God's Word in the O.T. and N.T., Logos and Dabar

[Future Man]

We see, therefore, that when John speaks of the logos he does not refer to a pre-existent Messiah - he refers to the conception of a Divine plan and purpose, which found its literal expression in the person of Jesus Christ.

Unless you take Trintarians to believe Jesus to have been a "literal word" from the mouth of the Father, then there is no argument to the above. I've already stated a possible *purpose* for Jesus being named the 'Word'. But how does this exclude him from preex? It doesn't. It's a straw man which you consistently throw around throughout the entirety of your argument. In other words:

"Jesus is the plan of God and therefore never preexisted!"

Does anyone else see the same problem with the above that I do?

As previously noted, James Dunn agrees with this interpretation, but still finds it difficult to reconcile the necessarily impersonal nature of the logos with the text of the KJV.

His chief concern is that:

The point is obscured by the fact that we have to translate the masculine "logos" as "He" throughout the poem.

Dunn is clearly labouring under a false assumption. There are no grounds on which it might be argued that we have to refer to the “logos” as “He.” It is true that the word “logos” is masculine (at least, in the grammatical sense) but this is irrelevant. Instead of focusing his attention on the word "logos", Dunn would do better to examine the word autos, which the KJV has translated as “Him.”

I certainly don't disagree. Curious how I even refuted you on this point. It's a wonder that you even brought it back up

In fact, right up until the publication of the KJV 1611, most Bibles referred to the logos of John 1 as “it”, instead of "he."

...that includes the baby Jesus, btw.

The reason for this is simple - it is because the translators of those Bibles understood that the logos is not a literal, personal entity.

I'd like to see actual quotes where they stated this. Until then, I will assume the obvious in that you are dishonestly putting words into their mouths.

There are no legitimate grounds on which God’s logos can be defined as a pre-existent being. Yes, the logos was “in the beginning… with God.” But it was not God Himself, nor was it another divine being beside Him. So, while the logos (according to John) is divine, the logos is not the pre-existent Christ.

And you have yet to tell us "why?". All you have done is define the meaning of the common use of the word, "word". I may as well define Phillip's name i.e. "fond of horses", and then proceed to inform our viewers that according to "biblical consistency" Phillip must natrually be a 'horse'. Ludicrus. Or even better, that Jesus is a literal beam of light.

This distinction is crucial.

An baseless distinction? You haven't even gone into the context, other than a hack paraphrase

Moving on through the Johannine prologue, we arrive at:

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Here we must take care to read the text properly. We have been told that it was the logos which was made flesh - not God Himself. But what does this mean?

The 'logos' which 'was God'. Here Ev makes the mistake of improperly reading the Greek. Read the articles I provide.

I refer once again to Dunn’s analysis:

But if we translated "logos" as "God's utterance" instead, it would become clearer that the poem did not necessarily intend the "logos" in verses 1-13 to be thought of as a personal divine being. In other words the revolutionary significance of verse 14 may well be that it marks . . . the transition from impersonal personification to actual person. [3]

Indeed, it certainly does! Just as the spoken logos of God had once brought forth light, now it resulted in a living entity - the Messiah.

And again, I say, what ever happened to your former postion, Ev? Mmmm....

 

[Future Man]

I find it somewhat curious that Ev is attempting to argue the rendering of 'theos' in Jn1:1 considering he doesn't even believe the 'Word' to be Jesus in the first place. Interesting, eh?

The following is more for the sake of this forums honest viewers than anything else. For this reason (and that fact that Ev won't read an argument if it's only linked to) I will simply post the article here. A close look at *real* scholarship.

Notice how it addresses the charge of "modalism" that Ev ignorantly asserts is presented under the Trin view.

On this topic:

John 1:1 Meaning and Translation


by James White



(This information sheet is divided into two sections - the first explores the meaning of John 1:1, and the second addresses the more technical subject of the correct translation of the verse. The second portion will be of interest to those who are faced with the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses and its rendering of the last clause of this verse as "the Word was a god.")

Section I
John 1:1-3, 14, 18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being...And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth...No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

The prologue to John's Gospel has long been a center of controversy when discussing the Deity of Christ, and naturally so. One can hardly read the above sentences without catching a glimpse of One Who is far beyond the realm of simply human; even far beyond the realm of the angelic. The logos, the Word, was in the beginning, was with God, and was God. The Word created all things, and there is absolutely nothing in existence that the Word did not create. Remember that the original readers of John's Gospel would not have already read verse 14, and they would not have the preconceived knowledge that the Word is identified as Christ. Try to detach yourself from that knowledge for a moment, and imagine what kind of being you would be imagining while reading about this Word. Certainly one can hardly conceive of a higher Being.

To understand what John is saying, we must delve into the verses themselves and analyze them carefully. We must bear in mind that we are reading only a translation of what John wrote, and hence some mention will have to be made of the Greek language.

John's first assertion is that "In the beginning was the Word." Which beginning? Considering the whole context of the prologue, many have identified this beginning as the same beginning mentioned in Genesis 1:1. But most see that the assertion of the Apostle goes far beyond that.

The key element in understanding this, the first phrase of this magnificent verse, is the form of the word "was," which in the Greek language in which John was writing, is the word en (the "e" pronounced as a long "a" as in "I ate the food"). It is a timeless word - that is, it simply points to existence before the present time without reference to a point of origin. One can push back the "beginning" as far as you can imagine, and, according to John, the Word still is. Hence, the Word is eternal, timeless. The Word is not a creation that came into existence at "the beginning," for He antedates that beginning.

John is very careful in his language at this point. Throughout this section, John carefully contrasts the Word, and all other things. He does so by consistently using en of the Logos, the Word, and by consistently employing a totally different verb in reference to all other things. This other verb is "to become" (egeneto). It is used of John the Baptist in verse 6, of the world in verse 10, and the children of God in verse 12. Only when we come to verse 14 does John use "to become" of the Word, and that is when the Word "became flesh." This refers to a specific point in time, the incarnation, and fully demonstrates John's intentional usage of contrasting verbs.

John is not alone in this. Jesus contrasted Abraham's "becoming" with His own eternal existence in John 8:58 in the same way. The Psalmist contrasted the creation of the world with the eternity of God in Psalm 90:2 (LXX) by using the same verbs found in John 1:1 and 14. Hardly seems coincidental, does it?

We have seen that the Word is eternal. Much has been said about how John got the term "Logos," the Word. Some say he borrowed it from Greek philosophy, a sort of philosophical subterfuge. No one would argue that John just simply left the Logos as he found it among the philosophers. No, he filled the Word with personality and identified the Word not as some fuzzy, ethereal essence that was the guiding principle of all things, (as the Greeks thought), but as the eternal Son of God, the One Who entered into time, and into man's experience as Jesus of Nazareth. The "Word" reveals that Jesus is the mind of God, the thought of God, His full and living revelation. Jesus did not just come to tell us what God is like - He showed us. He is the revelation of God.

