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.
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.
Gospel ( /ˈɡɒspəl/ ) is the Old English translation of Greek εὐαγγέλιον, meaning "good news". [1] This may be seen from analysis of euangélion (εὖ, eû, '"good"' + ἄγγελος, ángelos, '"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 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]
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]
The ancient Hebrew noun בְּשׂוֹרָה (besorah) 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 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] [lower-alpha 1] [13] [lower-alpha 2]
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.
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]
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 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, 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]
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.[ citation needed ] 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]
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Paul, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age, and he also founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD.
Seventh Day Baptists are Baptists who observe the Sabbath as the seventh day of the week, Saturday, as a holy day to God. They believe in conscious baptism of believers by immersion, congregational government and the scriptural basis of opinion and practice. They profess a statement of faith instituted on fundamental precepts of belief. Seventh Day Baptists rest on Saturday as a sign of obedience in a covenant relationship with God and not as a condition of salvation. Many, have adopted a Baptist covenant theology, based on the concept of regenerated society.
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This is a glossary of terms used in Christianity.
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Ephesians 4 is the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Traditionally, it is believed to have been written by Apostle Paul while he was in prison in Rome, but more recently, it has been suggested that it was written between AD 80 and 100 by another writer using Paul's name and style. This chapter is a part of Paul's exhortation, with the particular section about the mutual interdependence of the Christians as the church and how they should live in the world (4:17–5:20).
1 Timothy 4 is the fourth chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The author has been traditionally identified as Paul the Apostle since as early as AD 180, although most modern scholars consider the letter pseudepigraphical, perhaps written as late as the first half of the second century AD.
Philippians 1 is the first chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle about mid-50s to early 60s AD and addressed to the Christians in Philippi, written either in Rome or Ephesus. This chapter contains the greeting, thanksgiving, prayer and exhortation as an introduction (overture) to the major narratives in the next chapters.
The Priene calendar inscription is an inscription in stone recovered at Priene that records an edict by Paullus Fabius Maximus, proconsul of the Roman province of Asia and a decree of the conventus of the province accepting the edict from 9 BC. The documents align the provincial calendar with the Roman calendar, honouring Augustus by making the provincial year began on his birthday. It refers to Augustus' birth using the term "gospel." It is known as the Priene text because it was found on two stones in the marketplace of the ancient town of Priene. Other copies are known from Apamea and Eumeneia.