The gospel or good news is a theological concept in several religions. In the historical Roman imperial cult and 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 is found at least as far back as Greece's Classical era and Roman authors are known to have adopted it toward the end of the 1st century BCE. It is a central message of Christianity today, in which written accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ are known as Gospels.
The concept of "gospel" is also significant in Islam, where it is referred to as the Injīl (Arabic: الإنجيل, romanized: Injīl, lit. 'good news'), believed to be a divine revelation given to ʿĪsā (Jesus).
Gospel () is the Old English translation of the Koine Greek term εὐαγγέλιον (euangélion), meaning "good news". This may be analyzed as 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 rendered as gōdspel (gōd, "good" + spel, "news"). The Old English term continued into Middle English Bible translations and survives in Modern English as gospel.
In Greek, the term originally referred to a reward or gratuity paid to a courier for bringing good news. It later came to designate the message of good news itself, and also a religious offering of thanks for good fortune.
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In Islam, the Arabic term Injīl (الإنجيل) is derived from the Syriac ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ (awongelion), which itself originates from the same Greek word euangelion. The Quran mentions the Injīl as a divine scripture revealed to ʿĪsā (Jesus), regarded by Muslims as one of the four major revealed books, alongside the Torah, Zabur, and Quran.
In Greek and Roman religion
Ancient Greece
In Ancient Greek religion the word εὐαγγέλια means a sacrifice offered for good tidings or good news. 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. 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.
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. Augustus was both a man and a god, "a savior who has made war to cease and who shall put everything in peaceful order." 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. 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 in 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.
In the Bible and Christianity
Hebrew scripture
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.
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, which has been called the "Proto-Evangelion" or "Proto-Gospel".
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 humankind 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 ScripturesPaul 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.
The good news can be summarized in many ways, reflecting various emphases. C. H. Dodd has summarized the Christian good news as taught by the apostle Peter in the Acts of the Apostles:
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 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; c.f. Genesis 12:1–3).
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.
Christian mission
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".
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, 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.
In the Qur'an and Islam
In the Qur'an
The Quran refers to the Arabic term Injīl (Arabic: الإنجيل, romanized: Injīl, lit. 'good news') as a revelation given to ʿĪsā (Jesus). The Injīl is described in the Qur'an as containing "guidance and light" and as confirming the previous revelation of the Tawrat (Torah).[Quran 5:46][Quran 3:3] The Qur'an also instructs the "People of the Gospel" to judge by what God revealed therein ([Quran 5:47]) and describes the Qur'an as a guardian over previous scriptures ([Quran 5:48]).
Islamic interpretation
In Islamic theology the Injīl is regarded as one of the revealed scriptures (alongside the Tawrat, Zabur and the Qur'an). Mainstream Sunni and Shia doctrine affirm that the original Injīl was a genuine revelation to Jesus, but they generally maintain that the original Injīl has not survived in an unaltered form (a position often expressed by the Arabic term taḥrīf — "alteration" or "corruption").
Classical exegetes and many modern Muslim writers discuss two broadly held views: (1) the Injīl was at least partly recorded by Jesus's followers but later subject to editorial change, and (2) the revelation to Jesus was primarily oral and later reflected in various Christian writings. Both approaches appear across Sunni and Shia tafsīr literature and are discussed in modern scholarship.
Early Islamic literature and hadith
Early Islamic historiographical sources (for example the sīra and chronicles such as al-Ṭabarī) record interactions between Muslims and Christian communities (e.g., the Christians of Najrān), including letters, treaties and debates in which the Gospel and other scriptures are discussed.
Some hadith collections contain narrations referencing the People of the Book or earlier scriptures; because the authentication and interpretive weight of such hadiths vary, modern surveys and encyclopedias generally rely primarily on the Qur'an and authoritative tafsīr when summarizing Islamic doctrine about the Injīl, and treat hadith evidence cautiously and contextually.
Interfaith and missionary (daʿwah) context
The Injīl is an important topic in Muslim–Christian dialogue and in Muslim missionary discourse. Qur'anic injunctions addressed to the People of the Book (for example [Quran 5:47]) and verses that both affirm and reinterpret earlier revelation (for example [Quran 5:48]) are frequently cited in theological exchanges. Contemporary scholars and interfaith practitioners commonly treat the Injīl as a primary point of comparison in discussions on revelation, textual history, and scriptural authority.
