(I personally dispute that any of the gospels are truly βίοι: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1724.) Once the term "gospel" had been applied to one or more core texts, I think it was very easy for that term to be applied to other texts which, despite belonging to different genres, served similar purposes in the Christian circles in and/or for which they were composed. Compare modern "gospels" as extreme examples of this possibility, such as The Gospel According to André.Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:21 am Hope this is relevant. Here are some of my questions about the "gospel" title and genre--
1) What explains the use of the same word for two very different types of writing: bioi (narratives) on the one hand, and wisdom/parenetic discourses on the other (such as gThomas, gPhilip, gTruth)
I personally think that Paul's influence has been somewhat overblown, and suspect that at least some gospel texts would/could have been written even if Paul had never existed. In some circles, yes, Paul is paramount. In others, not so much.2) Can a broad historical argument be made that all these texts were jockeying with each other to inherit and develop the original Pauline gospel, which itself is a riff on themes in both the prophets and in Roman imperial ideology?
ETA: I think that Paul made a big splash in the small pond that was Christianity at the time, but the pond was there both before and after Paul.
This is not actually the case. The Coptic manuscript of Thomas has "gospel according to Thomas" (corresponding to εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Θωμᾶ in Greek) just like the others: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1869:3) Is there any significance in the textual critical evidence about differences in how the term gospel was deployed in the 2nd c? For example, "euangellion kata __" is the NT formula, whereas the coptic gThomas apparently just has "the gospel of Thomas" written at the end of the scroll.
The translations do not always make this clear. But all of the gospels, canonical or otherwise, tended to follow the same formula: κατὰ Θωμᾶ, κατὰ Πέτρον, κατὰ Ἑβραίους, κατὰ Αἰγυπτίους, and so on.