John did not stop here, however. He did not leave us to simply know the eternity of the Word. The next phrase says, "and the Word was with God." Again we find the verb "was" cropping up, again pointing to the timelessness of the subject at hand. The Word was with God. The preposition John uses here is quite revealing. It is the Greek word pros. It means "to be in company with someone" (1) or to be "face-to-face." It speaks of communion, interaction, fellowship. Remember that this is an eternal fellowship, a timeless relationship. "Pros with the accusative presents a plane of equality and intimacy, face to face with each other."(2)

 

[Future Man]

This phrase, if taken completely alone, would be very confusing, since John has already asserted the eternality of the Word. Now he clearly distinguishes between the Word and God. He asserts that they are distinguishable. "God" and "Word" are not interchange-able terms. Then, is John talking about two "gods?" Can more than one being be fully eternal? John was a monotheistic Jew. He could never believe in more than one Being Who can rightly be called "God." How then is this to be understood?

This phrase must be taken with the one that follows. We read, "and the Word was God." Again, the eternal en. John avoids confusion by telling us that the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus, as we know Him as the Word, does not constitute everything that is included in the Godhead. In other words, John is not teaching the ancient heresy known as Sabellianism, which taught that Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are simply three different aspects of one person, i.e., Jesus is the Father, the Father is the Spirit, and so on. Instead, John here asserts the full Deity of Christ, while informing us that He is not the Father, but that they ("God" and the "Word") have eternally co-existed.

This last phrase has come under heavy fire throughout the ages. The correct translation of this passage is here given, and anyone interested in the technical aspects of the argument are referred to Appendix A. Basically, the passage teaches that the Word, as to His essential nature, is God. John does not here call the Word "a divine one," as some polytheistic Greek might say. He did not use the adjective, theios, which would describe a divine nature, or a god-like one. Instead, he used theos, the very word John will use consistently for the Father, the "only true God" (17:3). He uses the term three times of Jesus in the Gospel, here, in 1:18, and in 20:28. It can not be doubted that John would never call a creature theos. His upbringing and Jewish heritage forbad that.

How then are we to undertand these two phrases? Benjamin B. Warfield said:

"And the Word was with God." The language is pregnant. It is not merely coexistence with God that is asserted, as of two beings standing side by side, united in local relation, or even in a common conception. What is suggested is an active relation of intercourse. The distinct personality of the Word is therefore not obscurely intimated. From all eternity the Word has been with God as a fellow: He who in the very beginning already "was," "was" also in communion with God. Though He was thus in some sense a second along with God, He was nevertheless not a seperate being from God: "And the Word was" --still the eternal "was" --"God." In some sense distinguishable from God, He was in an equally true sense identical with God. There is but one eternal God; this eternal God, the Word is; in whatever sense we may distinguish Him from the God whom He is "with," He is yet not another than this God, but Himself is this God. The predicate "God" occupies the position of emphasis in this great declaration, and is so placed in the sentence as to be thrown up in sharp contrast with the phrase "with God," as if to prevent inadequate inferences as to the nature of the Word being drawn even momentarily from that phrase. John would have us realize that what the Word was in eternity was not merely God's coeternal fellow, but the eternal God's self. (3)

The Beloved Apostle walks a tight line here. By the simple ommission of the article ("the", or in Greek, ho) before the word for God in the last phrase, John avoids teaching Sabellianism, while by placing the word where it is in the clause, he defeats another heresy, Arianism, which denies the true Deity of the Lord Jesus. A person who accepts the inspiration of the Scriptures can not help but be thrilled at this passage.

John goes on in verse two to reiterate the eternal fellowship of the Father and Son, making sure that all understand that "this one," the Word, was (there it is again) in the beginning pros ton theon, with God. Their fellowship and relationship precedes all else, and it is timeless.

As icing on the cake, John then precludes anyone from misunderstanding his claim that Jesus is eternally God by writing verse 3. "All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." One can hardly be more inclusive than that. There is simply nothing that is existent anywhere that was not created by the Word. He created everything. Obviously, therefore, if one can be described as creating everything, one must be the Creator, and certainly not a creation. The Word is the Creator. All people reading John's words would undertand that the Creator is God, not some lower being created by God to do the work for Him. By not qualifying his statement, John assured that we could correctly understand his intention and his teaching concerning Christ, the Word. He is eternally God, the Creator.


Section II
En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos.

Almost all the controversy surrounding John 1:1 revolves around the fact that the theos of the last phrase kai theos en ho logos is anarthrous, i.e., it has no article. Some have gone so far as to assert that the correct translation, therefore, is "the Word was a god," basing the argument on the lack of the definite article ho before theos. What does the lack of the article indicate? Is it necessary to what John is saying?

I begin with the most quoted scholar on this subject, Dr. A. T. Robertson:

And the Word was God (kai theos en ho logos). By exact and careful language John denied Sabellianism by not saying ho theos en ho logos. That would mean that all of God was expressed in ho logos and the terms would be interchangeable, each having the article. The subject is made plain by the article (ho logos) and the predicate without it (theos) just as in John 4:24 pneuma ho theos can only mean "God is spirit," not "spirit is God." So in 1 John 4:16 ho theos agape estin can only mean "God is love," not "love is God" as a so-called Christian scientist would confusedly say. For the article with the predicate see Robertson, Grammar, pp. 767f. So in John 1:14 ho Logos sarx egeneto, "the Word became flesh," not "the flesh became Word." Luther argues that here John disposes of Arianism also because the Logos was eternally God, fellowship of the Father and Son, what Origen called the Eternal Generation of the Son (each necessary to the other). Thus in the Trinity we see personal fellowship on an equality. (4)

As Robertson made reference to his voluminous Grammar in the above quotation, I will include it in its entirety:

The word with the article is then the subject, whatever the order may be. So in Jo. 1:1, theos an ho logos, the subject is perfectly clear. Cf. ho logos sarx egeneto (Jo. 1:14). It is true that ho theos an ho logos (convertible terms) would have been Sabellianism. See also ho theos agape estin (1 Jo.4:16). "God" and "love" are not convertible terms any more than "God" and "Logos" or "Logos" and "flesh." Cf. also hoi theristai angeloi eisin (Mt. 13:39), ho logos ho sos alatheia estin (Jo. 17:17), ho nomos hamartia; (Ro. 7:7). The absence of the article here is on purpose and essential to the true idea. (5)

Note that Robertson translates the phrase, "the Word was God." His argument is summed up well in the following passage:

A word should be said concerning the use and non-use of the article in John 1:1, where a narrow path is safely followed by the author. "The Word was God." It both God and Word were articular, they would be coextensive and equally distributed and so interchangeable. But the separate personality of the Logos is affirmed by the construction used and Sabellianism is denied. If God were articular and Logos non-articular, the affirmation would be that God was Logos, but not that the Logos was God. As it is, John asserts that in the Pre-incarnate state the Logos was God, though the Father was greater than the Son (John 14:28). The Logos became flesh (1:14), and not the Father. But the Incarnate Logos was really "God only Begotten in the bosom of the Father" (1:18 correct text). (6)

In light of Dr. Robertson's comments, it is indeed unbelievable that some will quote from the above section and try to intimate that Robertson felt that Jesus was less than the Father because he quoted John 14:28. A quick look at his comments on John 14:28 in Word Pictures in the New Testament, volume 5, page 256 refutes this idea.

