What is a Gospel?

What is a Gospel? And How Should We Read A Gospel?

A Gospel is a book that narrates the career of Jesus: his public life and teaching, his death, and his resurrection. In some ways the four Gospels represent the memoirs of the Apostles. But these memoirs are far more than a re-telling of the facts of Jesus’ career: they are the proclamation of Jesus in written form. The Gospel writers intend to tell the story of Jesus in such a way that invites a faith response to Jesus. The Gospels are far more than just factual accounts of Jesus life, death and resurrection: they invite a response to Jesus, both as a historical person and as a person who is still alive today.

Gospels are a bit like biographies, especially the biographies that were written in the centuries just before and after Jesus’ years in Palestine. Those ancient biographies tended to focus on the significance or meaning of a person’s life and career. As such they often consider small events or conversations, things that reveal character or express the inner person, and sometimes don’t look so much at major world news events. When we read a modern biography we expect to find emphasis on historic ‘facts’: date of birth, childhood influences, schooling, major accomplishments, physical appearance, and so on. The Gospels follow more closely the ancient biographical approach than they do a more modern understanding of biography. So it is not surprising that we have stories about what Jesus said and did told in ways that reveal who Jesus is and only a few references to the major political events of those days.

Gospels are crafted to invite a response to a living historical figure. They are far more than ‘just the facts’. Rather they are intentionally designed by each individual author to tell the stories of Jesus’ career from a specific viewpoint, and for a specific purpose, and sometimes for specific theological impact. That is why each of the Gospels narrates the events of Jesus life in a little bit different way.

So a Gospel should be read on its own terms and allowed to have the impact intended by the author. Each Gospel is a stand-alone book in and of itself: it tells the good news of Jesus in a comprehensive and holistic way that expresses the intent of the author. That is why it is extremely important to let the text speak for itself first and foremost, and only then consider other texts, other Gospels of Letters or Old Testament writings. First: let the text speak for itself in order to understand and respond to the intentional design of the author.

How do you allow the text to speak for itself? By careful study of the text! Things like repeated ideas, internal definition, developing themes, contrasts, and other literary study tools enable careful textual study. Careful study of the text also includes looking for how people in the story understood and responded to the narrative.

Careful study of a Gospel also includes something unique: response is invited, in fact response is essential to really understanding a Gospel, and the gospel. So in the final analysis, the way we should read a Gospel is with willingness to both understand the author’s meaning, and accept the gospel author’s invitation to interact with Jesus Christ, the living historical figure who today, like two thousand years ago, invites us to follow him and capture men and women