The Books of the New Testament | Page 6

The modern English word "Gospel" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon
word Godspell, which means "God story," the story about the life of
God in human flesh. It does not, therefore, exactly correspond with the
Greek name euaggelion, which means "good tidings." In the earliest
times the Greek name meant the good tidings proclaimed by our Lord
about the Kingdom of God which He had come to establish. And, as
our Lord Himself rules over this kingdom, the tidings about the
kingdom included tidings about Himself. So Christ Himself says, "for
My sake and the gospel's" (Mark viii. 35). After the Ascension of our
Lord and the disappearance of His visible presence, the euaggelion
came to mean the good tidings about Christ, rather than the good
tidings brought by Christ (see 1 Cor. ix. 14 and 2 Cor. iv. 4). So St.
Paul generally means by euaggelion the good news, coming from God,
of salvation freely given to man through Christ. When he speaks of
"My gospel" (Rom. ii. 16), he means "my explanation of the gospel;"
and when he says, "I had been intrusted with the gospel of the
uncircumcision" (Gal. ii. 7), he means that he had been appointed by
God to preach the good tidings to the Gentiles, with special emphasis
on the points most necessary for their instruction.
The word euaggellon, in the sense of a written gospel, is first found in
the ancient Christian manual called the Didaché, or Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles, in ch. xv.: "Reprove one {10} another, not in anger
but in peace, as ye have it in the gospel." This book was probably
composed about A.D. 100. The word seems to have been still more
definitely applied to a written account of the life of Christ in the time of
the great heretic Marcion, A.D. 140. The plural word euaggelia,
signifying the Four Gospels, is first found in a writing of Justin
Martyr,[1] about A.D. 152. It is important to notice that he also calls
them "Memoirs of the Apostles," and that he refers to them collectively
as "the Gospel," inasmuch as they were, in reference to their distinctive

value as records of Christ, one book.
[Sidenote: Their Genuineness.]
The first three Gospels do not contain the name of the writers in any
connection which can be used to prove conclusively that they were
written by the men whose names they bear. On the other hand, the
fourth Gospel in a concluding passage (John xxi. 24) contains an
obvious claim to have been written by that intimate friend of Jesus to
whom the Church has always attributed it. But the titles, "according to
Matthew," "according to Mark," "according to Luke," rest on excellent
authority. And they imply that each book contains the good news
brought by Christ and recorded in the teaching of the evangelist
specified. These titles must, at the very least, signify that the Christians
who first gave these titles to these books, meant that each Gospel was
connected with one particular person who lived in the apostolic age,
and that it contained nothing contrary to what that person taught. The
titles, taken by themselves, are therefore compatible with the theory
that the first three Gospels were perhaps written by friends or disciples
of the men whose names they bear. But we shall afterwards see that
there is overwhelming evidence to show that the connection between
each book and the specified person is much closer than that theory
would suggest.
Speaking of the four Gospels generally, we may first observe that it is
impossible to place any one of them as late as A.D. 100, {11} and that
the first three Gospels must have been written long before that date.
This is shown by the internal evidence, of which proof will be given in
detail in the chapters dealing with the separate Gospels. The external
evidence of the use of all the four Gospels by Christians, and to some
extent by non-Christians, supports the internal evidence. Let us begin
by noting facts which are part of undoubted history, and then work
back to facts of earlier date. It is now undisputed that between the years
170 and 200 after Christ our four Gospels were known and regarded as
genuine products of the apostolic age. St. Irenaeus, who became Bishop
of Lyons in France in A.D. 177, and was the pupil of Polycarp, who
had actually been a disciple of St. John, uses and quotes the four

Gospels. He shows that various semi-Christian sects appeal severally to
one of the four Gospels as supporting their peculiar views, but that the
Christian Church accepts all four. He lays great stress on the fact that
the teaching of the Church has always been the same, and he was
personally acquainted with the state of