A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, the term is also used to refer to the Apocryphal gospels, the Non-canonical gospels, the Jewish gospels and the Gnostic gospels.
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The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell [1] (rarely godspel), meaning "good news" or "glad tidings". It is a calque (word-for-word translation) of the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον, euangelion (eu- "good", -angelion "message"). The Greek word "euangelion" is also the source (via Latinised "evangelium") of the terms "evangelist" and "evangelism" in English. The authors of the four canonical Christian gospels are known as the four evangelists.
Originally, the gospel was the good news of redemption through the propitiatory offering of Jesus Christ for one's sins, the central Christian message. Note: John 3:16.[2] Before the first gospel was written (Mark, c 65-70),[3] Paul the Apostle used the term εὐαγγέλιον gospel when he reminded the people of the church at Corinth "of the gospel I preached to you" (1 Corinthians 15.1). Paul averred that they were being saved by the gospel, 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:
In the New Testament, evangelism meant the proclamation of God's saving activity in Jesus of Nazareth, or 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). The peculiar situation in the English language of an obsolete translation persisting into current usage harks back to John Wycliffe who already had gospel, and whose usage was adopted into the King James Version. The short o in the modern word gospel is due to mistaken association with the word god. Old English gōd-spell had a long vowel and would have become good-spell in modern English.
Critical scholars generally agree on several early sayings collections and accounts preceding the "canonical" Gospels. The dedicatory preface of the Gospel of Luke testifies already to the existence of several "accounts" of the life of Jesus by the time of its composition.[4] The term Luke uses (διήγησις diēgēsis) is a term used in classical Greek for any historical narrative.[5] The term "Gospel" is not used in the New Testament text for any of the canonical Gospels, though in later centuries a traditional reading of 2 Corinthians 8:18 "the brother whose praise is the Gospel" was to sometimes identify this with Luke, and consequently Gospel of Luke.[6]
The synoptic gospels are the source of many popular stories, parables, and sermons, such as Jesus' humble birth in Bethlehem, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the Last Supper, and the Great Commission. John provides a theological description of Jesus as the eternal Word, the unique savior of humanity. All four attest to his Sonship, miraculous power, crucifixion, and resurrection. Portions of the gospels are traditionally read aloud during church services as a formal part of the liturgy.
The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics.[7] In differentiating history from invention, historians interpret the gospel accounts skeptically[8] but generally regard the synoptic gospels as including significant amounts of historically reliable information about Jesus.[8]
More generally, gospels compose a genre of early Christian literature.[9] Gospels that did not become canonical also circulated in Early Christianity. Some, such as the work known today as Gospel of Thomas, lack the narrative framework typical of a gospel.[10] These gospels almost certainly appeared much later than the canonical gospels, with the Gospel of Thomas being a likely exception.
The historicity of the gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. Historians subject the gospels to critical analysis, attempting to differentiate authentic, reliable information from what they judge to be inventions, exaggerations, and alterations.[8]
Biblical scholars consider the synoptic gospels to contain much reliable historical information about the historical Jesus as a Galilean teacher [11][12] and of the religious movement he founded, but not everything contained in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
The baptism of Jesus, his preaching, and the crucifixion of Jesus are deemed to be historically authentic. Elements whose historical authenticity is disputed include the two accounts of the nativity of Jesus, as well as certain details about the crucifixion and the resurrection.[20][21][22][23][24][25] The fourth gospel, John, includes a number of historically reliable details, but it differs greatly from the first three gospels, and historians largely discount it. The canonical gospels, overall, are considered to have more historically authentic content than the various non-canonical gospels.
On one extreme, some Christian scholars maintain that the gospels are inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus.[26] On the other extreme, some scholars have concluded that the gospels provide no historical information about Jesus life since the first gospel accounts (Mark) only appeared 40 years after Jesus's death.[27]
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 four gospels, 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, or Revelation 4:6-10, 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. He also supported reading each gospel in light of the others.
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 had been 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).[28] 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[29] under the commission of Pope Damasus I in 382.
There was also another order, the "western order of the Gospels", so called because it is typical for the manuscripts which are usually a representative of the Western text-type.
This order is found in the following manuscripts: Bezae, Monacensis, Washingtonianus, Tischendorfianus IV, Uncial 0234.
Although there is no set order of the four gospels in patristic lists or discussions,[30] D. Moody Smith suggests that the standard order of Matthew-Mark-Luke-John "projects a kind of intention that can scarcely be ignored."[31]
In what he calls a "mild form of reader criticism, Greg Goswell suggests a possible rationale that "the commission at the end of Matthew (28:20) is in part fulfilled by the subsequent Gospels (and letters)" while for Luke,
The preface to Luke (1:1–4) is a possible explanation for that Gospel’s canonical placement after Matthew and Mark, for its non-pejorative reference to previous "attempts" (επεχειρησαν) at writing an account of what Jesus said and did can be understood in canonical context as referring to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.[30]
Goswell concludes by suggesting that the self-reference to "this book" in John 20:30, "can be taken as an implicit acknowledgment of other books, namely the three preceding Gospels."[30]
Medieval copies of the four canonical gospels are known as Gospel Books or also simply as Gospels (in Greek as Tetraevangelia). Notable examples include the Lindisfarne Gospels (c 700), the Barberini Gospels, Lichfield Gospels and the Vienna Coronation Gospels (8th century), the Book of Kells and the Ada Gospels (c. 800) or the Ebbo Gospels (9th century).
