The Daily Office · John 1:1–5
The Word
John 1:1–5
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2He was in the beginning with God.
3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
What's happening here
John writes for an audience that includes both Jews who knew Genesis and Greeks steeped in philosophy. He picks one word — Logos — that means something to both of them at once, and uses it to claim that the rational principle behind the universe and the God of Israel are the same person, and that person became a Galilean carpenter. It is one of the most ambitious opening paragraphs in any literature.
The word that matters
Greek · word, reason, the ordering principle of reality
For Greek philosophers, the Logos was the impersonal logic that made the cosmos coherent. For Jewish readers, "the word of the Lord" was how God created and spoke through the prophets. John tells both groups: the thing you have been pointing at is a person, and we have eaten dinner with him.
Where else this shows up
Genesis 1:3
God speaks and the world begins. John says: that speaking was a Someone.
Hebrews 1:1–3
A parallel claim with different vocabulary — God spoke through prophets, then finally through a Son who upholds the universe by his word.
1 John 1:1
The same author, decades later, still amazed: "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life."