Explanatory Notes on Birth Stories -- Published

I have now finished publishing Explanatory Notes on the Birth Stories. This is verse by verse commentary on John 1:1-18, Matthew 1-2, and Luke 1-2. All of it is also available unedited here for free on the blog. 

The printed version is available here.

The Kindle version is available here.

I will probably try to do an Explanatory Notes on the Crucifixion/Resurrection Stories too around Easter.

Explanatory Notes -- John 1:1

1:1 In the beginning was the Logos, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

1. If you have grown up as a Christian, the expression, "the word of God," probably makes you think immediately of the Bible. The Bible is indeed the word of God. However, the New Testament was not yet collected when these words were written down. It is natural for us to come to the words of the Bible with the definitions in our heads, but to know what the Bible actually meant when God first inspired it, we need to know what these words meant when the author of John wrote them. [1] 

Spoiler alert. We will find out who this Logos is when we get to John 1:14. The "Logos of God" is not the Bible in this context. It is Jesus. Christ is the Logos. "The Logos became flesh, and tabernacled among us."

[I have since inserted several 100 words here on an orthodox, theological reading of John 1:1. It will appear in the published version, Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Birth.]

The phrase, "the logos of God" had a history. It had a known background at the time of Christ. It was not an expression that the beloved disciple came up with himself. Yes, we can find references to the "word" in the Old Testament. Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path." This psalm probably did especially have the Law, the Pentateuch, in mind. 

More immediately, John 1:1 has clear echoes of Genesis 1 and God in creation. "And God said, 'Let there be light.'" God speaks the entire creation into order in Genesis 1. Each day of creation begins with the word of God. The phrase here, "in the beginning" is clearly meant to echo Genesis 1:1.

2. However, much happened in the hundreds of years between Psalm 119 and the Gospel of John. In the Greek world, the Logos was a major part of Stoic philosophy, which originated around 300BC. In Stoicism, the Word was the Mind that governed the world. Those things that happened in the world happened because the Word wanted it to happen. Like fate, it was pointless to fight against the Word, because everything would certainly end up the way the Word directed it to be. 

Rather, you should "love your fate" (amor fati). The Stoic conception of the divine Mind was very amenable to the Jewish understanding of God. In fact, a famous Stoic hymn by Cleanthes called, "A Hymn to Zeus," could almost have been written to the God of Israel.

What makes this Greek background potentially relevant is the fact that some prominent Jewish thinkers, especially at Alexandria in Egypt, integrated the Old Testament sense of God's word and God's speaking with this Stoic philosophy, also mixing in some Platonic philosophy as well. This mixture of philosophies is known as "Middle Platonism." The best-known Jewish thinker to use this synthesis to interpret the Bible is Philo, who was probably born around 20BC.

From Platonism, Philo believed that God was the ultimate pattern of all things. The Logos or Word of God was the image of God, God's shadow. Then the world was a copy of the Word. In his synthesis, the Word was the instrument of God in creation, the one "through whom" God made the world. From Stoicism, Philo saw the Logos as the pilot of the world, the tool God uses to implement his will in the world.

A keen eye will see some possible parallels between this "Logos speculation" and various passages in the New Testament. The prologue of John is the most obvious intersection, as we will see, but several other passages also come to mind:

• Colossians 1:15 -- "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (cf. Philo, Special Laws 1.81).
• Hebrews 4:12 -- "The Logos of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword" (cf. Philo, Heir 130).
• Hebrews 10:1 -- "The Law, having a shadow of the good things to come, not the image itself of the things..." (cf. Philo, Allegorical Laws, 3.96).
• 1 Corinthians 8:6 -- "For us [is] one God, the Father, from whom all things... and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things" (cf. Philo, Cherubim 127).

Whether these parallels prove to be substantial or not, they are at least worth investigating.

3. a. "In the beginning, was the Logos."
How would a Jew like Philo have understood this statement? God created the world by speaking it into existence. The Word of God is God's will for the world in action. God said, "Let it be," and it was. Everything started with God speaking.

b. "The word was with God."
John uses a unique expression for "with" here. It is not the normal word of accompaniment. It is normally a word that means "to" or "toward." The Word was toward God does not really make a lot of sense at first glance. It would make more immediate sense if John had put, "the Word was from God."

On the one hand, it is hard to know the colloquialisms of late first century Ephesus. Perhaps this preposition simply meant "with" in town. Or perhaps it means something like, "the Word belonged with God." "The Word related or pertained to God."

c. "The word was divine."
This part of the verse has long been a point of debate. Jehovah's Witnesses translate the verse, "The Word was a god," pointing out that there is no word "the" (called the article) on God. However, there is a grammatical rule called "Colwell's Rule" that argues that the reason it doesn't have the article is the order of the Greek words. The order is "God was the Word." 

