GOSPEL
BCE
In Greek sources prior to the
rise of Christianity, the rare occurrences of εὐαγγελ- terminology describe
activity related to a εὐαγγέλος, a messenger bearing news— sometimes “good” (εὐ-
) news, but not necessarily (Bultmann 2007; Dickson 2005; Friedrich 1964;
Koester 1990). The verb εὐαγγελίζομαι describes the act of proclaiming the
messenger’s tidings; the noun εὐαγγέλιον refers either to the news itself or to
the reward the messenger receives. The message often has to do with military
success. Plutarch (Sert.11.4), for example, speaks of Quintus Sertorius’s
peculiar habit of parading a garlanded doe before his troops upon hearing the
good news of a triumph, while elsewhere (Glor. Ath. 3 [347D]) he remarks on the
Spartan custom of providing meat to the man who brings news of victory from the
battlefield. The translators of the Septuagint deploy the term similarly when
rendering the Hebrew root בשר in the Former Prophets. The Amalekite hopes for a
reward ( בשרה / εὐαγγελία) when reporting the good news ( מבשר / εὐαγγελιζόμενης)
of Saul’s death to David (2 Sam 4:10; 18:22), while Jonathan, son of Abiathar,
ironically brings the good news ( מבשר / εὐαγγέλισαι) of Solomon’s anointing to
Adonijah’s feast (1 Kgs 1:42).
The distribution of the εὐαγγελ-
root in non- Christian Greek is noteworthy. Among the nouns, the plural εὐαγγέλια
outnumbers the singular. The singular, neuter noun occurs but seven times in
non- Christian Greek. Even more remarkably, all but one of those occurrences
lack the definite article; the lone example of the singular, articular noun
comes in Plutarch’s account of a messenger sent by Demetrius bearing news of a
victory at Cyprus (Demetr. 17.5). Plutarch composed Parallel Lives in
the first two decades of the second century, which means that the singular,
articular, neuter noun may not even have existed when the earliest Christian
author whose work survives today, Paul, used it a whopping forty- three times
in his uncontested epistles. (Joshua D. Garroway, “Gospel,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels, ed. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2023], 452)
