Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The Word and Wisdom
Greek thinkers spoke of the logos, the reason that ordered the world, and Jewish teachers spoke of God's Word and Wisdom, through whom he made everything. John opens his Gospel with that language and then says the Word became flesh.
Everyone in the room knew the word, and each of them heard something different in it. In John's day the Greek word logos meant more than a word on a page. Philosophers used it for the reason that holds the universe together. Jews spoke of God's word, which made the world and came to the prophets, and of God's Wisdom, pictured as a person at his side when he made everything. John takes up this language, and then says something none of them had said: the Word became a human being.
Many philosophers used the Greek term for word to mean reason, the force that structured the universe. Philo, a Jewish philosopher, combined this with Jewish ideas of God's word. The Old Testament personified Wisdom (Proverbs 8), and ancient Judaism came to identify Wisdom, Word and Law. The standard Jewish view, Keener says, made this Wisdom older than the rest of creation, yet still a created thing. God spoke the world into being. Jewish teachers said he created through his Wisdom joined with his word (Psalm 33:6; Wisdom of Solomon 9:1-3), and the rabbis counted ten commands in Genesis 1. Jews thought of Wisdom or Word as divine yet distinct from the Father, the closest term John had (Keener). Heiser points to another layer. In the Old Testament the word of Yahweh is sometimes seen as well as heard, coming to Abram in a vision and bringing him outside (Genesis 15:1-6). He writes, "These appearances of the Word of Yahweh are the conceptual backdrop" to John's language. The ESV Study Bible also stresses the Old Testament background (Genesis 1:3; Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 55:10-11) and contrasts the Greek idea of an impersonal principle. Wright sums up John's answer to the philosophers: "the Word isn't an abstract principle, it's a person." The next step was new. Keener writes, "Neither Greek philosophers nor Jewish teachers could conceive of the Word becoming flesh." Paul uses the same language of Christ. Colossians 1:15 describes him in the terms Judaism kept for divine Wisdom, God's archetypal image through which he made the world. Philo calls the Logos God's image and firstborn son, and the beginning was a title for God, Wisdom and the Logos.
An analogy: a speaker who takes a word everyone already uses, from the lecture hall and from the family Bible, and then points to a man and says, this is what it meant. Each listener hears an echo first, and then a surprise.
The Word through whom everything was made, as in John 1:1-3, draws on Jewish talk of God creating by his Word and Wisdom. Paul uses the same pattern when he says all things come through one Lord in 1 Corinthians 8:6, and Colossians 1:16 says all things were created in him.
Not a speaker redefining a term. Anyone with a lectern can give an old word a new sense. John claims the Word was with God in the beginning and became flesh, which neither Greek philosophers nor Jewish teachers could conceive; the philosophers' logos was an impersonal principle.
Where the language comes from. Keener and his cultural backgrounds notes trace it to Jewish Wisdom, Word and Torah, with Philo joining that to the philosophers' logos. Wright reads the opening against both Genesis and the pagan philosophers' principle of rationality. Heiser finds the backdrop in Old Testament appearances of the visible word of Yahweh, as in Genesis 15:1-6 and 1 Samuel 3. The ESV Study Bible stresses the Old Testament background and sets John's Word against the Greek concept. A second question is what fullness in Colossians 1:19 and 2:9 draws on. Keener and his notes give two options: the Old Testament picture of God's glory or wisdom spreading through the world, or the sum of the powers by which God rules, as in Philo. The ESV Study Bible hears God's glory filling the temple.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/john-1-1-18\/","n":"John 1:1-18, The Word made flesh","s":"John begins before creation with the Word who was with God and was God, through whom everything was made, and who became flesh and lived among us.","r":"John 1:1-18"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/2corinthians-4-1-6\/","n":"2 Corinthians 4:1-6, The god of this age","s":"Paul renounces cunning and tampering with God's word; if his gospel is veiled, it is veiled to the perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, while God has made his light shine in believers' hearts.","r":"2 Corinthians 4:1-6"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/colossians-1-15-20\/","n":"Colossians 1:15-20, Firstborn over creation, over thrones and powers","s":"Paul describes the Son as the image of the unseen God and firstborn over all creation, through whom and for whom everything was made, thrones and powers included, and through whose cross God makes peace with all things.","r":"Colossians 1:15-20"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/1john-1-1-4\/","n":"1 John 1:1-4, What our hands have touched","s":"The letter opens with the Word of life, which was from the beginning and which the writer and those with him heard, saw and touched. They announce the eternal life that was with the Father and appeared to them, so that the readers may share their fellowship with the Father and the Son.","r":"1 John 1:1-4"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/gods-of-the-bible\/yahweh\/","n":"Yahweh","s":"The personal name of Israel's God, printed as LORD in most English Bibles.","r":"Genesis 2:4"}
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on John 1:1-18 (introduction), 1:1-2, 1:3 and 1:14
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on John 1:1 and 1:3
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 16, Abraham's Word
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on John 1:1 and 1:3
- N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, comment on John 1:1-18
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Colossians 1:15, 1:17, 1:18, 1:19 and 2:9
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Colossians 1:15, 1:16, 1:18, 1:19 and 2:9
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Colossians 1:15 and 1:19
