The gospel

In the historical Roman imperial cult and today in Christianity, the gospel is a message about salvation by a divine figure, a savior, who has brought peace or other benefits to humankind.

In Ancient Greek religion, the word designated a type of sacrifice or ritual dedication intended to thank the gods upon receiving good news.

The religious concept is found at least as far back as Greece's Classical era and Roman authors are known to have adopted it toward the end of the 1st century BCE.

In Greek the term originally designated a reward or tip customarily paid to a messenger who has delivered good news.

In the play The Knights by Aristophanes of 424 BCE, the comic character Paphlagon proposes an excessive sacrifice of a hundred heifers to Athena to celebrate good news.

In it, the Koine Greek word for "good news" appears in celebrating the birth of the god and savior Augustus, sent by Providence to bring peace.

It announces the intention of the city of Priene to change their calendar so that it begins on the birthday of Augustus, the first day of the good news.

Dated to 9 BCE, a few years before the birth of Jesus, the inscription demonstrates that the gospel was used as a political term before it was applied to Christianity.

[citation needed] Missiology professor Howard A. Snyder writes, "God has chosen to place the Church with Christ at the very center of His plan to reconcile the world to himself".

[23][24] Another perspective described in the Pauline epistles is that it is through the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection, and the resulting worship of people from all nations, that evil is defeated on a cosmic scale.

Reflecting on the third chapter of Ephesians 3,[25] theologian Howard A. Snyder writes: God's plan for the church extends to the fullest extent of the cosmos.