The majority 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".[32] The two-gospel hypothesis, in contrast, says that Matthew was written first (by Matthew the Apostle), and then Luke the Evangelist wrote his gospel (using Matthew as his main source) before Mark the Evangelist wrote his gospel (using Peter's testimony). John was written last and shares little with the synoptic gospels.
The gospels were apparently composed in stages. Mark's traditional ending (Mark 16:9-20, see Mark 16) was most likely composed early in the 2nd century and appended to Mark in the middle of that century.[33] The birth and infancy narratives apparently developed late in the tradition.[34] Luke and Matthew may have originally appeared without their first two chapters.[34]
The consensus among biblical scholars is that all four canonical gospels were originally written in Greek, the lingua franca of the Roman Orient.
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. Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus [35]) view as follows:
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, which is believed to have been written before Acts, 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):
Such early dates are not limited to conservative scholars. In Redating the New Testament John A. T. Robinson, a prominent liberal theologian and bishop, makes a case for composition dates before the fall of Jerusalem.
Matthew was probably written in Syria, perhaps in Antioch,[37] an ancient Christian center. Mark has traditionally been associated with Peter's preaching in Rome, and it is well-suited to a Roman audience.[37] Various cities have been proposed for the origin of Luke, but there is no consensus on the matter. Ephesus, in Western Anatolia, is a popular scholarly choice for the place of origin for the Gospel of John.[37]
Following Raymond Brown's postulation of a Johannine community having been responsible for John's gospel and letters,[39] other scholars have identified localized communities behind each of the other gospels and Q. This assumes the relative isolation of early Christian communities in which distinctive traditions concerning Jesus thrived. Other scholars have questioned this hypothesis and have stressed the constant communication between early Christian communities.[40][41][42][43]
The oral traditions that the evangelists drew on were transmitted by word of mouth for decades. This oral tradition consisted of several distinct components. Parables and aphorisms are the "bedrock of the tradition." Pronouncement stories, scenes that culminate with a saying of Jesus, are more plausible historically than other kinds of stories about Jesus. Other sorts of stories include controversy stories, in which Jesus is in conflict with religious authorities; miracles stories, including healings, exorcisms, and nature wonders; call and commissioning stories; and legends.
One of the most important concerns in accurately accounting for the oral Jesus tradition is the model of transmission used. Form criticism (Formgeschichte) was developed primarily by the German scholars Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Martin Dibelius, and Rudolf Bultmann.[44][45][46] The oral model developed by the form critics drew heavily on contemporary theory of folkloric transmission of oral material, and partly as a result of this form criticism posited that the Jesus tradition was transmitted informally, added to freely, and was uncontrolled.[47] However, "Today it is no exaggeration to claim that a whole spectrum of main assumptions underlying Bultmann's Synoptic Tradition must be considered suspect.[48] " A number of other models have been proposed which posit greater control over the tradition, to varying degrees. For example, largely in response to form critical scholarship, Professor Birger Gerhardsson examined oral transmission in early rabbinic circles, and proposed that a more controlled and formal model of orality would more accurately reflect the transmission of the Jesus tradition in early Christian circles, and therefore that the oral traditions present in the gospels have been fairly reliably and faithfully transmitted.[49] Professor Kenneth Bailey, after spending a great deal of time in remote and illiterate villages in the Middle East, used his experience with orality in such places to formulate a similar model of controlled transmission within the early Christian communities, but posited an informal mechanism of control.[47] Controlled models of the Jesus tradition, and with them an evaluation of the gospels as possessing greater historical reliability, have been accepted by several scholars in recent years.[50][51][52] However Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld adds that the early followers of Jesus were not interested in simply preserving the past but were also interested in fitting the narratives to suit urgent information, audience interest and creativity in communication and believed that they were in direct communication with Jesus though the Holy Spirit, thus making it still difficult for historians to assess the historical reliability of the oral tradition.[53] With regards to Bailey's studies, Maurice Casey writes that they cannot be applied to 1st century Jews as they were about a different culture at a different time.[54]
The four gospels present different narratives, reflecting different intents on the parts of their authors.[55]
All four gospels portray Jesus as leading a group of disciples, performing miracles, preaching in Jerusalem, being crucified, and rising from the dead.