To recap, Robertson says that 1) the translation of the phrase theos en ho logos is "the Word was God." 2) That the anarthrous theos is required for the meaning. If the article were present, this would teach Sabellianism, as then theos and logos would be convertible terms. 3) That the article before logos serves to point out the subject of the clause.

 

[Future Man]

H. E. Dana and Julius Mantey utilize John 1:1 to illustrate the usage of the article to determine the subject in a copulative sentence:

The article sometimes distinguishes the subject from the predicate in a copulative sentence. In Xenophon's Anabasis, 1:4:6, emporion d' en to korion, and the place was a market, we have a parallel case to what we have in John 1:1, kai theos en ho logos, and the word was deity. The article points out the subject in these examples. Neither was the place the only market, nor was the word all of God, as it would mean if the article were also used with theos. As it stands, the other persons of the Trinity may be implied in theos. (7)

Again, these scholars are pointing out the use of the article to show the subject against the predicate in a clause. They, like Robertson, point out that since theos is anarthrous, it shows that it is not convertible with logos and vice versa.

Dr. Kenneth Wuest, long time professor of Greek at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, commented on this verse:

The Word was God. Here the word "God" is without the article in the original. When it is used in this way, it refers to the divine essence. Emphasis is upon the quality or character. Thus, John teaches us here that our Lord is essentially Deity. He possesses the same essence as God the Father, is one with Him in nature and attributes. Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter, the teacher, is Very God. (8)

Wuest in his Expanded Translation, renders 1:1:

In the beginning the Word was existing. And the Word was in fellowship with God the Father. And the Word was as to His essence absolute deity. (9)

That Wuest brings in the idea that the anarthrous predicate noun has a characterizing effect, and that it refers more to the nature of the subject of the clause than to an identification of it. This is right in line with what Robertson said - that the Logos is not all of God, and that you cannot say "the God was the Logos." The very context (kai ho logos en pros ton theon) demonstrates this fully. Those who would assert that the Logos is to be identified with all of God (i.e., Jesus is the Father and the Father is Jesus - Sabellianism) find an insuperable problem here.

It is good to note Vincent's comment that here "John is not trying to show who is God, but who is the Word." (10) The Logos is the central character here. Hence, when we see that the Word was, as to His nature God, we can understand exactly how He can be with God and yet be God.

F. F. Bruce's comments on this passage are valuable:

The structure of the third clause in verse 1, theos en ho logos, demands the translation "The Word was God." Since logos has the article preceding it, it is marked out as the subject. The fact that theos is the first word after the conjunction kai (and) shows that the main emphasis of the clause lies on it. Had theos as well as logos been preceded by the article the meaning would have been that the Word was completely identical with God, which is impossible if the Word was also "with God". What is meant is that the Word shared the nature and being of God, or (to use a piece of modern jargon) was an extension of the personality of God. The NEB paraphrase "what God was, the Word was", brings out the meaning of the clause as successfully as a paraphrase can...So, when heaven and earth were created, there was the Word of God, already existing in the closest association with God and partaking of the essence of God. No matter how far back we may try to push our imagination, we can never reach a point at which we could say of the Divine Word, as Arius did, "There was once when he was not." (11)

Another scholarly source along this line is found in the Expositor's Greek Testament:

The Word is distinguishable from God and yet Theos en ho logos, the Word was God, of Divine nature; not "a God," which to a Jewish ear would have been abominable; nor yet identical with all that can be called God, for then the article would have been inserted...(12)

A slightly different tact is taken by another group of scholars. These scholars refer to what is known as Colwell's rule, named after E. C. Colwell, who first enunciated his rule in the Journal of Biblical Literature in 1933. (13) The rule says, "The absence of the article does not make the predicate indefinite or qualitative when it precedes the verb; it is indefinite in this position only when the context demands it. The context makes no such demand in the Gospel of John." (14) This is the view taken by Morris, Metzger, Griffith and others. Though Colwell's rule is not exceptionless, it is a valuable guide. At the very least, it is a good guide to translation in this case. Those scholars who see the verse in this light are not necessarily in contradiction with the others already cited. First it should be noted that Robertson and Nicoll had passed away before the work of Colwell, and their comments reflect this. Also, both approaches lead to the same conclusion - the passage teaches the Deity of Jesus Christ. Some scholars see the anarthrous theos as emphasizing the nature of the Word, and all agree that it is not simply an adjectival type of description, saying that Christ is merely a "god-like one." A more recent authors work (March 1973) bears on this issue as well. Philip B. Harner did an extensive study of anarthrous predicate nouns which was published in the Journal of Biblical Literature as well (15). His research led to some realignment in viewing Colwell's rule, it is true. It should also be noted that his article has been used extensively by those who would deny the Deity of Christ and mistranslate this passage. Sufficent at this point is a quotation from Harner's article itself:

In all of these cases the English reader might not understand exactly what John was trying to express. Perhaps the clause could be translated, "the Word had the same nature as God." This would be one way of representing John's thought, which is, as I understand it, that ho logos, no less than ho theos, had the nature of theos. (16)

The authoritative reference source, Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, is quite direct on John 1:1:

A similar ascription is more common in the Johannine writings, and for the most part incontestable. Jn. 1:1 says of the Pre-existent: kai theos en ho logos...The lack of the article, which is grammatically necessary in 1:1, is striking here, and reminds us of Philonic usage. The Logos who became flesh and revealed the invisible God was a divine being, God by nature. The man born blind has some sense of this when, after his healing, he falls down in believing adoration before Christ, who addresses him with the divine "I" (Jn. 9:38f). The final veil is removed, however, when the Risen Lord discloses Himself to Thomas and the astonished disciple exclaims: ho kurios mou kai ho theos mou (Jn. 20:28). In Jn. 1:1 we have Christology: He is God in Himself. Here we have the revelation of Christ: He is God for believers. (17)

To summarize: The phrase kai theos en ho logos is most literally translated as "and the Word was God." (Robertson, Bruce). The reason that theos is anarthrous is both that it is the predicate nominative (Robertson, Dana and Mantey) and that it is demanded by the fact that if it had the article, it would be then interchangeable with logos, which is contextually impossible. (Robertson, Dana and Mantey, Bruce, Nicoll) Colwell's rule also comes into play at this point. We have seen that the majority of scholarship sees the theos as indicating the nature of the Word, that He is God as to His nature. The noun form is here used, not the adjectival theios, which would be required to simply classify the Word as "god-like."

