I've often been fascinated by a third story of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God into the man Jesus of Nazareth. We have Joseph's account of events in the Gospel of Matthew, and Mary's version of events in the Gospel of Luke. Yet a third version exists, one that has the view of an Eternal God in mind, and that is the beginning of the Gospel of John.
In this gospel John speaks of the Eternal, Pre-Existent Word (in Greek, logos) that takes on the form of a human man. Because the Greek word logos has many Greek philosophical attachments, many have inferred that John was heavily influenced by Greek culture and writing in his Gospel. This is quite an unnecessary view. The Hebrew people were well acquainted with the idea of God's "Memra", the Aramaic word of "word", that would intervene in the lives of men, carry God's word, and accomplish His purposes. To further this view, I give you the following brief outline from Dr. Michael S. Heiser on Memra, the Eternal, Pre-Existent Word of God from the Old Testament.
At the outset, it's important to recall that we are still dealing with the issue of who was with God before anything was created. In the last chapter we looked at Wisdom, God's "co-creator" or special agent of creation. We saw how Wisdom was a deity figure and identified as Jesus in the New Testament. In this chapter we will meet the second member of the Jewish Godhead again, albeit by a different name (and yes, I said Jewish).
If you caught the play on words (or on the Word!) that closed the last chapter, you have an idea as to what our subject will be in this chapter. If you've been a Christian for any amount of time you have probably heard a sermon or Bible study lesson from John 1:1-3, 14, where John identifies the Word (the Greek word for "word" is "Logos") as the One who became flesh and lived with them - Jesus. That kind of talk can be confusing. How does a person become known as the "Word"? I'm hoping to shed some light on this for you and, as always, take you down a few unfamiliar but exciting roads.
It probably won't surprise you that I'm going to start with John 1, even though that's the most famous "Jesus is the Word" chapter. That would be too predictable and formulaic. My habit of starting with the Old Testament is something to get used to - I want to show how all these ideas started with Israel's Bible before there even was a New Testament. For those of you who may have done some reading about Jesus as the Logos before, it may surprise you that I'm going to disagree with the consensus view that John got this idea from Greek philosophers who talked about the Logos as the reason principle that governed the world. I don't think John's idea of the (Logos) had much to do with the pagan Greeks. I think John got it from his Old Testament and Jewish teachings in the synagogues of his day.
The phrase "the word of the Lord came to me" or something similar is very common in the Old Testament. That often happened to prophets who were getting tuned by God aurally to receive some message to deliver to a typically unreceptive audience. There are occasions when it means more. though - when it's actually describing a person or entity. So, in what follows, I don't mean to say that when one sees this phrase or one like it that it always or even mostly refers to some sort of divine person. I only mean to say that sort of thing does happen, and I believe it's fundamental to what John had in mind when he wrote the first chapter of his gospel. Let's take a look at some examples.
Read the full text at - http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/WordChapter.pdf
In this gospel John speaks of the Eternal, Pre-Existent Word (in Greek, logos) that takes on the form of a human man. Because the Greek word logos has many Greek philosophical attachments, many have inferred that John was heavily influenced by Greek culture and writing in his Gospel. This is quite an unnecessary view. The Hebrew people were well acquainted with the idea of God's "Memra", the Aramaic word of "word", that would intervene in the lives of men, carry God's word, and accomplish His purposes. To further this view, I give you the following brief outline from Dr. Michael S. Heiser on Memra, the Eternal, Pre-Existent Word of God from the Old Testament.
At the outset, it's important to recall that we are still dealing with the issue of who was with God before anything was created. In the last chapter we looked at Wisdom, God's "co-creator" or special agent of creation. We saw how Wisdom was a deity figure and identified as Jesus in the New Testament. In this chapter we will meet the second member of the Jewish Godhead again, albeit by a different name (and yes, I said Jewish).
If you caught the play on words (or on the Word!) that closed the last chapter, you have an idea as to what our subject will be in this chapter. If you've been a Christian for any amount of time you have probably heard a sermon or Bible study lesson from John 1:1-3, 14, where John identifies the Word (the Greek word for "word" is "Logos") as the One who became flesh and lived with them - Jesus. That kind of talk can be confusing. How does a person become known as the "Word"? I'm hoping to shed some light on this for you and, as always, take you down a few unfamiliar but exciting roads.
It probably won't surprise you that I'm going to start with John 1, even though that's the most famous "Jesus is the Word" chapter. That would be too predictable and formulaic. My habit of starting with the Old Testament is something to get used to - I want to show how all these ideas started with Israel's Bible before there even was a New Testament. For those of you who may have done some reading about Jesus as the Logos before, it may surprise you that I'm going to disagree with the consensus view that John got this idea from Greek philosophers who talked about the Logos as the reason principle that governed the world. I don't think John's idea of the (Logos) had much to do with the pagan Greeks. I think John got it from his Old Testament and Jewish teachings in the synagogues of his day.
The phrase "the word of the Lord came to me" or something similar is very common in the Old Testament. That often happened to prophets who were getting tuned by God aurally to receive some message to deliver to a typically unreceptive audience. There are occasions when it means more. though - when it's actually describing a person or entity. So, in what follows, I don't mean to say that when one sees this phrase or one like it that it always or even mostly refers to some sort of divine person. I only mean to say that sort of thing does happen, and I believe it's fundamental to what John had in mind when he wrote the first chapter of his gospel. Let's take a look at some examples.
Read the full text at - http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/WordChapter.pdf
