What is The Gospel?
This is the key question. An equally important question might be what is not the Gospel?
Wikpedia
Here is the Wikipedia page on the Gospel.
Let's assume we are talking about the first definition from the Wikipedia:
To denote the proclamation of God's saving activity in Jesus of Nazareth or to denote the message proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth. This is the original New Testament usage (for example Mark 1:14-15 or 1 Corinthians 15:1-9, see also Strong's G2098).
Note this is really two definitions. But neither quite hits the mark.
The first is that the Gospel is proclamation of something. That confuses the proclamation with the content of the proclamation. The Gospel is still the Good News even if the story is not being told.
This gives rise to three questions.
1 - What is the good news?
2 - Why was it good news to the hearers?
3 - Why is it good news to me/us?
The second question splits into at least two separate questions. "Why was it good news to the first-century Jew?" and "Why was it good news to the first-century Gentile?"
See my point? Do this right and it's a full blown task.
If you want to see it done right, see N. T. Wright "Jesus and the Victory of God", "The New Testament and the People of God", and "Resurrection of the Son of God". When you've made it through those 3000 or so pages you have started to ask the right questions (and maybe found a few answers for yourself).
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