The Gospels

Books in the new testament referred to as the Gospels:

In Christianity, a gospel (from Old English, "good news") is generally one of four canonical books of the New Testament that describe the miraculous birth, life, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. These books are the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, written between 65 and 100 AD.

Many modern scholars argue that the sequence in which the Gospel accounts have traditionally been printed in the Bible is not the order of their composition, and that the first canonical gospel to have been written is Mark (c 65-70), which in turn was used as a source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew and Luke may have also used the hypothetical Q Document. These first three gospels are called the synoptic gospels because they share a similar view. The last gospel, the gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics.

The vast majority of biblical scholars believe the canonical gospels were originally written in Greek, although some believe the gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew and later translated to Greek. However, Eusebius wrote that Matthew composed the Gospel According to the Hebrews and his Church Catalog suggests that it was the only Jewish Gospel. Yet, some have accused Eusebius of falsification.

Originally, the "gospel" meant the proclamation of God's saving activity in Jesus of Nazareth, or the agape (love) message proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth. This is the original New Testament usage (for example Mark 1:14-15 or 1 Corinthians 15:1-9; see also Strong's G2098). The word is still used in this sense. Ancient, non-canonical works that purport to quote Jesus (e.g., Gospel of Thomas) are also called gospels, and the term refers, in general, to works of a genre of Early Christian literature (cf. Peter Stuhlmacher, ed., Das Evangelium und die Evangelien, Tübingen 1983, also in English: The Gospel and the Gospels).

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