GOMER

of the early race of Anakim. He was slain, in single combat, by David (or, according to anotlier tradition, by Eliianan) at Epiies-dammim, before an impending battle between the Philistines and the Israelites. That this 'duel' was of a religious character comes out clearly in 1 S 17"- ", where we are told that the Philistine cursed David by his gods, while David replies: ' And I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts.' The fact that David brings the giant's sword as an offering into the sanctuary at Nob points in the same direction. Goliath is described as being 'six cubits and a span' in height, i.e. over nine feet, at the likeliest reckoning; his armour and weapons were proportionate to his great height. Human skeletons have been found of equal height, so that there is nothing improbable in the Biblical account of his stature. The flight of the Philis-tines on the death of their champion could be accounted for by their belief that the Israelite God had shown Himself superior to their god (but see 2 S 23'-'2, 1 Ch 11'™-); see, further, David, Elhanan.

W. O. E. Oesterley.

GOMER. — 1. One of the sons of Japheth and the father of Ashkeuaz, Riphath, and Togarmah (Gn 10"-, 1 Ch I"-), who along with Togarmah is included by Ezekiel in the army of Gog (Ezk 38=). Gomer represents the people termed Gimirr& by the Assyrians, and Cimmerians by the Greeks. Their original home appears to have been north of the Euxine, but by the 7th cent. B.C. they had completely conquered Cappadocia and settled there.

2; Daughter of Diblaim, wife of the prophet Hosea (wh. see). L. W. King.

GOMORRAH.— See Plain [Cities op the].

GOODMAN. — The only occurrence of this Eng. word in the OT is Pr 7" ' the goodman is not at home.' The Heb. is simply 'the man'; but as the reference is to the woman's husband, 'goodman,' still used in Scotland for 'husband,' was in 1611 an accurate rendering. In the NT the word occurs 12 times (always in the Synop. Gospels) as the trans, of oikodespotes, 'master of the house.' The same Gr. word is translated 'householder' in Mt 13"- '2 20> 2V, and 'master of the house' in Mt 10^5, Lk 1326.

GOPHER WOOD (Gn 6"), of which the ark was constructed, was by tradition cypress wood, and this, or else the cedar, may be inferred as probable.

E. W. G. Mastehman.

GORGIAS. — A general of Antiochus Epiphanes, who is described as 'a mighty man of the king's friends' (1 Mac 3"), and a captain who 'had experience in matters of war' (2 Mac 8'). When Antiochus set out on his Parthian campaign (b.c. 166'or 16S), his chancellor, Lysias, who was charged with the suppression of the revolt in Pal., despatched a large army to Judaea, under the command of Ptolemy, Nicanor, and Gorgias. The fortunes of the war are described in 1 Mac 3" i^ S165. Esff., 2 Mac 8>2-M 10"«- 12™-; Jos. Ant. xii. vii. 4, viii. 6.

60RTYNA.— The most important city in Crete, after Gnossus, situated about midway between the two ends of the island. It is named (1 Mac 15^) among the autonomous States and communes to which were sent copies of the decree of the Roman Senate in favour of the Jews.

GOSHEN.— 1. An unknown city in Judah (Jos IS")-2. An unknown territory in S. Palestine, probably the environs of No. 1 (Jos 10"). 3. A division of Egypt in which the children of Israel were settled between Jacob's entry and the Exodus. It was a place of good pasture, on or near the frontier of Palestine, and plentiful in vegetables and fish (Nu 11'). It cannot with exact-ness be defined. Jth 1«- "> is probably wrong in in-cluding the nomes of Tanis and Memphis in Goshen. The LXX reads 'Gesem of Arabia' in Gn 45" 46*', elsewhere ' Gesem.' Now Arabia is defined by Ptolemy,

GOSPELS

the geographer, as an Egyptian nome on the East border of the Delta of the Nile, and this seems to be the locaUty most probably contemplated by the narrator. It runs eastwards from opposite the modern Zagazig (Bubastis) to the Bitter Lakes. 'There seems to be no Egyptian origin for the name, unless it represented Kesem, the Egyptian equivalent of Phacussa (the chief town of the nome of Arabia according to Ptolemy). It may be of Semitic origin, as is suggested by the occurrence of the name, as noticed above, outside Egyptian territory.

R. A. S. Macalisteh.

GOSPEL.— This word (lit. 'God-story') represents Greek euangelion, which reappears in one form or another in ecclesiastical Latin and in most modern languages. In classical Greek the word means the reward given to a bearer of good tidings (so 2 S 4'" LXX in pi.), but after-wards it came to mean the message itself, and so in 2 S 18=!»- K- 2» [LXX] a derived word is used in this sense. In NT the word means ' good tidings ' about the salvation of the world by the coming of Jesus Christ. It is not there used of the written record. A genitive case or a possessive pronoun accompanying it denotes: (a) the person or the thing preached (the gospel of Christ, or of peace, or of salvation, or of the grace of God, or of God, or of the Kingdom, Mt 425 9» 24'S Mk l'«, Ac 202*, Ro 15", Eph 1'^ 6" etc.); or sometimes (6) the preacher (Mk 1' (7), Ro 2'e la^s, 2 Co i' etc.); or rarely (c) the persons preached to (Gal 2"). ' The gospel ' is often used in NT absolutely, as in Mk 1" 8» 14' RV, 16", Ac 16', Ro 1128, 2 Co S's (where the idea must not be entertained that the reference is to Luke as an Evangelisl), and so 'this gospel,' Mt. 26"; but English readers should bear in mind that usually (though not in Mk 16") the EV phrase 'to preach the gospel' repre-sents a simple verb of the Greek. The noun is not found in Lk., Heb., or the CathoUc Epistles, and only once in the Johannine writings (Rev 14«, 'an eternal gospel' — an angelic message). In Ro 10" 'the gospel' is used absolutely of the message of the OT prophets.

The written record was not called ' the Gospel ' till a later age. By the earUest generation of Christians the oral teaching was the main thing regarded; men told what they had heard and seen, or what they had received from eye-witnesses. As these died out and the written record alone remained, the perspective altered. The earliest certain use of the word in this sense is in Justin Martyr (c. a.d. 150: 'The Apostles in the Memoirs written by themselves, which are called Gospels,' Apol. i. 66; cf. 'the Memoirs which were drawn up by His Apostles and those who followed them,' Diai. 103), though some find it in Ignatius and the Didache. The earUest known titles of the Evangelic records (which, however, we cannot assert to be contemporary with the records themselves) are simply 'According to Matthew,' etc. A. J. Maclean.

GOSPELS. — Under this heading we may consider the four Gospels as a whole, and their relations to one another, leaving detailed questions of date and author-ship to the separate articles.

1. The aims of the Evangelists. — On this point we have contemporary evidence in the Lukan preface (1'-^), which shows that no EvangeUst felt himself absolved from taking all possible pains in securing accuracy, that many had already written Gospel records, and that their object was to give a contemporary account of our Lord's Ufe on earth. As yet, when St. Luke wrote, these records had not been written by eye-witnesses. But they depended for their authority on eye-witnesses (12); and this is the important point, the names of the authors being comparatively immaterial. The records have a religious aim (Jn 20"). Unlike the modern bi-ography, which seeks to relate all the principal events of the life described, the Gospel aims at producing faith by describing a few significant incidents taken out of a much larger whole. Hence the Evangelists are all

304