For this month, I want to dive down the path of what Gospel means and the various expressions it has seen over the years. Whether it is Gospel music, the Gospels of the New Testament, or even if you just want to take something as gospel. This word, like many of the words I will be writing about (or already have), roots back to first century writing. But let’s make our way through a few of the roads it has paved.

Let’s first start with Gospel music; a multi-faceted expression of music that embraces so many different sub-genres within it. Gospel, as a term for music, was firmly rooted back in the 1920’s when the music of traveling quartets had been turned into a slew of recordings, making its way to the public through radio broadcast for the first time. From there it has grown into an evolving core genre with multiple sub-genres. The title of Gospel for this type of music goes back even further though. The first published use you will see of this is in 1874 with the printing of a song book, used during the era of Dwight L. Moody’s revivalism, with the title of “Gospel Songs: A Choice collection of Hymns and Tunes”. It was in the 1760’s and 1770’s that you will first start seeing this term tied to music; specifically Hymns that were sung acapella with the tapping of feet and clapping of hands.  But, in saying this, the term gospel is not defined through its use in music, but rather it was barrowing it from another form of its usage.

In the early 1700’s, Gospel had taken on a short life as an adjective in the phrase “Gospel-gossip”. This can be seen in 1711 within “Spectator”, written in England by Joseph Addison, as an expression meaning to be one who is always talking of sermons, texts, ect. It is this type of mindset that that drove the term Gospel to define what the people were doing when they continually sang Hymns; a type of music that defines itself in doctrine and biblical passages. But, Gospel-gossip was only a stepping stone and rested on a prior meaning. Gospel-gossip and “to take something as gospel” both come from a common path.

It was in the mid-13^th century that anything that could be considered “as true as the Gospels” (the first four books of the New Testament) was Gospel. This carried its way to the mid-17^th century where any doctrine of exclusive importance was given credit to be as true as the gospel. It has since dethreaded itself from the Gospels of the Bible and is used today as an idiom for something to be creditable. So, that means our next path to look at is why the first four books of the New Testament are called Gospels.

The way we say gospel has actually changed over time due to the transmorphing of the first part of the word. We say gospel with a short o, like got. This comes from the fact that, at one point in its life, it was the compound word of Godspell (Old Saxon). This language root, plus a few others, were putting God (because of what it was consistently referring to) and spell (a message or story) together to make the compound word that meant God’s Message, or God’s Story. But, this was actually a conflation of what the original starting word was and what it was representing. I say this because of where gospel is springing from. Gospel is the overarching term used throughout the first books of the New Testament and it eventually became the term for what type of literature it was. When the New Testament was translated from Greek to Latin, the Latin term used was Bona Adnuntiatio; which means “Good Message”. So, a Latin translation was converted to Old Saxon English as Good Spell, which became a compound word of Goodspell. It then shortend it’s oo to an o with a character above it to indicate its sound. Eventually the written form morphed into Godspell (while changing the o to a short o sound), and finally reached the form Gospel.

Let’s take one last stab at this. I said this is all rooting from a Latin translation. But let’s take a moment to look at the Greek origin that the Latin is trying to represent. There are actually two words that this is tied to, Euaggelizo and Euaggelion. The former is the verb and the latter is the noun. This is a common Greek term that can be found in works such as Homer’s Odyssey, and is not subject to just the Greek letters and books of the New Testament. But, when you look at the bound works of the New Testament, the verb is used 95 times and the noun is used 77 times. So what is it that makes the use of this word so prolific? It comes down to what it is representing. Throughout all of the New Testament, these two words are nearly always tied to something specific. Instead of jumping all over the place with those texts, I want to hone in on one specific letter written by Paul. In first Corinthians, chapter 15, Paul is speaking to the people of Corinth and lays out a pretty good summery of what this “Good Message” is. I encourage you to read the first eleven verses, but let me summarize. Paul is making it very clear that the gospel (a message of good news) is that one, Christ (Jesus) died for our sins according to the Scriptures (the writing of the Old Testament), and two, that he was buried and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. He then goes on to start listing some of the eye witnesses of this event (most who were still alive as he was writing this).

So, in conclusion, when we hear and use the term Gospel, we are bringing it back to the Good News that was established and brought by Jesus in First Century Israel. Something that has taken on the form of being seen as so true, and attestable by its witnesses, that it has become synonymous with truth. It is something that people want to proclaim through Gospel-Gossip. It is, at its very heart, the fundamental foundation of what established the followers of The Way, spreaders of the Good Message, and eventual heir of the title of Christians.