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Therefore, when inspired writers proclaimed the good news of salvation they used the word euangelion which was understood in the day as "good news." Even though it is not believed that the New Testament message has been derived from this Roman cult, we see that people would have already associated a religious content with euangelion.# This insight helps in understanding passages such as Hebrews 4:2: "For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." The idea here, from the context of this passage, is that to the first century Jews the "good news" was preached similarly compared to the "good news" for Israel, as they came out of Egypt, to a land flowing with milk and honey. .
Euangelion rarely occurs outside of the New Testament. Nevertheless, in classical Greek it has basically three meanings. Barclay notes that (1) originally, it meant "the reward given to a messenger for bringing good tidings." It is so used in the Septuagint# in 2 Samuel 4:10. (2) It then went on to mean "the sacrifices made to the gods when such good tidings were received." (3) Finally, in late Hellenistic Greek# it came to mean "the good tidings themselves."# .
Classical, Septuagint, and Various Papyri Examples.
Some specific classical examples include the fact that it was used by Homer to refer, not to the message, but to the reward given to the messenger.# Furthermore, in Attic Greek it always occurred in the plural and generally referred to sacrifices or thank offerings made in behalf of good tidings. Interestingly, Thayer notes that from the Hebrew it often meant the fee given to a teacher.# It is a word that was primarily secular yet began to carry some religious meaning by the first century AD. Extra biblical occurrences of euangelion are relatively small. However, since it is sometimes used in connection with religious activities it carried a religious as well as secular connotation.
