Pre-Christian Uses Of “Gospel”

In Eng­lish, the word gospel is laden with reli­gious mean­ing, but when Jesus and the apos­tles used the word euan­ge­lion (good news/gospel) they were using a non­re­li­gious word from their cul­ture.

There’s a good list­ing of ancient uses of the word at the Perseus Dig­i­tal Library, and by com­bin­ing that list with some oth­er resources I’ve cre­at­ed sum­ma­ry use­ful for those who don’t know Greek. When I could, I’ve put the Greek word in brack­ets so you can see the form that is used. This is pret­ty much just a list­ing of data with­out inter­pre­ta­tion — I’m mere­ly try­ing to share some of my research to save time for oth­ers who are walk­ing down the same road as me.

This is close to every pre-Chris­t­ian use of the noun euan­ge­lion (I did not inves­ti­gate the ver­bal form euan­ge­li­zomai — click the verb to launch your own research). You will note that the word (which looks like εὐαγγέλιον) is rel­a­tive­ly rare in ancient Greek, but com­mon in the New Tes­ta­ment. Also of note, the New Tes­ta­ment often talks of the gospel in the sin­gu­lar (to euan­ge­lion), but in pre-Chris­t­ian lit­er­a­ture the form used is almost always dif­fer­ent (it is usu­al­ly plur­al and often does not have the def­i­nite arti­cle attached). Even though Jesus and the first Chris­tians used a word from their cul­ture, they clear­ly invest­ed it with new mean­ing and placed an unprece­dent­ed empha­sis upon it.

I have arranged the ref­er­ences into two groups: the first group is from the sec­ond-cen­tu­ry BC through con­tem­po­raries of the New Tes­ta­ment authors, and the sec­ond group con­tains old­er uses which are less impor­tant for demon­strat­ing cur­rent usage.

One final dis­claimer: this post might make me look like some sort of Greek lan­guage guru. I am not. I am about as con­ver­sant with the Bib­li­cal lan­guages as are most sem­i­nary grad­u­ates ten years out of their pro­grams… which is to say, not near­ly as con­ver­sant as I should be.

The Most Important Pre-Christian Uses of the Word Euangelion

The Septuagint (LXX) – 2^nd century BC

The Sep­tu­agint (a Greek trans­la­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment) uses the word in 2 Sam 4:10

when a man told me, ‘Saul is dead,’ and thought he was bring­ing good news [εὐαγγέλια], I seized him and put him to death in Zik­lag” (view the Greek)

Diodorus Siculus (1^st century BC) – Library 15.74

[1b] Now Diony­sius had pro­duced a tragedy at the Lenaea at Athens and had won the vic­to­ry, and one of those who sang in the cho­rus, sup­pos­ing that he would be reward­ed hand­some­ly if he were the first to give news of the vic­to­ry, set sail to Corinth. There, find­ing a ship bound for Sici­ly, he trans­ferred to it, and obtain­ing favour­ing winds, speed­i­ly land­ed at Syra­cuse and gave the tyrant news of the vic­to­ry. [2] Diony­sius did reward him, and was him­self so over­joyed that he sac­ri­ficed to the gods for the good tid­ings [εὐαγγέλια] and insti­tut­ed a drink­ing bout and great feasts. (view the Greek)

Cicero (1^st century BC)

Cicero (writ­ing in Latin) uses the Greek word twice in his Let­ters to Atti­cus. I don’t know if that was con­sid­ered pre­ten­tious or not, but I know that I love see­ing the Greek mixed in with the Latin (which tells you just how much of a geek I am).

Let­ters to Atti­cus 2.3.1 (around 60 B.C.)

First, a tri­fle please for good news [εὐαγγέλια]. Valerius has been acquit­ted with Hort­en­sius as his advo­cate. (view the Latin)

Let­ters to Atti­cus 13.40.1 (around 45 B.C.)

Is that so? Does Bru­tus real­ly say that Cae­sar is going over to the right par­ty? That is good news [εὐαγγέλια]. (view the Latin)

The Priene Inscription (9 B.C.)

The most famous pre-Chris­t­ian use of the word is in The Priene Inscrip­tion. This is a let­ter from the Pro­con­sul Paulus Fabius Max­imus engraved in stone (pic­ture) in Priene, a city in mod­ern-day Turkey. Oth­er frag­men­tary inscrip­tions of this let­ter have been found in Apamea, Maeo­nia, Eume­nia, and Dory­laeum. This text is tagged OGIS 458 / SEG IV no 490, which means that you can see more about it in Ori­en­tis Grae­ci Inscrip­tiones Selec­tae (a 1905 com­pi­la­tion by Wil­hel­mus Dit­ten­berg­er usu­al­ly abbre­vi­at­ed as OGIS, avail­able online) or in Sup­ple­men­tum Epi­graph­icum Grae­cum (SEG) vol­ume 4. The let­ter is pret­ty long, but only the part below is rel­e­vant to the gospel.