The synoptic gospels represent Jesus as an exorcist and healer who preached in parables about the coming Kingdom of God. He preached first in Galilee and later in Jerusalem, where he cleansed the temple. He states that he offers no sign as proof (Mark) or only the sign of Jonah (Matthew and Luke).[56] In Mark, apparently written with a Roman audience in mind, Jesus is a heroic man of action, given to powerful emotions, including agony.[37] In Matthew, apparently written for a Jewish audience, Jesus is repeatedly called out as the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy.[37] In Luke, apparently written for gentiles, Jesus is especially concerned with the poor.[37] Luke emphasizes the importance of prayer and the action of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' life and in the Christian community.[57] Jesus appears as a stoic supernatural being, unmoved even by his own crucifixion.[55] Like Matthew, Luke insists that salvation offered by Christ is for all, and not the Jews only.[57][58]
The Gospel of John represents Jesus as an incarnation of the eternal Word (Logos), who spoke no parables, talked extensively about himself, and did not explicitly refer to a Second Coming.[37] Jesus preaches in Jerusalem, launching his ministry with the cleansing of the temple. He performs several miracles as signs, most of them not found in the synoptics. The Gospel of John ends:(21:25) "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
One important aspect of the study of the gospels is the genre under which they fall. Genre "is a key convention guiding both the composition and the interpretation of writings.[59] " Whether the Gospel authors set out to write novels, myths, histories, or biographies has a tremendous impact on how they ought to be interpreted. If, for example, Rudolf Bultmann was correct, and the Gospel authors had no interest in history or in a historical Jesus,[46] then the Gospels must be read and interpreted in this light. However, some recent studies suggest that the genre of the Gospels ought to be situated within the realm of ancient biography.[60][61][62][63][64] Although not without critics,[65] the position that the Gospels are a type of ancient biography is the consensus among scholars today.[66]
In addition to the four canonical gospels, early Christians wrote other gospels that were not accepted into the canon, some of which are discussed below.
Epiphanius, Jerome and other early church fathers preserve in their writings citations from one or more Jewish-Christian Gospels, versions of Matthew used by Ebionites and Nazarenes. Most modern critical scholars consider that the extant citations suggest at least two and probably three distinct Jewish-Christian versions of Matthew, and that the source language of these is probably Greek.[67] A minority of scholars, including Edward Nicholson (1879) and James R. Edwards (2009) have suggested that the surviving citations are all from one Gospel, which is, as Jerome himself records that the Nazarenes claimed, the original, and Hebrew, Gospel of Matthew.[68]
According to Eusebius, Origen said the first Gospel was written by Matthew (Church History 6.25.4). Jerome reports that the Nazarenes believed that this Gospel was composed in Hebrew near Jerusalem for Hebrew Christians and Jerome claimed to have translated parts of it into Greek, but if so any the Greek translation has not survived. Jerome reports that the Nazarenes' Hebrew original was kept at the Library of Caesarea and that the Nazarene Community transcribed a copy for him which he used in his work (On Illustrious Men 3:7) Jerome refers to this gospel sometimes as the Gospel according to the Hebrews (3.7) and sometimes as the Gospel of the Apostles (Against Pelagius 3.2).
The gospel attributed to Thomas is mostly wisdom without narrating Jesus's life. A few scholars argue that its first edition was written c 50-60, but that the surviving edition was written in the first half of the 2nd century.[69] This would mean that its first edition was contemporary with the earliest letters of Paul the Apostle. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that the original may date from c. 150.[70] It may represent a tradition independent from the canonical gospels, but that developed over a long time and was influenced by Matthew and Luke.[70] While it can be understood in Gnostic terms, it lacks the characteristic features of Gnostic doctrine.[70] The Jesus Seminar identified two of its unique parables, the parable of the empty jug and the parable of the assassin.[71] It had been lost but was discovered, in a Coptic version dating from c. 350, at Nag Hammadi in 1945-6, and three papyri, dated to c. 200, which contain fragments of a Greek text similar to but not identical with that in the Coptic language, have also been found.[70]
The gospel of Peter was likely written in the first half of the 2nd century.[72][73] It seems to be largely legendary, hostile toward Jews, and including docetic elements.[74] It had been lost but was rediscovered in the 19th century.[74]
The Gospel of Judas is another controversial and ancient text that purports to tell the story of the gospel from the perspective of Judas, the disciple who is usually said to have betrayed Jesus in most versions of the Bible. It paints an unusual picture of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, in that appears to interpret Judas's act not as betrayal, but rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus. 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 Princeton, was 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 2nd century.
According to scholars proposing the existence of a hypothetical sayings-source, a Redensquelle, 'Q' (following the terminology of Johannes Weiss) at some time there existed a document comprised mostly sayings of Jesus with little narrative. It is presumed the source for many of Jesus' sayings in Matthew and Luke, and accordingly must have preceded these gospels. It is believed that the earliest form of the sayings were written c. 50-60.[69] However Mark Goodacre and other scholars have questioned the existence of a Q document.[75]
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.
Another genre is that of gospel harmonies, in which the four canonical gospels were selectively recast as a single narrative to present a consistent text. Very few fragments of harmonies have 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. More recently, in 2006, UOG Press published ONE as a modern gospel harmony of the four Canonical Gospels; ONE contains a 2,992 numbering reference system which tracks the textual harmonization process to the extant works for analysis and citation.[76]
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.
McGrath, A. 2001. In the Beginning the Story of the King James Bible and how it changed a Nation, a Language and a Culture. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0 340 78585 3.
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