We get the English word gospel from the old English word gōdspel. Now spel means to report of to tell news, and so with the prefix it looks like it could mean to tell news about God. Except that the prefix actually isn’t god, but instead means good. And so gōdspel, just like gospel, means the good news, or proclaiming good news. And that is the message that starts the gospel of Mark, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Now we could probably spend our whole time just unpacking that single line, but we’re not going to, except to say that the Greek word for good news there, is the word that the old English gōdspel was trying to capture and that is euangelion. In looking at that word, I’m sure you can see some antecedents of some English words, like evangelist and also angel, which is appropriate as those who bring good news. But it had broader meaning than that as well. It was the news that was brought, it was the person who brought the news and it was also the word used for a reward given to the person bringing the news. So we still have the expression don’t kill the messenger, which would sometimes happen, but the opposite of that was that a reward would be given to someone who brought good news. Same word. And so we have reference to this in several famous Greek works, including Homer and Plutarch and Cicero. And yet, it appears that Mark is doing something very different here with this word. Mark is saying is that this good news is not just about the message, but it’s about the messenger himself. That Jesus is not just the bringer of the good news, but the good news himself and that appears to be unique.
Now Paul, who is responsible for the earliest Christian writings that we have, had also used the term euangelion as good news, but he was primarily referencing to the death and resurrection of Jesus. And although Mark has been said to be a passion narrative with a long introduction, he appears to be the first to be making not just the connection that he is, but also possibly creating a new genre of literature, the gospel. There is lots of argument of whether that is what Mark is doing here, as he doesn’t actually call this work a gospel, and there is speculation of whether he was building off of other works already in existence that we no longer have access to. But, this is a different type of work than what we know existed at the time, such as the works about great men, thinking things like Plutarch’s Lives. Luke’s gospel is very similar to that type of work, but Mark is not. He is doing something different, and again that’s encapsulated in this opening line “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
