Changes

How do we classify a Gospel? How would an imaginary librarian let’s say in Alexandria Egypt classify a copy of the Gospel according to Mark, if that book had been presented to the library in the last part of the first century? Where would she place it on the shelf? Well there would have been no appropriate existing shelf on which to place such a book. Therefore, the library would have to improvise. The Gospels were a new and totally unique literary genre; a totally new classification for which none of the categories of the time would do. There had been no Gospels before that time so they chose a new word to describe a new literary phenomenon. There was no known parallel or analogy to the Gospels before these famous four were written.

The term ‘gospel’ is from the Greek word euaggelion (εὐαγγέλιον) meaning ‘good ~~news’~~news. ’ The word gospel gives us our English word ‘good spell’ or ‘good news.’ Therefore, we think of the Gospel as the story of God’ s saving action in the life ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ came preaching the Gospel; he came preaching the good news of his redemptive work in fulfillment of prophecy. And so you can think of Jesus as both the bearer of the Good news as well as the content or the substance of that good news. Perhaps I should say the word has gone through a variety of usages. For example, the word ‘Gospel’ evangelium (or euaggelion) in Greek was used in non-Christian settings. By non-Christians the word meant good news of any type. For example, if there had been victory in a battle. Or if a new Roman ruler had been enthroned, they would call that good news. So, for non-Christians it was unprecedented to apply that term to a category of literature. So non-Christians used it for just any kind of good news, the biblical usage is to think of the Gospel as the good news of Jesus and his salvation. But then the third usage is literary where the word became used as a book title towards the end of the second century. They have been described by some as passion narratives with long introductions.

In terms of classifying the Gospels, they are not essays, because they do not attempt to discuss the subject from an impersonal or abstract view point as an essay would tend to do. Neither are the gospels biographies, technically, because they lack many of the details concerning Christ’s career. There is not detailed description of his appearance and there is little or no character development. Background facts and chronology are absent. There are huge gaps and therefore one would not think of these as being biographies in the true sense of that word.

SLTJ:Ch 2