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GOSPEL.—This word (lit. ‘God-story’) represents Greek euangelion, which reappears in one form or another in ecclesiastical Latin and in most modern languages. In classical Greek the word means the reward given to a bearer of good tidings (so 2Sa_4:10 LXX [Note: Septuagint.] in pl.), but afterwards it came to mean the message itself, and so in 2Sa_18:20; 2Sa_18:22; 2Sa_18:25 [LXX [Note: Septuagint.] ] a derived word is used in this sense. In NT the word means ‘good tidings’ about the salvation of the world by the coming of Jesus Christ. It is not there used of the written record. A genitive case or a possessive pronoun accompanying it denotes: (a) the person or the thing preached (the gospel of Christ, or of peace, or of salvation, or of the grace of God, or of God, or of the Kingdom, Mat_4:23; Mat_9:35; Mat_24:14, Mar_1:14, Act_20:24, Rom_15:19, Eph_1:13; Eph_6:15 etc.); or sometimes (b) the preacher (Mar_1:1 (?), Rom_2:16; Rom_16:25, 2Co_4:3 etc.); or rarely (c) the persons preached to (Gal_2:7). ‘The gospel’ is often used in NT absolutely, as in Mar_1:15; Mar_8:35; Mar_14:9 RV [Note: Revised Version.] , Mar_16:15, Act_15:7, Rom_11:28, 2Co_8:16 (where the idea must not be entertained that the reference is to Luke as an Evangelist), and so ‘this gospel,’ Mat_26:13; but English readers should bear in mind that usually (though not in Mar_16:15) the EV [Note: English Version.] phrase ‘to preach the gospel’ represents a simple verb of the Greek. The noun is not found in Lk., Heb., or the Catholic Epistles, and only once in the Johannine writings (Rev_14:6, ‘an eternal gospel’—an angelic message). In Rom_10:16 ‘the gospel’ is used absolutely of the message of the OT prophets.
The written record was not called ‘the Gospel’ till a later age. By the earliest generation of Christians the oral teaching was the main thing regarded; men told what they had heard and seen, or what they had received from eye-witnesses. As these died out and the written record alone remained, the perspective altered. The earliest certain use of the word in this sense is in Justin Martyr (c [Note: circa, about.] . a.d. 150: ‘The Apostles in the Memoirs written by themselves, which are called Gospels,’ Apol. 1. 66; cf. ‘the Memoirs which were drawn up by His Apostles and those who followed them,’ Dial. 103), though some find it in Ignatius and the Didache. The earliest known titles of the Evangelic records (which, however, we cannot assert to be contemporary with the records themselves) are simply ‘According to Matthew,’ etc.
A. J. Maclean.