What does Gospel mean?

Question: What is the equivalent for gospel in classical Hebrew, and how do you identify it?

This is a good question, it is not immediately obvious how to go about finding the answer.  Since the preserved text of the New Testament writings is in Greek, one must begin by determining the exact meaning of the Greek term.  In this case the Greek term is ευαγγελιον.  The ευ prefix means good, and the rest of the word comes from αγγελoς, which means messenger.  In this case the noun form ευαγγελιον means good news, and the verb form means proclaim good news.  The methological problem is that gospel does not obviously mean either of these things.  The term gospel comes from Old English gōdspel, which means good tale. 

From this point one can try to back translate into Hebrew, which would result in the modern Hebrew expression חדשות תובות.  This does indeed mean good news, but it is the wrong answer.  A second approach is to look up good news in a concordance.  This will identify such passages as 2 Sam 4:10, 18:22, 18:25 for hr:cB].  The corresponding verbal form is rceb'm].  These also are the terms used in the available Hebrew translations of the New Testament, if you have access to them.  Modern Hebrew continues to use the noun form for tidings as well as the piel stem of the verbal root, but the implecation of good tidings is not inherent in the term..

Note particularly that this points up a problem for understanding the content of the New Testament in English translation – and presumably any translation: certain important words have been retained from ancient terms long after the meanings of those words have been forgotten in modern parlance.  This problem exists for native speakers of Israeli Hebrew as well, because the text of the Hebrew bible at least 2400 years old; meaning, usage, and grammar have changed, and some terms have dropped out of usage altogether.  Typical examples from English are angel, gospel, and atonement among others.  If you look up angel in a dictionary, you will find something like supernatural spirit messenger.  This is not what either the Greek or the Hebrew equivalent specifically means; rather this a meaning that translators have imposed by simply transliterating the Greek word.

The meaning of atone and atonement is also rather slippery.  If you look up atone in an English dictionary, you will find various combinations of the following: make amends, expiate, propitiate, reconcile.  If you look up expiate, you will find it defined by propitiate.  If you look up propitiate, you will find expiate.  But what does either of these mean???  These are all translations for the Hebrew root for כפר, which occurs in the piel stem and various nominal forms.  If you look up כפר in a Hebrew lexicon, you will get the above English terms back, getting you no closer to the actual meaning.  This same kind of problem exists with the Hebrew root פסח – Passover – טמא  – unclean – טהר – clean.

All of these terms are important for really understanding the message that the text was intended to convey.  Most people who have been raised up with exposure to the biblical message think they understand such major terms – and they do, until they try to deal with specific details of a particular passage.  Then one ends up with this: I really knew what it meant until I tried to define it.  In the future, I will try to assemble more detailed analyses on such terms as these.