Gospel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, 

the which, if they should be written every one, 

I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. 

Amen."

~(John)~

Gospel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: A gospel is an account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The most widely known examples are the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but the term is also used to refer to apocryphal gospels, non-canonical gospels, Jewish-Christian gospels, and gnostic gospels.

Christianity places a high value on the four canonical gospels, which it considers to be a revelation from God and central to its belief system.[1] Christianity traditionally teaches that the four canonical gospels are an accurate and authoritative representation of the life of Jesus,[2] but more liberal churches and many scholars believe that not everything contained in the gospels is historically reliable.[3] For example, according to Linda Woodhead, "the gospels’ birth and resurrection narratives can be explained as attempts to fit Jesus’s life into the logic of Jewish expectation".[4]

The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell ^[5] (rarely godspel), meaning "good news" or "glad tidings". The word comes from the Greek euangelion, or "good news".^[6] The gospel was considered the "good news" of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the central Christian message.

John Riches states that, "Many scholars doubt that the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses as their attributions seem to suggest: there is too much evidence of reworking oral traditions and of straight borrowing from other Gospels to make this likely."^[12] For example, the vast majority of material in Mark is also present in either Luke or Matthew or both, suggesting that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke.

The four canonical gospels "were probably all written by the end of the first century".^[13] But they did not yet at that time have a consistent narrative.

According to Linda Woodhead,

Christian gospels are also propaganda. They tell their readers (or hearers) that Jesus was something special, and they expect them to respond accordingly. No neutral stance is possible in relation to a gospel. Depending on your response, its message will turn out either to be good news for you – or bad.^[15]

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered synoptic gospels on the basis of many similarities between them that are not shared by the Gospel of John. "Synoptic" means here that they can be "seen" or "read together," indicating the many parallels that exist among the three. The synoptic gospels are the source of many popular stories, parables, and sermons, such as Jesus's humble birth in Bethlehem, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the Last Supper, and the Great Commission.

The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics.^[17] In differentiating history from invention, some historians interpret the gospel accounts skeptically^[18] but generally regard the synoptic gospels as including significant amounts of historically reliable information about Jesus.

Goswell concludes by suggesting that the self-reference to "this book" in John 20:30, "can be taken as an implicit acknowledgment of other books, namely the three preceding Gospels".

The historicity of the gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four canonical New Testament gospels as historical documents. Historians subject the gospels to critical analysis, attempting to differentiate authentic, reliable information from what they judge to be inventions, exaggerations, and alterations. Some Christian scholars maintain that the gospels are inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus.^[59] E. P. Sanders asserts that all four of the Gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability,^{[18][page needed]} but Howard Teeple has concluded that the gospels provide no historical information about Jesus's life since the first gospel account (Mark) may have appeared as much as forty years after Jesus's death.

There are positions between these extremes. Some biblical scholars consider the synoptic gospels to contain much reliable historical information about the historical Jesus as a Galilean teacher^[61][62] and of the religious movement he founded, but not everything contained in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable.^[63] Reza Aslan asserts that "the gospels are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus's life. These are not eyewitness accounts of Jesus's words and deeds recorded by people who knew him. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith written many years after the events they describe. Simply put, the gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man."

The baptism of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus are events almost universally agreed upon by biblical scholars to be historically authentic.^[65][66][67] Elements whose historical authenticity is disputed include the two accounts of the nativity of Jesus, as well as certain details about the crucifixion and the resurrection.^[69][70]

In Mark, apparently written with a Roman audience in mind, Jesus is a heroic man of action, given to powerful emotions, including agony.^[36] In Matthew, apparently written for a Jewish audience, Jesus is repeatedly called out as the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy.^[36]

In Luke, apparently written for gentiles, Jesus is especially concerned with the poor.^[36] Luke emphasizes the importance of prayer and the action of the Holy Spirit in Jesus's life and in the Christian community.^[76] Jesus appears as a stoic supernatural being, unmoved even by his own crucifixion.^[74] Like Matthew, Luke insists that salvation offered by Christ is for all, and not the Jews only.

The Gospel of John represents Jesus as an incarnation of the eternal Word (Logos), who spoke no parables, talked extensively about himself, and did not explicitly refer to a Second Coming.^[36] Jesus preaches in Jerusalem, launching his ministry with the cleansing of the temple. He performs several miracles as signs, most of them not found in the synoptics. The Gospel of John ends:(21:25) "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."