Hence, John 1:1 teaches that the Word is eternal (the imperfect form of eimi, en), that He has always been in communion with God (pros ton theon), and hence is an individual and recognizable as such, and that, as to His essential nature, He is God. Anything less departs from the teaching of John, and is not Biblical.

 

[Future Man]

What about "a god?"

Until 1950, an extra section dealing with a translation of John 1:1 as "the Word was a god" would not have been necessary. No one would dare publish such a "translation." However, in 1950, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society published its own translation of the Bible, The New World Translation of the Greek Scriptures. This version translates John 1:1 in this way. A number of appendices have appeared in the NWT attempting to defend this translation by making reference to many of the same scholars that have already been quoted. Aside from the comment of The Expositor's Greek Testament above, the following from F. F. Bruce sums up the truth pretty well:

It is nowhere more sadly true than in the acquisition of Greek that "a little learning is a dangerous thing". The uses of the Greek article, the functions of Greek prepositions, and the fine distinctions between Greek tenses are confidently expounded in public at times by men who find considerable difficulty in using these parts of speech accurately in their native tongue. (18)

A footnote appears after the comment on the article, and it says:

Those people who emphasize that the true rendering of the last clause of John 1:1 is "the word was a god", prove nothing thereby save their ignorance of Greek grammar.

This translation violates the following principles:

Monotheism in the Bible - certainly it can not be argued that John would use the very word he always uses of the one true God, theos, of one who is simply a "god-like" one or a lesser "god." The Scriptures do not teach that there is a whole host of intermediate beings that can be called "gods." That is gnosticism.
If one is to dogmatically assert that any anarthrous noun must be indefinite and translated with an indefinite article, one must be able to do the same with the 282 other times theos appears anarthrously. For an example of the chaos that would create, try translating the anarthrous theos at 2 Corinthians 5:19. There is simply no warrant in the language to do this.
It ignores the position of theos in the clause - it comes first, and is emphatic.
It ignores a basic tenet of translation: if you are going to insist on a translation, you must be prepared to defend it in such a way as to provide a way for the author to have expressed the alternate translation. In other words, if theos en ho logos is "a god," how could John have said "the Word was God?" We have already seen that if John had employed the article before theos, he would have made the terms theos and logos interchangeable, amounting to Sabellianism.
The translation tears the phrase from the immediately preceding context, leaving it alone and useless. Can He who is eternal (first clause) and who has always been with God (second clause), and who created all things (verse 3) be "a god?"
Just because a noun is not preceded by the article does not automatically justify the insertion of the English indefinite "a". This is a gross over-simplification of the facts, a practice unfortunately common amongst those who are not properly trained in the Greek language. I am aware that this is a serious charge, however, the facts reveal that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has consistently refused to name any of its NWT translators, and of those who have been discovered, none had any more than two years of Greek and no formal Hebrew. (19)
Others could be added, but this is sufficient. There is obviously no scholarly support for the rendering of "a god," and there is massive scholarly argument against it. It is not a valid translation in any way.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd edition edited by F. W. Gingrich and Frederick Danker, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979) p. 719.

2. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 6 vols., (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1932), 5:4

3. Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1950), p. 53.

4. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, vol. 5, pp. 4-5.

5. A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934) p. 767-768.

6. A. T. Robertson, The Minister and His Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977) pp. 67-68.

7. H. E. Dana, Julius Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1950) pp. 148-149.

8. Kenneth Wuest, Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, vol. 3, "Golden Nuggets," p. 52.

9. Wuest, Word Studies, vol. 4, p. 209.

10. M. R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, vol. 1, p. 384.

11. F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), p. 31.

12. W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Greek Testament, 5 vols, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983), 1:684.

13. E. C. Colwell, "A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament" (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1933) pages 12-21. See also discussion in footnote, Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), p. 77.

14. Morris, The Gospel According to John, p. 77.

15. Philip B. Harner, "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns Mark 15:39 and John 1:1" (Journal of Biblical Literature, March 1973), 92:75-87.

16. Harner, pg. 87.

17. Gerhard Kittel, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964) vol 3:105-106.

18. F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1963), p. 60-61.

19. This information was made available during a trial in Scotland, Douglas Walsh v. The Right Honorable James Latham Clyde, M.P., P.C., etc., Scotland, 1954. I include this to demonstrate the non-scholarly, non-factual approach utilized in defending this erroneous translation.

Source: http://aomin.org/JOHN1_1.html

 

[Future Man]

For another excellent article (which too addresses the 'modalism' charge) See here:

http://www.forananswer.org/John/Jn1_1.htm

_____________________________________

Now that 'theos' is out of the way, .....

 

[OldShepherd]

Posted by Evangelion, Aussie Mail carrier
[1] Dunn, James D. G. (1980), Christology in the Making.

EV quotes extensively from Dunn, as if he were some well-known Bible authority. But Dunn is just another anti-Trinitarian throwing his unproven, undocumented, unsupported opinion around. See quote below. The link has more information on Dunn.

• 
  What Anti-Trinitarians quote:
  A wide variety of quotes are used by anti-Trinitarians that are supposed to prove trinity is a false doctrine
  What they fail to tell the same article also says:

• Dunn rejects the deity of Christ: "So too the argument that Jesus is divine because he forgave sins ..." (Christology in the Making, James D. G. Dunn, 2nd edition, 1989, foreword, xxi)
  
• The first great Christological battle of the Christian period was not over docetism (Ignatius) or modalism (Tertullian); it was over monotheism. ... That presumably is why the first internal debates which capture the attention in the second and third centuries are those which take for granted the deity of Christ (docetism and modalism), and why Logos Christology is the highroad of developing Christian orthodoxy. (Christology in the Making, James D. G. Dunn, 2nd edition, 1989, foreword, xxx)
  