Colwell noted first that this is a situation where you have two nouns joined by "was," which is called a "to be" verb. He then noted that the "predicate" comes first (the predicate is the part of the sentence in English that normally comes after the verb). In this situation in the Greek language, he noted, the first noun usually does not have the word the on it, even though it is part of the meaning.

Bottom line? He argued that it should be translated, "The Word was God."

In general, when a noun in Greek does not have the word the on the front, it does not mean that we should stick the word a or an in front of it. The article ("the") in Greek is used when you are talking about a specific thing. However, without the article, the noun tends to be talking about a kind of thing. 

For this reason, I wonder if the best translation is something like, "the Word was divine." "God" in this case would give a categorization of the Logos. What category does the Logos belong to? It belongs in the category of God. 

It remained for the Church to unpack the precise relationship between the Logos, Christ, and God the Father. What we often find is that orthodox Christian belief is not simply a matter of "the Bible alone" or "the Church." God used both to reveal proper Christian understanding. We should not be troubled then if John 1 sowed seeds that came to full blossom in the understanding of the Church in the 300s and 400s.

It would be very easy for me to believe that God used the thinking of Alexandria to help some early Christians have words to express some of these mysteries. Did Jewish Logos speculation provide the early church with language to express mysteries about Christ, mysteries that God then helped develop into orthodox Christology in the Church of the next few centuries? In this regard, I have long been struck by the fact that Apollos was an extremely educated and eloquent man from Alexandria (Acts 18:24).  

Philo does have a passage where he notes the absence of the word the in relation to God. In the Greek translation of Genesis 31:13, one instance speaks of the God and another only of "God" without the word the. To what does the second instance refer? It refers to the Logos. To Philo, the word logos without the word the on the front "calls God's oldest Word 'God'" (Dreams 1.130).    

[1] Tradition is that the Gospel of John was written by John the son of Zebedee, one of the first disciples Jesus called (cf. Mark 1:19). The Gospel itself only indicates that the "beloved disciple" was the source of the Gospel's information (John 21:20-24). We will refer to the author as John and the beloved disciple for convenience.

Advent 1: John 1

Today is the first Sunday of Advent and it seemed appropriate to reflect these next few Sundays about the coming of Jesus.  John 1 seemed a good place to start.

"In the beginning was the Logos.  The Logos was with God, and the Logos was divine.  This Logos was with God in the beginning.  Everything came into existence through it, and apart from it, not even one thing came into existence.  That which has come into existence by it was life, and the life was the light of mortals.  And the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not put it out."

It is not until verse 14 that we hear, "the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld its glory, like the glory of the only born from the Father, full of grace and truth."

The Logos was the word of God, his will in action.  When God created the world, he spoke.  Everything  came into existence when God spoke a word.  To speak of Jesus as God's Logos come into the world is thus to say that Jesus is the instrument by which God accomplished his will for the world.  That will was "full of grace and truth."  His will was to make sons and daughters in the world of all who would receive him (1:12).  His will was an expression of love, for it was because God so loved the world, that he sent his Son into it (3:16-17).

Jesus on earth "tabernacled," which is to say that he was a tent in which God was present in the world.  Jesus on earth brought life to the dark in the world.  The first Sunday of Advent is about expectation about foreshadowing, about prophetic anticipation.  What are we to anticipate?  This year I am anticipating the Spirit of Christ filling the world again this year and thus God's will coming into the world again this year.  I am anticipating God's presence being in and among us, bringing grace and truth to the world once more.

Did you know? (the word in John 1)

I was thinking about a new kind of post to do.  One of my roles in the church is surely informant...  If my education is worth anything, why not share some tidbits from time to time.  So here's a first shot.

Did you know...
That the "word" in John 1 has a rich background in both Jewish and secular literature at the time of Christ.

1. It certainly does not refer to Scripture in its original sense.  You will only think this if you are defining the words on the basis of your dictionary rather than the dictionary of John's time.

2. It eventually refers to Jesus in John 1.  In the immediate literary context, the word becomes flesh in 1:14 and turns out to be none other than Jesus among the people of that time.

3. Jewish literature like the book of Wisdom and the writings of a Jew from Egypt named Philo use the word logos, "word," sometimes as a metaphor, sometimes as an almost personal entity that puts God's will into action.  Here are a couple quotes:

"Through the logos God made the world, using it as an instrument..." (Philo, Allegorical Laws 3.96)

"Some regard the image of God, his messenger the logos, as God's very self" (Philo, On Dreams 1.239)

"God... you made all things through your logos..." (Wisdom 9:1).

So, in my opinion, when John 1 says, "In the beginning was the logos," it is drawing on this rich tradition.  In the beginning was God's will for the world in action... and that will for the world became flesh, and tabernacled among us, just like the tabernacle where Moses met God in the wilderness...

Did you know?