The Term “Gospel”

✦ The term gospel is an old-English form of “good news,” which stems from the Greek word evangelion.

✦ Prior to Christianity, the term evangelion had as much or more meaning and emotion in Roman culture as gospel has in Christianity today.

✦ The Romans proclaimed evangelion to announce a new Caesar or a birth of a divine heir to the throne.[1]

✦ The earliest Christian writings (the first three Gospels in their original translations) used the term in nearly identical fashion to the Roman use:

Mark 1:1 states, “The beginning of the evangel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
In Luke 1:19 an angel proclaims evangel announcing the birth of John the Baptist to his father.
In Luke 2:10 an angel proclaims evangel announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds.

✦ Evangelion appears almost 80 times in New Testament writings, but never in the prior Jewish religious writings of the Hebrew Bible.

[1] Chaim Potak, Wanderings, Chaim Potaks’s History of the Jews, Alfred Knopf, New York, 1978, pg 280.