A gospel is a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, culminating in his trial and death, and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances. It originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century AD, the term () came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported, through which the English word "gospel" originated as a calque.
The canonical gospels represent a variation of Greco-Roman biography. Ancient biographies were typically written shortly after the subject's death and included substantial historical material. They are meant to convince people that Jesus was a miracle-working holy man and provide examples to emulate. As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD. Biblical scholars are therefore cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically as historical documents, and although they afford a good idea of Jesus' public career, critical study has largely failed to distinguish his original ideas from those of the later Christian authors, and the focus of research has therefore shifted to Jesus as remembered by his followers, and understanding the Gospels themselves.
The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament. They were written between AD 70 and 100. Like many ancient biographers such as Plutarch they do not name their authors. They were attributed to the apostles very early and their authorship is debated in scholarship. Mark was the first to be written, followed by Matthew and Luke, which forms a two-volume work with the Acts of the Apostles. Scholars increasingly favor the author of John’s knowledge of the synoptic gospels. Scholars differ on the reliability of the traditions found in the gospels. The synoptic gospels are the primary sources for reconstructing Christ's ministry, while John is used less since it differs from the synoptics. Current research emphasizes the gospels as the works of creative authors with their own agendas while recognizing their preservation of the memory of Jesus.
Many non-canonical gospels were also written after the four canonical gospels, and like them advocate for the theological views of their authors. Important examples include the gospels of Thomas, Peter, Judas, and Mary; infancy gospels such as that of James (the first to introduce the perpetual virginity of Mary); and gospel harmonies such as the Diatessaron.
Etymology Gospel is the Old English translation of the Hellenistic Greek term (evangélion), meaning "good news"; this may be seen from analysis of (evangélion) ( (ef) "good" + (ángelos) "messenger" + (ion) diminutive suffix). The Greek term was Latinized as in the Vulgate, and translated into Latin as . In Old English, it was translated as ( "good" + "news"). The Old English term was retained as in Middle English Bible translations and hence remains in use also in Modern English.
Encyclopaedia Britannica defines gospel as stemming from gōdspel "good story/news," a calque translating Latin evangelium from Greek εὐαγγέλιον "good news."
Canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Contents The four canonical gospels share the same basic outline of the life of Jesus: he begins his public ministry in conjunction with that of John the Baptist, calls disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the Pharisees, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. Each has its own distinctive understanding of him and his divine role and modern scholars recognize their differences over attempts at harmonization. The patterns of parallels and differences found in the gospels are typical of ancient biographies about actual people and history, and are thus unproblematic if not read anachronistically. According to the manuscript evidence and citation frequency by the early Church Fathers, Matthew and John were the most popular gospels while Luke and Mark were less popular in the early centuries of the Church.
The gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke are termed the "synoptic gospels" (from , "seeing all together") because they present very similar accounts of the life of Jesus. Mark begins with the baptism of the adult Jesus and the heavenly declaration that he is the son of God; he gathers followers and begins his ministry, and tells his disciples that he must die in Jerusalem but that he will rise from the dead; in Jerusalem, he is at first acclaimed but then rejected, betrayed, and crucified, and when the women who have followed him come to his tomb, they find it empty. Whilst not as overt as John's Gospel (the fourth and non-synoptic gospel) scholars have found that the synoptic gospels portray Jesus as divine in various ways. Mark apparently believes that he had a normal human parentage and birth, and makes no attempt to trace his ancestry back to King David or Adam; it originally ended at Mark and had no post-resurrection appearances, although Mark , in which the young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell "the disciples and Peter" that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author knew of the tradition.
The authors of Matthew and Luke added different infancy and resurrection narratives to the story they found in Mark. Luke forms a two-volume work with its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. Barker suggests that Luke supplemented Matthew's nativity by adding Mary's perspective to Matthew's Joseph. Recent scholarship focuses on explaining the gospels' relationship in terms of ancient compositional practices and comparisons with other ancient historical biographers. Each also makes subtle theological changes to Mark, though James Barker argues this is exaggerated, with ancient rhetorical practices explaining many differences in the gospels instead. The Markan miracle stories, for example, confirm Jesus' status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah), but in Matthew they demonstrate his divinity, and the "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb in Mark becomes a radiant angel in Matthew. Luke is not especially critical of the content of Mark but mainly corrects his source's grammatical syntax, lection, and style instead.
John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. He presents a significantly different picture of Jesus's career, omitting any mention of his early life, baptism, and temptation. John knows and presupposes synoptic stories and thusly emphasizes other narratives rather than recounting every passage. The chronology is also different, describing the passage of three years in Jesus's ministry in contrast to the single year of the synoptics, placing the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning, and the Last Supper on the day before Passover. However, there are also verses such as Mark and Matthew viewed as hints of a longer ministry in the synoptic gospels. Ancient writing practices involved such chronological displacement and changes, with even reliable biographers including Plutarch displaying them. According to Delbert Burkett, the Gospel of John is the only gospel to call Jesus God, though other scholars including Larry Hurtado and Michael Barber view a possible divine Christology in the synoptics. In contrast to Mark, where Jesus hides his identity as messiah, in John he openly proclaims it.
Composition
Like the rest of the New Testament, the four canonical gospels were written in Koine Greek. The Gospel of Mark probably dates from around AD 70, Matthew and Luke around AD 80–90, and John AD 90–100, which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family. Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous, as was common for bios of the time; biographies by Plutarch and Suetonius were also originally anonymous as well. They are generally agreed not to represent eyewitness accounts, though this may partly be the result of dubious form-critical assumptions. Most scholars view the author of Luke–Acts as an eyewitness to Paul. However, Paul never met Jesus, he was still a contemporary of Jesus and personally knew eyewitnesses of Jesus such as his closest disciples (Peter and John) and brother James since the mid 30s AD, within a few years of the crucifixion (). He had knowledge of the life of Jesus and his teachings. Before the gospels were written, he claimed to have had a vision of Jesus after his death, and later met his brother James. The form-critics largely viewed the gospels as compilers of transmitted traditions, but the gospels are now seen as biographers engaging in literarily creative and imaginative form of art (which did involve claiming consulting eyewitnesses). Though the texts are anonymous, many scholars such as Simon J. Gathercole have defended the attributions to Luke and John, though many others have abandoned this view, though even they continue to maintain the beloved disciple in the last supper as the source of much of John's content: "We start from the fact that this Fourth Gospel has always been known as the Gospel according to John, and this goes with the traditional view that the evangelist was the Apostle John. Although this tradition continues to have supporters among modern scholars, the majority cling to it only in the most tenuous form, or abandon it altogether. It is thus important to see the reasons why the traditional identification is regarded by most scholars as untenable.": "The name "John" was attached to this gospel by the Church, and the author was identified as the apostle John. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the Gospel was actually written by this apostle.": "There certainly was a Beloved Disciple, and his name could have been John, but no modern scholar thinks this gospel was written by one of the twelve apostles."
The form critics of the 20th century viewed the gospels as compilers of tradition analogous to other collections of folktales by primitive communities steeped in eschatology, but today scholars recognize the gospels as Greco-Roman biographies by conscious authors with their own theological agendas. Burkett argues the emergence of the gospels can be summarized by oral traditions passed on as unordered units, written collections of miracle stories and sayings, and proto-gospels preceding and serving as sources for the gospels, which combined proto-gospels, written collections, and oral tradition. The dedicatory preface of Luke testifies to the existence of previous accounts of the life of Jesus. According to Chris Keith, there is no incontrovertible evidence the gospel traditions circulated as written narratives, testimonia, or notes prior to Mark.