Gospel, from the Old English god-spell
"good tidings" is a calque of Greek ευαγγέλιον (eu-angelion) used in the New Testament (see "Etymology" below).
In Christianity, the term gospel can be used to mean different things,
including:
- to denote the proclamation of God's saving activity in Jesus of Nazareth, or to denote the
agape message proclaimed by Jesus
of Nazareth: this is the original New Testament usage (for example Mark 1:14-15 or 1 Corinthians 15:1-9; see also Strong's G2098);
- more popularly, the four canonical Gospels, which are attributed to the
Four Evangelists (Gospel of Matthew,
Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and
Gospel of John): the term "a reading from the Gospel" can refer to any of the
4 books;
- other non-canonical works of antiquity that purport to quote Jesus (e.g., Gospel of
Thomas);
- a genre of Early Christian literature (cf. Peter
Stuhlmacher, ed., Das Evangelium und die Evangelien, Tübingen 1983, also in English:
The Gospel and the Gospels).
| Major events in Jesus' life in the Gospels |
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Etymology
The word gospel derives from the Old English god-spell(rarely
godspel), (meaning "good tidings" or "good news"), a translation of the
Greek word ευαγγέλιον, euangelion (eu- "good",
-angelion "message"). The Greek word "euangelion" is also the source of the term "evangelist" in English.
The expression ευαγγέλιον "gospel" was used by Paul,
probably before the literary Gospels of the New Testament canon had been produced, when he reminded the people of the church at
Corinth "of the gospel I preached to you" (1
Corinthians 15.1) through which, Paul averred, they were being saved, and he characterized it in the simplest terms, emphasizing Christ's appearances after the Resurrection (15.3 – 8):
...that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried;
and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures; And that he was seen of Cephas; then of the Twelve: After that, he was seen of above five
hundred brethren at once: of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some have fallen asleep. After that he was seen
of James, then of all the apostles. Last of all, he was seen of me also, as one born out
of due time.
The earliest extant use of εὐαγγέλιον "gospel" to denote a particular genre of writing dates to the
2nd century. Justin Martyr (c. 155) in 1 Apology 66
wrote: "...the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels".
Henry Barclay Swete's Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, pages
456-457 states:
- Εὐαγγέλιον in the LXX occurs only in the plural, and perhaps only
in the classical sense of 'a reward for good tidings' (2
Sam 4:10 [also 18:20, 18:22, 18:25-27, 2 Kings 7:9]); in the N.T. it is from the first
appropriated to the Messianic good tidings (Mark 1:1, 1:14), probably deriving this new meaning from the use of εὐαγγέλίζεσθαι in Isa
40:9, 52:7, 60:6, 61:1.
Canonical Gospels
Of the many gospels written in antiquity, only four gospels came to be accepted as part of the New Testament, or canonical. An insistence upon there being a
canon of canonical four, and no others, was a central theme of Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 185. In
his central work, Adversus Haereses
Irenaeus denounced various early Christian groups that used only one gospel, such as Marcionism which used only Marcion's version of Luke, or the
Ebionites which seem to have used an Aramaic version
of Matthew as well as groups that embraced the texts of newer revelations, such as the
Valentinians (A.H. 1.11). Irenaeus declared that the four he espoused were
the four Pillars of the Church: "it is not possible that there can be either more
or fewer than four" he stated, presenting as logic the analogy of the four corners of the earth
and the four winds (3.11.8). His image, taken from Ezekiel 1, of God's throne
borne by four creatures with four faces—"the four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and the four
had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle"—equivalent to the "four-formed" gospel, is the
origin of the conventional symbols of the Evangelists: lion, bull, eagle, man. Irenaeus was ultimately successful in declaring
that the four gospels collectively, and exclusively these four, contained the truth. By reading each gospel in light of the
others, Irenaeus made of John a lens through which to read Matthew, Mark and Luke.