• A final point of importance is the bearing of all this back on the interpretation of the same key NT Christological texts which provided the focus of "Christology in the Making" and which have been so much at the centre of the continuing dialogue. What the dialogue soon brought home to me with increasing strength is the serious danger to Christian monotheism unperceived by several at least of my critics. The importance of setting these texts within the historical context of meaning and of recognizing conceptuality in transition is indicated by the correlative recognition that these developments in earliest Christology took place within and as an expression of Jewish-Christian monotheism. In contrast, the too quick resort to the 'obvious' or 'plain' meaning actually becomes in some cases a resort to a form of bitheism or tritheism. So, for example, the assumption that the Logos of John 1. 1 can be substituted by 'Christ', or the argument that Col. 1. 15 would have been intended by Paul as a description of Christ, that is, of Jesus Messiah."' In contrast, classic orthodoxy is that Jesus Christ is he whom the Word of God became in the incarnation. The mistake, or so it seems to me, is the equivalent of treating 'person' in the Trinitarian formula ('one substance, three persons') as 'person' in the sense that we now understand 'person', or, more to the point, in the way that Jesus of Nazareth was a person. If the preexistent Word of God, the Son of God, is a person in that sense, then Christianity is unavoidably tritheistic. And if we take texts like Col. 1. 15ff. as straightforward descriptions of the Jesus who came from Nazareth we are committed to an interpretation of that text which has broken clearly and irrevocably from monotheism. Likewise if we assume that the Father/Son language of John's Gospel has in view more the relationship between the Father and the Son (of Nicene and post-Nicene concern) than the continuity of Logos Christology (of pre-Nicene concern) we lose sight of the primary monotheistic control which prevents such language slipping into polytheism. (Christology in the Making, James D. G. Dunn, 2nd edition, 1989, foreword, xxxii)
  
• If the preexistent Word of God, the Son of God, is a person in that sense, then Christianity is unavoidably tritheistic. (Christology in the Making, James D. G. Dunn, 2nd edition, 1989, foreword, xxxii)
  
• "The charge is (in Hurtado's terms) that I arbitrarily and incorrectly ignored the pagan religious traditions of the Greco-Roman period, a charge to which I am vulnerable particularly because I dated the emergence of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation late in the first century CE, when there would have been several decades during which Christian thinking in this area could have been directly influenced by pagan cults and myths." ... "Were the point simply that I had not provided anything like a thorough investigation of what we may call here simply 'pagan parallels', it is, of' course, wholly accurate." (Christology in the Making, James D. G. Dunn, 2nd edition, 1989, foreword, xxii, xxiii)

http://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-Dunn.htm

 

[Future Man]

If the preexistent Word of God, the Son of God, is a person in that sense, then Christianity is unavoidably tritheistic. (Christology in the Making, James D. G. Dunn, 2nd edition, 1989, foreword, xxxii)

I was warned once, quite awhile back, that Foritigurn and Evangelion rely heavily on Dunn. Citations of this sort are to be expected, as evidence against Christ being the 'Logos' in John's prolouge is between '0' and 'zip'. As has been demonstrated.

 

[OldShepherd]

This thread was started by an Australian mail carrier, posting as Evangelion. Those parts which do not have a reference or a citation, we assume are the words of EV. However portions of this post have been copied from other websites without proper credit. At the link below is an anti-Trinitarian website maintained by Tom Raddatz. Here is a quote taken from that website.

• 
  Christian apologists who were contemporary with Numenius drew similar conclusions from the teachings of an Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, Philo Judaeus (c. 20 BC-50 AD). [1] Philo was striving to RECONCILE Judaism and GREEK PHILOSOPHY... [2] Philo had a form of the Logos doctrine ready-made for the Trinitarians who were to spring up in his century. He taught: 'All beings between the perfection of God and the imperfect, finite matter have their unity in, and proceed from, the divine Logos.' [3] Thus a liberal Jewish philosopher of the priestly class in Alexandria was laying the groundwork for the false Trinitarian doctrine even before the Apostle Paul had evangelized the Greek world...
  
  "[4]But perhaps Philo's greatest contribution to Trinitarians was his fantastic method of allegorization. This was a gnostic approach of giving HIDDEN, OR HIGHER, SECRET MEANINGS to Scripture. This was especially adopted by Clement of Alexandria, and did much to advance the trinity doctrine... (Clement's method of interpretation survived in power until the Reformation." )..." -William Chalfant, Ancient Champions of Oneness, pages 116-118.
  
  "...The rejection of Modalism (oneness) and the recognition of Christ as the Logos forced upon the west the necessity of rising from faith to a philosophical and, in fact, a distinctively Neoplatonic dogmatic." -Dr. Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma, page 79.

http://www.1lord1faith.org/wm/Oneness/q201-210.htm

It is permissible to use widely known information about well-known figures, without citing a source. For example, most Americans know that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president, serving during the American civil war, he was known for working as a rail splitter in his youth, and he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, in Ford’s theater.

However, the majority of people would have no idea who Philo was or what he was known for. Here is a quote taken from the long, bloviated, post by EV, above, for which a source was not cited, implying it was his own work. The questionable portions are marked with red numbers which correspond to the same numbers in the quote from the “Oneness” site. Unless a person had studied ancient history they would not know that “Philo was a well-educated Hellenic Jew from Alexandria”. Either EV copied from Raddatz or Raddatz copied from EV.

• 
  Posted by Evangelion
  
  [3] Philo (a well-educated Hellenic Jew from Alexandria) had a considerable influence on Christian leaders of the "Alexandrian School", such as Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr. [4] His allegorical method for interpreting Scripture also influenced Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, and others. Many elements of his philosophy made an impact on later Christian thinking, including his use of proofs for God's existence, his logos doctrine, his views about the unknowability of God, his negative language about God, his position on ex nihilo creation, and his interpretation of Divine providence.
  
  [1]Philo attempted to interpret Scripture in terms of Greek philosophy. His approach was innovative and eclectic. Philo taught that human beings can know God, whether directly from divine revelation, or indirectly through human reason. Various forms of proof for God included Plato's argument for a Demiurgos in Timaeus and Aristotle's cosmological argument for an Unmoved Mover. Interacting freely with Greek philosophy, Philo borrowed certain Platonic concepts to express his own theistic views. His concept of the logos is a case in point. In De Opificio he describes the logos as a cosmological principle, saying:

• 
  God assuming, as God would assume, that a beautiful copy could never come into existence without a beautiful model...when He willed to create this visible world, first blocked out the intelligible world, in order that using an incorporeal and godlike model he might make the corporeal world a younger image of the older. [4]

• 
  
  [2] Philo's philosophy was the original source of what later became the logos theology of mainstream Christianity.

• [5]
  
  Philo himself had been influenced by Plato’s Timaeus, in which he called the logos “the image of God”, and “the second God”. Many Trinitarians today are emphatic in their insistence that John's gospel deliberately makes use of the term "logos" because (according to them) he was fully aware of its Philonic meaning, and expected his readers to understand this! Some Trinitarians even go so far as to say that John himself was responsible for using the term in a new and especifically religious way.

Stay tuned for a detailed rebuttal this portion of EV’s post.

 

[Future Man]

 

[OldShepherd]

Evangelion posted a long series of posts allegedly demonstrating the pre-Christian Jewish thought on the Hebrew word “dabar”, i.e. word, and how it is supposedly reflected in the N.T. use of the Greek word “logos”, which also means “word.” Here are ninety eight O.T. verses, that EV did not include, in which the “dabar/word of יהוה/God” is said to come and to speak. Note carefully that the verses do not say, “God came saying” but the “word of God came saying”

”Perhaps this is a customary Jewish way of speaking”? Nope! The word “dabar” occurs, at least, 1439 times in the O.T.. It isn’t used that way the other 1341 times. People or angels speak, God speaks, and even one time a donkey speaks, but “spoken words” do not themselves speak!