It seemed good to the Greeks of Asia, in the opin­ion of the high priest Apol­lo­nius of Menophilus Azan­i­tus: ‘Since Prov­i­dence, which has ordered all things and is deeply inter­est­ed in our life, has set in most per­fect order by giv­ing us Augus­tus, whom she filled with virtue that he might ben­e­fit humankind, send­ing him as a sav­ior [σωτήρ], both for us and for our descen­dants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Cae­sar, by his appear­ance…. sur­pass­ing all pre­vi­ous bene­fac­tors, and not even leav­ing to pos­ter­i­ty any hope of sur­pass­ing what he has done, and since the birth­day of the god [τοῦ θεοῦ] Augus­tus was the begin­ning of the good tid­ings [εὐαγγέλιον] for the world that came by rea­son of him…

It’s so famous because it brings the idea of Cae­sar as a god and sav­ior to the world togeth­er with the notion that this was good news to be cel­e­brat­ed.

Josephus (1^st century A.D.)

Jew­ish Wars 2.420

Now this ter­ri­ble mes­sage [that a rebel­lion was brew­ing] was good news [εὐαγγέλιον] to Florus; and because his design was to have a war kin­dled, he gave the ambas­sadors no answer at all [to their request for assis­tance in stop­ping the sedi­tion before it grew]. (see the Greek)

Jew­ish Wars 4.618

fame car­ried [the news about Ves­pa­t­ian] abroad more sud­den­ly than one could have thought, that he was emper­or over the east, upon which every city kept fes­ti­vals, and cel­e­brat­ed sac­ri­fices and obla­tions for such good news [εὐαγγέλια] (see the Greek)

Jew­ish Wars 4.656

And now, as Ves­pasian was come to Alexan­dria, this good news [εὐαγγέλια] came from Rome, and at the same time came embassies from all his own hab­it­able earth, to con­grat­u­late him upon his advance­ment; and though this Alexan­dria was the great­est of all cities next to Rome, it proved too nar­row to con­tain the mul­ti­tude that then came to it.  (see the Greek)

Plutarch (1^st century AD)

Age­si­laus 33.4

even after the bat­tle at Man­ti­nea, which Thucy­dides has described, the one who first announced the vic­to­ry had no oth­er reward for his glad tid­ings [sin­gu­lar] than a piece of meat sent by the mag­is­trates from the pub­lic mess. (see the Eng­lish con­text)

Demetrius 17.5

Accord­ing­ly, when [Aris­tode­mus] had come near, he stretched out his hand and cried with a loud voice: “Hail, King Antigonus, we have con­quered Ptole­my in a sea-fight, and now hold Cyprus, with twelve thou­sand eight hun­dred sol­diers as pris­on­ers of war.” To this Antigonus replied: “Hail to thee also, by Heav­en! but for tor­tur­ing us in this way, thou shalt under­go pun­ish­ment; the reward for thy good tid­ings [plur­al] thou shalt be some time in get­ting. (see the Eng­lish con­text)

Moralia (Glo­ry of Athens) 347d (and e)

Why, as we are told, the Spar­tans mere­ly sent meat from the pub­lic com­mons to the man who brought glad tid­ings [εὐαγγέλιον] of the vic­to­ry in Man­ti­neia which Thucy­dides describes! And indeed the com­pil­ers of his­to­ries are, as it were, reporters of great exploits who are gift­ed with the fac­ul­ty of felic­i­tous speech, and achieve suc­cess in their writ­ing through the beau­ty and force of their nar­ra­tion; and to them those who first encoun­tered and record­ed the events [εὐαγγέλιον] are indebt­ed for a pleas­ing retelling of them. (see the Greek, Eng­lish)

Other (Older) References

Aristophanes (5^th century BC)

You can see the plur­al of the word used by Aristo­phanes in The Knights (Equi­tes) lines 647 and 656, both ref­er­ences are plur­al. This trans­la­tion is from Trans­la­tor at Work.

“You!  You… Coun­cil­lors!  I’ve got good news [εὐαγγέλια — see the Greek] for you!” I said to them.  “News that are so good, I want to make sure that I’m the first to announce them to you.  It’s the price of sar­dines, folks!  It’s the best it’s ever been since the out­break of the war!”

