The Gospel Hologram: The Sign on the Cross and the New Testament Gospels

In the New Testament, the ＂gospel＂ and its proclamation are rooted in Old Greek translation of passages promising exaltation for the people of Judah upon their return from Babylonian exile (Isa 40:9; 52:7; 61:1). That expectation languished until the coming of Jesus, according to Jesus devotees such as Paul the Apostle. Used of the orally preached message of salvation through Jesus, εὐαγγέλιον, ＂gospel,＂ eventually was applied also to documentary accounts of Jesus circulating among Christians near the end of the first century CE. The first written εὐαγγέλιον about Jesus, however, was neither a statement in one of Paul’s letters nor any of the biographical stories attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If those stories are to be believed, it was a sign proclaiming in apparent mockery that the crucified Jesus was ＂the king of the Jews.＂ While the basic meaning of the inscription on this object is the same in all four canonical gospels, each of them offers its own unique wording of it-much the way the gospels as whole narratives vary one from another while delivering a consonant message. In those same documents the terms ＂Son of God,＂ ＂Christ＂ (that is, Messiah), and the ＂King of the Jews＂ are so interrelated that each of them implies the others, which is why the sign, or title, in its setting qualifies as a spare but unambiguous gospel declaration. The title constitutes a mise en abyme, a miniature version of the object in which it appears. Further, the version of the sign in the Fourth Gospel encodes the Synoptic Canon. The title along with its crucified subject may be thought of as a literary ＂hologram,＂ a multi-dimensional recording of the whole onto one of its parts.