• 
  0559 אמר ‘amar aw-mar’
  a primitive root; TWOT - 118; v
  AV - said 4874, speak 179, answer 99, command 30, tell 29, call 7, promised 6, misc. 84; 5308
  1) to say, speak, utter
  1a) (Qal) to say, to answer, to say in one’s heart, to think, to command, to promise, to intend
  1b) (Niphal) to be told, to be said, to be called
  1c) (Hithpael) to boast, to act proudly
  1d) (Hiphil) to avow, to avouch
  
  01697 דבר dabar daw-baw’
  from 01696; TWOT - 399a; n m
  AV - word 807, thing 231, matter 63, acts 51, chronicles 38, saying 25, commandment 20, misc 204; 1439
  1) speech, word, speaking, thing
  1a) speech
  1b) saying, utterance
  1c) word, words
  1d) business, occupation, acts, matter, case, something, manner (by extension)
  
  Ge 15:1 After these things the word (dabar) of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying (‘amar),
  
  Ge 15:4 And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, . . .
  
  1Sa 15:10 Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying,
  
  2Sa 7:4 . . .the word of the LORD came unto Nathan, saying,
  
  2Sa 24:11 . . . the word of the LORD came unto the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,
  
  1Ki 13:17 For it was said to me by the word of the LORD,. . .
  
  1Ki 17:8 And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying,
  
  1Ki 18:1 . . .the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, . . .
  
  1Ki 18:31 . . . the word of the LORD came, saying, . . .
  
  1Ki 19:9 . . . the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, . . .
  
  1Ki 21:17 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
  
  1Ki 21:28 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
  
  2Ki 20:4 . . . the word of the LORD came to him, saying,
  
  1Ch 22:8 But the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
  
  2Ch 11:2 But the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying,
  
  2Ch 12:7 . . . the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah, saying,
  
  Isa 38:4 Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying,
  
  17 vss. Jer 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jer 1:11, Jer 1:13, Jer 2:1, Jer 11:1, Jer 13:8, Jer 28:12, Jer 30:1, Jer 32:6, Jer 33:1, Jer 33:19, Jer 33:23, Jer 35:12, Jer 36:27, Jer 37:6, Jer 39:15, Jer 43:8
  
  50 vss. Eze 3:16 . . . the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Eze 6:1, Eze 7:1, Eze 11:14, Eze 12:1, Eze 12:8, Eze 12:17, Eze 12:21, Eze 12:26, Eze 13:1, Eze 14:2, Eze 14:12, Eze 15:1, Eze 16:1, Eze 16:35, Eze 17:1, Eze 17:11, Eze 18:1, Eze 20:2 Eze 20:45, Eze 21:1, Eze 21:8, Eze 21:18, Eze 22:1, Eze 22:17, Eze 22:23, Eze 23:1, Eze 24:1, Eze 24:15, Eze 24:20, Eze 25:1, Eze 26:1, Eze 27:1, Eze 28:1, Eze 28:11, Eze 28:20, Eze 29:1, Eze 29:17, Eze 30:1, Eze 30:20, Eze 31:1, Eze 32:1, Eze 32:17, Eze 33:1, Eze 33:23, Eze 34:1, Eze 35:1, Eze 36:16, Eze 37:15, Eze 38:1,
  
  Hag 1:1 . . .came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet . . . saying,
  
  Hag 1:3 Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,
  
  Hag 2:10 . . .came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,
  
  Hag 2:20 And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai in the four and twentieth day of the month, saying,
  
  Hag 2:20 And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai . . . saying,
  
  Jon 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
  
  Zec 1:1 . . .came the word of the LORD unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, Zec 1:7
  
  Zec 4:8 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
  
  Zec 6:9 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, (Zec 7:8 Zec 8:18)
  
  Zec 7:4 Then came the word of the LORD of hosts unto me, saying
  
  Zec 8:1 Again the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying,
  
  98 verses.

In this verse יהוה/God revealed Himself to Samuel not by His word but by “the dabar, the word, of יהוה/God.”

• 
  1 Sa 3:21 And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh: for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.

 

[Doctrine1st]

Originally posted by OldShepherd
Evangelion posted a long series of posts allegedly demonstrating the pre-Christian Jewish thought on the Hebrew word “dabar”, i.e. word, and how it is supposedly reflected in the N.T. use of the Greek word “logos”, which also means “word.” Here are ninety eight O.T. verses, that EV did not include, in which the “dabar/word of יהוה/God” is said to come and to speak. Note carefully that the verses do not say, “God came saying” but the “word of God came saying”

”Perhaps this is a customary Jewish way of speaking”? Nope! The word “dabar” occurs, at least, 1439 times in the O.T.. It isn’t used that way the other 1341 times. People or angels speak, God speaks, and even one time a donkey speaks, but “spoken words” do not themselves speak!

• 
  0559 אמר ‘amar aw-mar’
  a primitive root; TWOT - 118; v
  AV - said 4874, speak 179, answer 99, command 30, tell 29, call 7, promised 6, misc. 84; 5308
  1) to say, speak, utter
  1a) (Qal) to say, to answer, to say in one’s heart, to think, to command, to promise, to intend
  1b) (Niphal) to be told, to be said, to be called
  1c) (Hithpael) to boast, to act proudly
  1d) (Hiphil) to avow, to avouch
  
  01697 דבר dabar daw-baw’
  from 01696; TWOT - 399a; n m
  AV - word 807, thing 231, matter 63, acts 51, chronicles 38, saying 25, commandment 20, misc 204; 1439
  1) speech, word, speaking, thing
  1a) speech
  1b) saying, utterance
  1c) word, words
  1d) business, occupation, acts, matter, case, something, manner (by extension)
  
  Ge 15:1 After these things the word (dabar) of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying (‘amar),
  
  Ge 15:4 And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, . . .
  
  1Sa 15:10 Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying,
  
  2Sa 7:4 . . .the word of the LORD came unto Nathan, saying,
  
  2Sa 24:11 . . . the word of the LORD came unto the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,
  
  1Ki 13:17 For it was said to me by the word of the LORD,. . .
  
  1Ki 17:8 And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying,
  
  1Ki 18:1 . . .the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, . . .
  
  1Ki 18:31 . . . the word of the LORD came, saying, . . .
  
  1Ki 19:9 . . . the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, . . .
  