Well, you should have seen their faces then! Turned nice and hap­py right there and then. They want­ed to give me a hero’s gar­land for telling the good news. So I gave them my advice. I said to them that if they want­ed to get their fair share for the price of an obol, they should rush down the mar­ket and buy them­selves all the plates they can. Cor­ner the mar­ket.  And keep it all a secret.

They applaud­ed me loud­ly then and gawked at me awestruck.

But then, that bas­tard, Paphlagon, who knew how to press the Coun­cil­lors’ but­tons, got up and said, “Men, these aus­pi­cious news [εὐαγγέλια — see the Greek] should move us to make a sac­ri­fice to our god­dess! I sug­gest we should slaugh­ter one hun­dred cows!”

And also in his play Wealth (Plu­tus) line 765 — (this trans­la­tion is also from Trans­la­tor at Work)

So, come on, now, folks! Dance! Come on, all togeth­er now: dance and sing and march and be hap­py because the day will nev­er come again when you come home and find your flour sack emp­ty!  Dance!

Wife:

By the god­dess Hekate! What won­der­ful news! [εὐαγγέλιά — see the Greek] Just for that I’m going to hang a long neck­lace of bread rolls around your neck!

Aeschines (4^th century BC) Against Ctesiphon section 160

But when Philip was dead and Alexan­der had come to the throne, Demos­thenes again put on prodi­gious airs and caused a shrine to he ded­i­cat­ed to Pau­sa­nias and involved the sen­ate in the charge of hav­ing offered sac­ri­fice of thanks­giv­ing as for good news [εὐαγγελίων] (name­ly that Philip of Mace­don had been assas­si­nat­ed by Pau­sa­nias) (see the Greek)

Isocrates, Areopagiticus (4^th Century BC) section 10.

As if this were not enough, we have been com­pelled to save the friends of the The­bans at the cost of los­ing our own allies; and yet to cel­e­brate the good news [εὐαγγέλια] of such accom­plish­ments we have twice now offered grate­ful sac­ri­fices to the gods, and we delib­er­ate about our affairs more com­plaisant­ly than men whose actions leave noth­ing to be desired! (see the Greek)

Xenophon (4^th century BC)

Hel­leni­ca 1.6.37

This they pro­ceed­ed to do; and when they were sail­ing in, Eteon­i­cus began to offer sac­ri­fices for the good news [Ï„á½° εὐαγγέλια], and gave orders that the sol­diers should take their din­ner, that the traders should put their goods into their boats in silence and sail off to Chios (for the wind was favourable), and that the triremes also should sail thith­er with all speed. (Glen’s note: this good news was, in this case, fake. Eteon­i­cus was pre­tend­ing that the dead Cal­l­i­crati­das had instead won a great vic­to­ry over the Athe­ni­ans). (see the Greek)

Hel­len­cia 4.3.14

Now Age­si­laus, on learn­ing these things, at first was over­come with sor­row; but when he had con­sid­ered that the most of his troops were the sort of men to share glad­ly in good for­tune if good for­tune came, but that if they saw any­thing unpleas­ant, they were under no com­pul­sion to share in it,—thereupon, chang­ing the report, he said that word had come that Peisander was dead, but vic­to­ri­ous in the naval bat­tle. [14] And at the moment of say­ing these things he offered sac­ri­fice as if for good news [εὐαγγέλια], and sent around to many peo­ple por­tions of the vic­tims which had been offered; so that when a skir­mish with the ene­my took place, the troops of Age­si­laus won the day in con­se­quence of the report that the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans were vic­to­ri­ous in the naval bat­tle. (see the Greek)

Menander?

Sup­pos­ed­ly the word is used by Menan­der (Per­ic. 993), (4^th cen­tu­ry BC), but I can’t find the Greek text online any­where to ver­i­fy that.

Homer

Homer used the term twice in The Odyssey (8^th cen­tu­ry BC) in 14.152 and 14.166, but The Odyssey was so ancient by New Tes­ta­ment times that I don’t think of it as much help in deter­min­ing con­tem­po­rary usage. I’m stretch­ing it to include 4^th and 5^th cen­tu­ry ref­er­ences. Homer was as ancient to them as Chaucer is to us. Which, in case you’ve for­got­ten Chaucer, reads like this: “Whilom, as olde sto­ries tellen us, Ther was a duc that high­te The­seus; Of Atthenes he was lord and gov­ernour, And in his tyme swich a con­quer­our…” – not much help to a schol­ar from the year 4,000 in deter­min­ing how a word is used in 2010. Bring­ing in stuff from the 4th cen­tu­ry BC is about as ancient as I care to get.

If I learn of more ref­er­ences (or if I have any mis­takes point­ed out to me) I’ll update this post.