Are the Gospel and the Bible the same thing?
In everyday Turkish, "İncil" (Gospel) and "Kutsal Kitap" (the Bible) are often used interchangeably, but the two terms differ in scope. The Bible refers to the entire collection of Christian scripture: 66 books in total, the Old Testament (39 books) and the New Testament (27…
In everyday Turkish, "İncil" (Gospel) and "Kutsal Kitap" (the Bible) are often used interchangeably, but the two terms differ in scope. The Bible refers to the entire collection of Christian scripture: 66 books in total, the Old Testament (39 books) and the New Testament (27 books). The word "Gospel" comes from the Greek "euangelion" (good news) and, in the narrow sense, names the first four books of the New Testament — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These four books recount Jesus' life, teaching, death and resurrection from four witness perspectives. The opening line of Mark shows this usage: the book introduces itself as "The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." In broader popular usage "İncil" sometimes means the whole New Testament, and sometimes the whole Bible; the Turkish triad "Tevrat, Zebur, İncil" points to different parts of the same collection — the Torah being the first five books attributed to Moses, the Zebur the psalms of David, and the İncil the New Testament. In short, every Gospel is part of the Bible, but the Bible is more than the Gospels. In Paul's letter to the Romans the word "gospel" describes not a book but the news itself; the book titles later grew out of that usage. The site's guide pages explain these terms in detail under headings such as "What is the Gospel?" and "Torah, Psalms and Gospel," and the reading index gives access to all 66 books.