  1Ki 21:17 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
  
  1Ki 21:28 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
  
  2Ki 20:4 . . . the word of the LORD came to him, saying,
  
  1Ch 22:8 But the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
  
  2Ch 11:2 But the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying,
  
  2Ch 12:7 . . . the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah, saying,
  
  Isa 38:4 Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying,
  
  17 vss. Jer 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jer 1:11, Jer 1:13, Jer 2:1, Jer 11:1, Jer 13:8, Jer 28:12, Jer 30:1, Jer 32:6, Jer 33:1, Jer 33:19, Jer 33:23, Jer 35:12, Jer 36:27, Jer 37:6, Jer 39:15, Jer 43:8
  
  50 vss. Eze 3:16 . . . the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Eze 6:1, Eze 7:1, Eze 11:14, Eze 12:1, Eze 12:8, Eze 12:17, Eze 12:21, Eze 12:26, Eze 13:1, Eze 14:2, Eze 14:12, Eze 15:1, Eze 16:1, Eze 16:35, Eze 17:1, Eze 17:11, Eze 18:1, Eze 20:2 Eze 20:45, Eze 21:1, Eze 21:8, Eze 21:18, Eze 22:1, Eze 22:17, Eze 22:23, Eze 23:1, Eze 24:1, Eze 24:15, Eze 24:20, Eze 25:1, Eze 26:1, Eze 27:1, Eze 28:1, Eze 28:11, Eze 28:20, Eze 29:1, Eze 29:17, Eze 30:1, Eze 30:20, Eze 31:1, Eze 32:1, Eze 32:17, Eze 33:1, Eze 33:23, Eze 34:1, Eze 35:1, Eze 36:16, Eze 37:15, Eze 38:1,
  
  Hag 1:1 . . .came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet . . . saying,
  
  Hag 1:3 Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,
  
  Hag 2:10 . . .came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,
  
  Hag 2:20 And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai in the four and twentieth day of the month, saying,
  
  Hag 2:20 And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai . . . saying,
  
  Jon 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
  
  Zec 1:1 . . .came the word of the LORD unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, Zec 1:7
  
  Zec 4:8 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
  
  Zec 6:9 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, (Zec 7:8 Zec 8:18)
  
  Zec 7:4 Then came the word of the LORD of hosts unto me, saying
  
  Zec 8:1 Again the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying,
  
  98 verses.

In this verse יהוה/God revealed Himself to Samuel not by His word but by “the dabar, the word, of יהוה/God.”

• 
  1 Sa 3:21 And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh: for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.

I must be missing something.

Somehow I get the impression that you and EV are talking about two different concepts of what "Logos" means. You seem to be using it to mean simply "God speaking" and I think EV is using as Philo or better yet, the one whose original idea it was, Heraclitus a Greek Philosopher from the 6th century BCE., who described it as the "universal, underlying principle, through which all things come to pass and in which all things share." essentially a force that gives the world it's order.

 

[OldShepherd]

Originally posted by Doctrine1st
I must be missing something.

Somehow I get the impression that you and EV are talking about two different concepts of what "Logos" means. You seem to be using it to mean simply "God speaking" and I think EV is using as Philo or better yet, the one whose original idea it was, Heraclitus a Greek Philosopher from the 6th century BCE., who described it as the "universal, underlying principle, through which all things come to pass and in which all things share." essentially a force that gives the world it's order.

Perhaps you have missed the earlier posts in this thread. In the Targums the divine tetragrammaton ws relaced with the Aramaic word, "memra" so instead of God acting the "memra" or word of God acts. And in the passages just cited the "word of God" is somehow distinct from God.

As for all the philosophers, I believe that God came first.

 

[OldShepherd]

There have been posts in this thread stating and implying that John and even Christianity copied the logos doctrine from Philo, and his predecessors, Plato, Heraclitus and others. Below quoted from International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

• 
  (c) Contrast between Philo and John: The contrast between the two writers is much more striking than the resemblance. The distinction is not due merely to the acceptance by the Christian writer of Jesus as the Word, but extends to the whole conception of God and His relation to the world which has made Christianity a new power among men. The Logos of Philo is metaphysical, that of John, religious. Philo moves entirely in the region of abstract thought, his idea of God is pure being; John's thought is concrete and active, moving in a region of life and history. Philo's Logos is intermediate, the instrument which God employs in fashioning the world; John's Logos is not subsidiary but is Himself God, and as such is not a mere instrument, but the prime Agent in creation. According to Philo the Deity is conceived as an architect who forms the world out of already existent matter. According to John the Logos is absolute Creator of all that is, the Source of all being, life and intelligence. In Philo the Logos hovers between personality and impersonality, and if it is sometimes personified it can hardly be said to have the value of an actual person; in John the personality of the Logos is affirmed from the first and it is of the very essence of his doctrine, the ground of His entire creative energy. The idea of an incarnation is alien to the thought of Philo and impossible in his scheme of the universe; the "Word that has become flesh" is the pivot and crown of Johannine teaching. Philo affirms the absolute incomprehensibility of God; but it is the prime object of the evangelist to declare that God is revealed in Christ and that the Logos is the unveiling through the flesh of man of the self-manifesting Deity. Notwithstanding the personal epithets employed by Philo, his Logos remains a pure abstraction or attribute of God, and it is never brought into relation with human history. John's Logos, on the other hand, is instinct with life and energy from the beginning, and it is the very heart of his Gospel to declare as the very center of life and history the great historical event of the incarnation which is to recreate the world and reunite God and man.
  
  From whatever point of view we compare them, we find that Philo and John, while using the same language, give an entirely different value to it. The essential purport of the Johannine Logos is Jesus Christ. The adoption of the term involves its complete transformation. It is baptized with a new spirit and henceforth stands for a new conception. From whatsoever source it was originally derived-from Hebrew tradition or Hellenic speculation-on Christian soil it is a new product. It is neither Greek nor Jewish, it is Christian. The philosophical abstraction has become a religious conception. Hellenism and Hebrewism [sic] have been taken up and fused into a higher unity, and Christ as the embodiment of the Logos has become the creative power and the world-wide possession of mankind.
  
  (from International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Electronic Database Copyright (c)1996 by Biblesoft)

 

[Doctrine1st]

From whatever point of view we compare them, we find that Philo and John, while using the same language, give an entirely different value to it. The essential purport of the Johannine Logos is Jesus Christ. The adoption of the term involves its complete transformation. It is baptized with a new spirit and henceforth stands for a new conception. From whatsoever source it was originally derived-from Hebrew tradition or Hellenic speculation-on Christian soil it is a new product. It is neither Greek nor Jewish, it is Christian. The philosophical abstraction has become a religious conception. Hellenism and Hebrewism [sic] have been taken up and fused into a higher unity, and Christ as the embodiment of the Logos has become the creative power and the world-wide possession of mankind.

In other words, they have taken a previous concept or ideal of others, familiar to others, and have given it a new twist to give Christianity a familiar meaning. I agree, it seems those who wish to present the facets of one religion have used the preexisting ideals of others for years.

