So who is this person?

So, onward with John's poetic prologue.  We move to the next paragraph John 1:14-17 which matches the paragraph about life and light in several ways.  The most obvious is that each has a  parenthesis about John (the Baptiser) and his witness to Jesus.  The initial sentence in this paragraph is about 'coming among us' and in the earlier paragraph the last sentence is about 'coming into the world'.  This doesn't mean that there is no resonance with the other paragraphs though!

One of the important things that happens in this paragraph is that John clearly identifies who he is writing about.  He starts by referring to the person he is speaking about as 'the Word' (this is the only time after the first verse); he ends by refering to Jesus Christ.  In between, he introduces the term 'the one and only' which he will use in the next paragraph.  So now we have the name of this person.  This is important for connecting us with the historical narrative which follows.  We know that this first bit is not random, but inviting us into the story of Jesus.

We are given more understanding of what John is asking us to be open to.  Up to now he has just said that the one he is talking about 'came' into the world.  This could mean some other sort of esoteric 'appearing'.  But here we are told that he 'became flesh', or became body.  If we have been reading closely up to now, this should astonish us.  We have been told that this being is cosmic in power and universal in significance; now we are told that he became animal, in the sense of consisting of muscle and bone.  That is hugely difficult to get our minds around, but John doesn't labour the point here. 

He is going to give us the rest of the story to come to terms with what he has said and some of what it might mean. Right now what he is doing is planting the thought in our minds so that the story is able to ask us the questions as we go along.

what's in a word?

"'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all." ""
— Lewis Carroll (Through The Looking Glass) 

John uses words, not merely lots of words (25 pages of them in my Bible), but words used to invite us into worlds beyond words.  He uses them, not just to tell his story engagingly, but to place his account of what he experienced in a symbolic world (Luke Timothy Johnson's phrase in The Writings of the New Testament) which will enable his readers to connect themselves with the multifaceted consequence of what happened.

The first word to strike us is 'Word'; it occurs three times in the the three simple phrases of the first sentence of John.  That is a lot.  John is in the habit of reusing significant conceptual words at intervals throughout his narrative, but this very first one he now abandons except for one repeat in verse 14.

So, what does this 'Word' mean; why does John use it?
It was a word in current use at the time John wrote; a  definitely 'in' word.  Word was used by several philosophical and spiritual groups to convey concepts which were not identical, but were all groping after the arcane and intangible 'thing' behind and above.
For a long time Greek culture had had a special appreciation for reason; whole palces and jobs in society were devoted to reasoning.  But around the time of John, educated Greek people were talking about The Word as an almost personalised reason which was the greater 'thing' in the universe giving meaning and making it all work; this was a philosophical replacement for the pantheon of gods which people had begun to find intellectually dissatisfying.
In Hebrew thought, the idea of The Word (of God) was in any case quite near the surface of religious philosophy, since God speaking and acting were almost interchangeable; in fact creation in Genesis 1 all happens through speech.  However, near the time of John, at least one of the more passionate groups within the Jewish community had begun to use The Word with a sense of more agency, again almost personalising it.

John comes along and plunders the philosphical context in which he writes.  He wants to connect with his readers; he wants to grab our interest with a basis which will give him a foundation to work from.  Everyone had heard this Word used; probably not many of them had any clear idea what they or anyone else meant by it.  So John starts to infuse it with new meaning and new mystery in his careful, clever first few sentences.

The Word ... John's description
John takes us right back to the beginning; he doesn't define it, since he is not embarking on a scientific or even philoshophical treatise.  He just wants us to get the picture that at the start, before anything else, The Word existed.  Then, with a thought for those of his readers who come from a background which includes the monotheistic (one single God only) idea of God, John places the Word with God; because of course all these people would know that in the beginning God ...  But of course this is not enough as a description of the relationship between the Word and God; John wants to clarify that the Word is not another entity alongside God, that is not at all what he wants to say.  So he tells us that the Word was God, they are one and the same, but what he has already said prepares us for some kind of undefined complexity.

Now, to get on with exploring the Word, John reiterates both the 'beginningness' and the intensity of relationship to God which characterise the Word.  He goes on to the Word's presence in the act of the creation of everything.  For his Jewish readers this further identifies him with God, who they know as the creator of all things; for his other readers this gives them further information about what it means to talk about God.  Then, to make quite certain we have all got the point, he tells us that nothing that exists came about without the Word.  He is not just one among others, before there was anything, there was only him.

None of this defines the Word, or God, or the relationship of the Word with God.  But somehow, in these incredibly compact sentences, John plants a seed of comprehension for us.  Even more, he prepares us to be amazed; he opens us to journey through paradox and wonder.

cosmic prologue

Before he even gets to the introduction, John gives us a startling glance at the cosmic origins and implications of the narrative which we are about to read.    

John 1:1-18
He starts with pre-space and non-time; he uses multidimensional images; he moves through the enitire world of being human; and he imagines seeing God.  But in this telescopic whirlwind of transcendence, John places two small ellipses (like this, in brackets, only Greek doesn't have brackets) which prepare us as readers for the sudden entry into tangible history which will happen in the next sentence.

It really is a glance - less than half a page when the rest of his account is 25 pages.  At the end of his account, there is a corresponding epilogue after the conclusion.  It is even more brief, at only one sentence!

It is almost as if John wants us to be ready to assess his narrative in the cosmic context, but he wants Jesus' life to speak for him.  So he primes us, but then never comes back to force the issue.

There are five short sub-paragraphs:
1:1-3      The Word
1:4-9      The Light (ellipsis 1:6-8 John the Witness)
1:10-13  Receiving
1:14-17  Grace and Truth (ellipsis 1:15 The Witness of John)
1:18       Revealing God

So this poetic prologue is gigantic in scope, and quite monstrous in significance.  We'll take a look at it section by section before we allow John to gently place us into less bewildering surroundings, into the world of everyday people.