Mark 1:1
The word “gospel”
Mark’s first sentence names what his book is with one word: gospel. It has long been a church word, but when Mark wrote it was a word everyone in the Mediterranean world understood.
This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Mark 1:1A word for good news
The Greek joins εὖ, ‘well’, to the root of ἀγγέλλω, ‘announce’. In older Greek it could mean the reward given to a messenger who brought good news; in time it came to mean the news itself. The verb from the same root, , means to bring good news. Our English word is the Old English gōdspel, a ‘good message’, made to render the Greek term (by way of the Latin bona adnuntiatio) part for part. The BSB and the KJV keep that old word; the LSV says good news; the Korean Bibles say 복음, a ‘blessed sound’.
The emperor’s good news
An inscription carved a few years before Jesus was born shows the word at work. In 9 BC the provincial assembly of Asia made the birthday of Augustus the first day of its year. Its decree praised him as a saviour who would put an end to war and set the world in peace, and declared that the birthday of the god had been for the world the beginning of good tidings, euangelia, because of him the Priene inscription. Around AD 75 Josephus tells how, when word spread that Vespasian had been made emperor, every city kept festivals and offered sacrifices for the good news Josephus, Jewish War 4. An emperor’s birth, an emperor’s accession: these were gospels.
Read in that world, Mark’s first line is not a quiet title but a claim. In an empire whose first emperor was styled son of the divine Julius, Mark gives the name gospel to the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
One gospel
The inscription speaks of good tidings in the plural; the New Testament always speaks of one gospel. The noun stands in 74 of its verses, and 58 of them are in Paul’s letters. Luke uses the verb in his Gospel but never the noun, and John’s Gospel has neither. In the first sentence he writes to Rome, Paul ties his whole life to the word:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God
Romans 1:1The gospel of God is news that comes from God. Mark’s gospel of Jesus Christ is news about him, and also news he brought: a Greek genitive can hold both, and readers through the centuries have heard both.
Christians kept the word as their own. On Matthew’s gospel of the kingdom Wesley writes that “the Gospel, that is, the joyous message, is the proper name of our religion” Wesley.
ObjectionSo did the church borrow “gospel” from emperor worship?
The word itself was ordinary Greek. What the New Testament means by it comes from Israel’s prophets. Isaiah sang of the one who brings news that God reigns, and the Greek translation made before Jesus’ birth, the Septuagint, rendered that herald’s work with this very verb. Many scholars hear the New Testament’s gospel sounding in both worlds at once: to Israel, news that the promise had come true; to Rome’s world, news of a king who was not Caesar. The next step goes down to that root.
This step’s verses, Mark 1:1 and Romans 1:1, each have a page in the dictionary of verses, with their original words, their translations and their commentaries side by side.
This step’s verses
Read each verse in the original, in several translations, with the commentaries and a note.
Verse dictionary →Source
- The provincial assembly of Asia, The Priene calendar inscription — 9 BC. Makes Augustus's birthday the first day of the year: "the birthday of the god was the beginning of the good tidings (euangelia) for the world because of him." English: Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (1910).
- Josephus, The Jewish War 4.618, 4.656 — c. AD 75. When word spread that Vespasian had been made emperor, every city kept festivals and sacrifices for the "good news" (euangelia). English: Whiston (1737).
- Jewish translators at Alexandria, The Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) — 3rd–1st century BC. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, often quoted by the New Testament writers. It mostly renders בָּשַׂר (basar) by εὐαγγελίζομαι (euangelizomai) (2 Samuel 18; Psalms 40:9, 68:11, 96:2; Isaiah 40:9, 52:7, 61:1), and calls the reward for news εὐαγγέλια at 2 Samuel 4:10. English: Brenton (1844).