This is from the Catholic Encylopedia in regards to the term "Logos":

The Logos

The word Logos is the term by which Christian theology in the Greek language designates the Word of God, or Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Before St. John had consecrated this term by adopting it, the Greeks and the Jews had used it to express religious conceptions which, under various titles, have exercised a certain influence on Christian theology, and of which it is necessary to say something.

I. THE LOGOS IN HELLENISM

It is in Heraclitus that the theory of the Logos appears for the first time, and it is doubtless for this reason that, first among the Greek philosophers, Heraclitus was regarded by St. Justin (Apol. I, 46) as a Christian before Christ. For him the Logos, which he seems to identify with fire, is that universal principle which animates and rules the world. This conception could only find place in a materialistic monism. The philosophers of the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ were dualists, and conceived of God as transcendent, so that neither in Plato (whatever may have been said on the subject) nor in Aristotle do we find the theory of the Logos.

Have a nice day

 

[OldShepherd]

Originally posted by Doctrine1st
In other words, they have taken a previous concept or ideal of others, familiar to others, and have given it a new twist to give Christianity a familiar meaning. I agree, it seems those who wish to present the facets of one religion have used the preexisting ideals of others for years.

No, neither the article I quoted or the one you quoted says that. The ISBE said that John used the same word but with a Christian meaning. Just like many groups use the name Christian today, but JWs don't mean the same thing as LDS by that word.

The Aramaic word "memra" was used of God in the Targums, Aramaic translations of the O.T. during the Babylonian captivity. John was a Israelite Jew, not a Greek, but to communicate to Greek speaking believers he used the ONLY Greek word he had available to communicate the O.T. concept of the memra was YHWH, and that is The Logos was Theos.

 

[Doctrine1st]

Originally posted by OldShepherd
No, neither the article I quoted or the one you quoted says that. The ISBE said that John used the same word but with a Christian meaning. Just like many groups use the name Christian today, but JWs don't mean the same thing as LDS by that word.

The Aramaic word "memra" was used of God in the Targums, Aramaic translations of the O.T. during the Babylonian captivity. John was a Israelite Jew, not a Greek, but to communicate to Greek speaking believers he used the ONLY Greek word he had available to communicate the O.T. concept of the memra was YHWH, and that is The Logos was Theos.

So one more time, when did the Targums begin to appear, your saying during the days of the Babylonian captivity?

And what your implication is that John, the rest of the Gospel writers, or for that matter, John the Baptist, Jesus, I mean Yeshua (Jesus is his Greek name), and Paul, who are are all born into the world of Hellenistic thought, it's teachings in what is undestood as to be the "most enlightened" schools of thought, it's highly reguarded Phililosophers, are able to distance themselves from any influences and artfully used Greek terms to communicate to a Greek audience without prejudice?

 

[OldShepherd]

Originally posted by Doctrine1st
So one more time, when did the Targums begin to appear, your saying during the days of the Babylonian captivity?

You could do as I did and do a search on google. But here is part of the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Targums, with a link if you care to become knowledgeable on the subject.

• 
  Targum
  The Aramaic translation of the Bible. It forms a part of the Jewish traditional literature, and in its inception is as early as the time of the Second Temple. The verb , from which the noun is formed, is used in Ezra iv. 7 in reference to a document written in Aramaic, although "Aramit" (A. V. "in the Syrian tongue") is added. In mishnaic phraseology the verb denotes a translation from Hebrew into any other language, as into Greek (see Yer. Ḳid. 59a, line 10, and Yer. Meg. 71c, line 11; both statements referring to the Greek version of Aquila); and the noun likewise may refer to the translation of the Biblical text into any language (see Meg. ii. 1; Shab. 115a). The use of the term "Targum" by itself was restricted to the Aramaic version of the Bible (see Bacher, "Die Terminologie der Tannaiten," pp. 205 et seq.). In like manner, the Aramaic passages in Genesis, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezra were briefly called "Targum," while the Hebrew text was called "Miḳra" (see Yad. iv. 5; Shab. 115b).
  
  http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=67&letter=T

And what your implication is that John, the rest of the Gospel writers, or for that matter, John the Baptist, Jesus, I mean Yeshua (Jesus is his Greek name), and Paul, who are are all born into the world of Hellenistic thought, it's teachings in what is undestood as to be the "most enlightened" schools of thought, it's highly reguarded Phililosophers, are able to distance themselves from any influences and artfully used Greek terms to communicate to a Greek audience without prejudice?

Not sure I understand the question. But my view is that they were all born into a Jewish, NOT Greek, society. Greek was merely the language they used to communicate with those who were not Jewish and did not speak Hebrew or Aramaic. There was no problem with distancing themselves, in fact they had just the opposite problem as evidenced by the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman. She was amazed that a Jew would even talk to her. And since she was Samaritan their conversation almost certainly was in Greek.

 

[OldShepherd]

Originally posted by Doctrine1st
It is in Heraclitus that the theory of the Logos appears for the first time, and it is doubtless for this reason that, first among the Greek philosophers, Heraclitus was regarded by St. Justin (Apol. I, 46) as a Christian before Christ.

Lets see exactly what Justin says about Heraclitus at this [Link] or [Here]

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  We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably(5) are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious.

Notice Justin didn’t just say Heraclitus was a Christian, as the above post implies, but included him among others that lived righteously. This is very similar to what Paul wrote in Romans.

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  Romans 2:14

• For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

Also Justin says nothing about the logos and Heraclitus. But we wouldn't want to clutter up this thread with too many facts.

 

[Doctrine1st]

Originally posted by OldShepherd
Lets see exactly what Justin says about Heraclitus at this [Link] or [Here]

• 
  We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably(5) are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious.

Notice Justin didn’t just say Heraclitus was a Christian, as the above post implies, but included him among others that lived righteously. This is very similar to what Paul wrote in Romans.

• 
  
  Huh??? I realize that he does not come out and specifically dub him a Christian but when he says:
  
  "He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably(5) are Christians

• , even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them"
  
  To imply he meant "only" that they lived "righteously" is disingenuous. The righteous life he refers to is clearly his "premise" for considering them as Chrisitians.
  
  

  Also Justin says nothing about the logos and Heraclitus. But we wouldn't want to clutter up this thread with too many facts.

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  And your point?
  
  Just the fact that he acknowledges these pagans for their intellect has some kind of meaning would it not? Could it be one for their contributions in thought?
  I mean that's quite a statement coming from someone, a church father at that, who is bent of giving Christianity it's validity?
  
  I know it's through faith to think that the Bible was created in some kind of divine vaccum, but that simply is not the case. Just as any culture or individual experiences, be it all those folks whose ideals form the Bible, it was shaped by the social, political, and cultural experiences that permeated thought prior to and during those current times.