The Gospel is what? How to interpret this word correctly

A person who comes to the Christian faith, first of all, asks the question of whether the Gospel is what? Part of the Bible or a separate sacred text? In general, the questions concerning the Gospel stirred and excited the minds of not only ordinary Christians, but also priests. Let's try to figure out what the Gospel is. This will help to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings of the Holy Scripture in the future.

General information

In many sources the gospel is interpreted in different ways and the question of what the word "gospel" means is given different answers.

So, most often it is pointed out that the Gospel is an early Christian scripture that tells about the life and deeds of Christ. Conventionally, the Gospel can be divided into canonical and apocryphal. When one speaks of the canonical Gospel, they mean that it is recognized by the church and included in the New Testament. His amity is ascribed to the apostles and is not questioned. These writings are the basis of the Christian cult. In total, four canonical Gospels are distinguished - the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In general terms, the Gospels of Luke, Mark and Matthew coincide with each other and are called synoptic (from the word synopsis - joint processing). The fourth Scripture, the Gospel of John, is very different from the previous three. But everywhere it is pointed out that the Gospels, in fact, are the first four books of the New Testament.

The Bible and the Gospel are synonyms or not

It is not right to interpret the Bible and the Gospel as synonyms.

The Gospels are parts of the New Testament, which most fully contains the world outlook, virtues and postulates of Christianity. In turn, the Bible often means nothing more than the Old Testament. Despite the fact that the New and Old Testaments are represented in close connection with each other, the latter is a Jewish Scripture. Therefore, in the expression "the Bible and the Gospel" we mean the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Holy Gospel, therefore, can really be considered an early Christian script, in which narrative (narrative) and preaching elements are combined.

History of creation

Initially, different Gospels contradicted each other significantly, since all began to be created in the second half of the 1st century, that is, conditionally after the crucifixion of Jesus. Strange in this there is nothing, because the authors who created the Gospels, who entered the New Testament, belonged to different Christian communities. Gradually, four gospels were singled out, which more or less coincided with each other and with the Christian dogmas that lasted to the fourth and fifth centuries. Only the first three Scriptures, included in the canon, coincide with each other in the matter of the preaching of Jesus and his life.

Coincidence in the text of the Gospels and analysis of the Scriptures

Theologians and researchers have calculated that the Gospel of Mark includes more than 90% of the material found in the other two Scriptures (for comparison, in the Gospel of Matthew, the percentage of coincidence is almost 60%, in the Gospel of Luke - slightly more than 40%).

From this it can be concluded that it was written a little earlier, and the rest of the Gospels simply relied on it. Scientists also put forward a version that there was some common source, for example, brief records of Jesus' conversations. The evangelist Mark came closest to them in writing. Up to now, the Gospels have reached the Greek, but it is obvious that Jesus did not use this language in preaching. The fact is that in Judea Greek was not in circulation among the broad masses of the people, as among the Egyptian Jews. Quite a long time among scientists, the opinion prevailed that the originals of the Gospels were written in Aramaic. During the First World War, biblical scholars did the so-called "reverse" translation of the aphorisms from Scripture to Aramaic. According to the researchers, the result surprised everyone. What in Greek sounds like a text with a disorganized rhythm, on the Ramsey sounded like poetic utterances with rhyme, alliteration, assonance and a clear, pleasant rhythm. In some cases, the play of words became visible, which the translators in Greek missed when working with the text. Considering the Gospel of Matthew, the scientists found direct confirmation that it was originally recorded in Hebrew.

This, in turn, indicates that the role of Hebrew in the life of the Jews of that time was substantially understated. Christian literature, according to SS. Averintseva, was born on the verge of completely different language systems - Greek and Aramaic-Jewish. These are different linguistic and stylistic worlds. The Gospel is a text that belongs to the ritual. It involves memorizing and understanding the part of the text, rather than just reading.

The World of the Gospel

The Gospel is centered around the person of Jesus Christ, who embodies the fullness of the divine and human nature. The hypostases of Christ - the Son of Man and the Son of God - appear in the Gospels inseparably, but without merging with each other. The evangelist John pays more attention to the divine nature of Jesus, while the first three evangelists pay attention to his human nature, the talent of a brilliant preacher. In creating the image of Jesus, each of the evangelists sought to find their correlation of the story of Jesus and His works and the news of Him. The most ancient is the Gospel of Mark, which is placed in the New Testament second.