C. H. 1964 The Apostolic

Preaching and its Developments Harper
and Row. (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20070223220610/http://www.religio
n-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=53
9&C=606)
General Directory for Catechesis 1997,
Congregation for the Clergy (https://w
ww.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregati
ons/cclergy/documents/rc_con_ccath
educ_doc_17041998_directory-for-cate
chesis_en.html)
Goldsworthy, G, 1991, According to
Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in
the Bible Sydney: Lancer Press.

Johnstone, P, 2001, Operation World,

Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Lifestyle.
Köstenberger, A and P. O'Brien, 2001,
Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A
Biblical Theology of Mission New
Studies in Biblical Theology 11,
Leicester: Apollos.
Padilla, R, 2004, 'An Ecclesiology for
Integral Mission,' in The Local Church,
Agent of Transformation: An
Ecclesiology for Integral Mission, T.
Yamamori and CR Padilla, eds, Buenos
Aires: Cairo Editions.
Snyder, H. A., 1999, 'The Church in
God's Plan,' in Perspectives on the
World Christian Movement, 3rd edn,
Pasadena, California: William Carey
Library.
 Jepsen, Bent Kim, 2009 The Origin of
Good News[1] (http://www.historicalchr
ist.com)

External links

Catholic Encyclopedia: Judaizers (htt

p://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08537
a.htm) - Concerning the cultural
implications of the Good News
Catholic Encyclopedia: Salvation (htt
p://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13407
a.htm)
Lordship salvation (http://www.reform
edmissionary.org) - Reformed
Christian Gospel presentation
emphasizing Lordship Salvation
 Archived (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20210512181523/http://www.refor
medmissionary.org/) 2021-05-12 at
the Wayback Machine

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