By the turn of the 5th century, the Catholic
Church in the west, under Pope Innocent I, recognized a biblical canon including the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which was previously
established at a number of regional Synods, namely the Council of Rome (382), the
Synod of Hippo (393), and two Synods of
Carthage (397 and 419).[1] This canon, which
corresponds to the modern Catholic canon, was used in the Vulgate, an early 5th century
translation of the Bible made by Jerome[2] under the commission of Pope Damasus I in 382.
Origin of the canonical Gospels
-
Among the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke include many of the same passages in the life of
Jesus and sometimes use identical or very similar wording. John expresses itself in a different style and relates the same
incidents in a different way— even in a revised narrative order— and is often full of more encompassing theological and
philosophical messages than the first three canonical Gospel accounts. It is John that explicitly introduces Jesus as God
incarnate.
Parallels among the first three Gospel accounts are so telling that many scholars have investigated the relationship between
them. In order to study them more closely, German scholar JJ Griesbach (1776)
arranged the first three Gospel accounts in a three-column table called a synopsis. As a
result, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have come to be known as the synoptic Gospels; and the
question of the reason for this similarity, and the relationship between these Gospel accounts more generally, is known as the
Synoptic Problem. Some Christians argue that this could be explained by adhering to the
belief that the gospels were "spirit-breathed", i.e. that the Holy Spirit provided
inspiration for every book in the Bible, and that consequently the similarities in the different accounts are due to having the
same author, i.e. God. It has also been argued by certain Christian groups that since the Synoptics all tell the story of the
life of Jesus, that they would naturally be similar in their accounts, though their critics argue that this explanation would
then imply that the Gospel of John isn't an account of the life of Jesus, since it is quite dissimilar in the accounts. Most
scholars see the similarities as being far too identical, much like three people reporting the same event, and then using exactly
the same cultural references, turns of phrase, ordering of content, and on occasion even the same set of words.
The understanding found among early Christian writers and scholars has been that the first account of the Gospel to be
committed to writing was that according to Matthew, the second Luke, followed by Mark and the final one John; and this order is
defended today by proponents of the Griesbach hypothesis. However, since then
Enlightenment scholars have been proposing also many other solutions to the Synoptic Problem; and the dominant view today is that
Mark is the first Gospel, with Matthew and Luke borrowing passages both from that Gospel and from at least one other common
source, lost to history, termed by scholars 'Q' (from German: Quelle, meaning "source"). This view is known as the "Two-Source Hypothesis". The rediscovery of the Gospel of
Thomas, a sayings gospel remarkably similar to the form that Q was thought to take, and containing many of the sayings
shared only between Matthew and Luke, but in a more raw form, has given a large degree of credence to the hypothesis.
Conservative Christian scholars argue that since the Gospel of Thomas is thought to be a later document than the synoptics,
Thomas could have copied from them, although this requires that Thomas made the effort of removing all the narrative framework,
and carefully picked out sayings shared between Matthew and Luke, and added others from an unknown elsewhere.
Another theory which addresses the synoptic problem is the Farrer hypothesis. This
theory maintains Markan priority (that Mark was written first) and dispenses with the
need for a theoretical document Q. What Austin Farrer has argued is that Luke used Matthew
as a source as well as Mark, explaining the similarities between them without having to refer to a hypothetical document.
The general consensus among biblical scholars is that all four canonical Gospels were originally written in Greek, the lingua franca of the Roman Orient. On the strength of
an early commentator it has been suggested that Matthew may have originally been written in Aramaic, or the Hebrew, or that it was translated from
Aramaic/Hebrew to Greek with corrections based on Mark. Regardless, no Aramaic original texts of the Gospel accounts have
ever been found, only later translations from the Greek (see Peshitta and Aramaic primacy for a fuller discussion).
Dating
Estimates for the dates when the canonical Gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the
dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the Gospels date to the 4th
century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Conservative
scholars tend to date earlier than others, while liberal scholars usually date later.[citation needed] The following are mostly the date
ranges given by the late Raymond E. Brown, in his book An Introduction to the New
Testament, as representing the general scholarly consensus in 1996 (for a fuller discussion of dating, please see the
articles for each Gospel):
- Mark: c. 68–73
- Matthew: c. 70–100 as the majority view; some conservative scholars argue for a pre-70 date, particularly those that
do not accept Mark as the first gospel written.
- Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85
- John: c. 90–110. Brown does not give a consensus view for John, but these are dates as propounded by C K Barrett,
among others. The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.
Traditional Christian scholarship has generally preferred to assign earlier dates. Some historians interpret the end of the
book of Acts as indicative, or at least suggestive, of its date; as Acts does not mention the death of Paul, generally accepted as the author of many of the Epistles, who was later put to death by the
Romans c. 65. Acts is attributed to the author of the Gospel of Luke, and therefore would shift the chronology of authorship
back, putting Mark as early as the mid 50s. Here are the dates given in the modern NIV Study Bible (for a fuller discussion
see Augustinian hypothesis):
- Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s
- Matthew: c. 50 to 70s
- Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s
- John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70
Non-canonical gospels
-
In addition to the four canonical gospels there have been other gospels that were not accepted into the canon. Generally these
were not accepted due to doubt over the authorship, the time frame between the original writing and the events described, or
content that was at odds with orthodoxy. For example, if a gospel claimed to be written by James, yet was authored in the second
century, clearly authorship was not authentic. This differs from the four canonical gospels which historians agree were authored
before 100. For this reason, most of these non-canonical texts were only ever accepted by small portions of the early Christian
community. Some of the content of these non-canonical gospels (as much as it deviates from accepted theological norms) is
considered heretical by the leadership of mainstream churches, including the
Vatican.
Two non-canonical gospels that are considered to be among the earliest in composition are the sayings Gospel of Thomas and the narrative Gospel of Peter.
The dating of the Gospel of Thomas is particularly controversial, as a minority of scholars[attribution needed] date it to before the writing of
the canonical gospels. Like the canonical gospels, scholars have to rely on higher criticism, not extant manuscripts, in order to
roughly date Thomas.
A genre of "Infancy gospels" (Greek: protoevangelion) arose in the 2nd
century, such as the Gospel of James, which introduces the concept of the
Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the absolutely different sayings
Gospel of Thomas), both of which related many miraculous incidents from the life of Mary and the childhood of Jesus that
are not included in the canonical gospels, but which have passed into Christian lore.
Another genre that has been suppressed is that of gospel harmonies, in which the apparent discrepancies in the canonical four
gospels were selectively recast to present a harmoniously consistent narrative text. Very few fragments of harmonies survived.
The Diatessaron was such a harmonization, compiled by Tatian around 175. It was popular for at least two centuries in Syria, but
eventually it fell into disuse.
Marcion of Sinope, c. 150, had a version of the Gospel of Luke which
differed substantially from that which has now become the standard text. Marcion's version was far less Jewish than the
now canonical text, and his critics alleged that he had edited out the portions he didn't like from the canonical version, though
Marcion argued that his text was the more genuinely original one. Marcion also rejected all the other gospels, including Matthew,
Mark and especially John, which he alleged had been forged by Irenaeus.
The existence of private knowledge, briefly referred to in the canon, and particularly in the canonical Gospel of Mark, is
part of the controversy surrounding the unexpectedly discovered Secret Gospel of
Mark.
The Gospel of Judas is another controversial and ancient text that perports to tell the story of the gospel from the
perspective of Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus. It paints an unusual picture of the relationship between Jesus and Judas.
The text was recovered from a cave in Egypt by a thief and thereafter sold on the black market until it was finally discovered by
a collector who, with the help of academics from Yale and Princton, were able to verify its authenticity. The document itself
does not claim to have been authored by Judas (it is, rather, a Gospel about Judas), and dates no earlier than the second
century.
Islamic view of gospels
-
In Islam, the word 'gospel' refers to the revelation given by God to Isa (Jesus). The Islamic view is that the four canonical gospels have been corrupted over time.
See also
References
- ^ Pogorzelski, Frederick (2006). Protestantism: A Historical and
Spiritual Wrong Way Turn. Bible Dates 1. CatholicEvangelism.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-11.
- ^ Canon of the New Testament. Catholic Encyclopedia. NewAdvent.com (1908). Retrieved on 2006-07-11.
External links
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