The Jesus Institute Forum

The nature of God – Part 6
Proverbs 8 & John 1

God and the Christ in the gospel of John,
the Johannine epistles, and the Revelation

Lee F Greer III
Loma Linda, California
© 2005
Prepared for the CHC Rose Room Sabbath school class
of Larry Christoffel & the members of JIF

(Last updated March 2006)

Abstract. The wisdom poems of Proverbs and Job and the logos poem of John 1 are in the best tradition of Jewish wisdom literature, employing poetic preexistence and personification in the eternal foreknowledge of the one God of heaven, recognized for centuries by numerous translators and many scholars. John 1:14 reflecting the miraculous virginal 'beginning of Jesus Christ' (Matt. 1:18 and Luke 1:35) introduces the Jesus the Christ, as the uniquely-begotten Son of God. God's purpose and promise became a person. This was what the early church believed even into the 3rd century CE. Greek neo-Platonic speculation by some church fathers (2nd-3rd centuries CE) and the Greco-Roman conciliar creeds would eventually change all that by the 4th and 5th centuries CE into metaphysical categories foreign to Biblical thought.

Introduction & method – listening to the text in its own context

"What we do know is that John was steeped in the Old Testament scriptures. If we wish to understand the historical ancestry of John's Logos (word) concept as he understood it, we have to go back to those Scriptures" (Wright, 1938)

(1) Determination of the text(s). The Hebrew text of Proverbs 8-9 is well established in the Masoretic Text. The Greek text of this passage in John is quite well established, but with an interesting textual variant which we will discuss (Aland et al., 1998; eds. The Greek New Testament).

Text
Proverbs 8-9 MT
Context
....1Does not wisdom call, 
And understanding lift up her voice?
2On top of the heights beside the way, 
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
3Beside the gates, at the opening to the city, 
at the entrance of the portals, she cries out:
4"To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the sons of men
5Understand, simple ones, prudence! 
and fools understand (in) heart
6Listen, for I will speak princely things; 
and the opening of my lips equitable things.
7For my mouth will utter truth;
and hateful to my lips is wickedness.
8In righteousness (are) all my words of mouth; 
nothing in them is twisted and crooked.
9They are all straightforward to him who understands, 
and right to those who find knowledge.
10Take my instruction and not silver, 
and knowledge rather than choice gold.
11For wisdom is better than jewels; 
and all delights cannot compare with her.
   ¶12I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, 
and knowledge of discrete purposes I discover.
13The fear of YHWH (is) to hate evil; 
Pride and arrogancy and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.
14To me is counsel [i.e., is mine] and sound wisdom; 
I (am) understanding, power is mine.
15By me kings reign, 
and judges decree justice.
16By me princes [sar] rule, 
and nobles, all who judge rightly.
17I love those loving me, 
and ones seeking me find me.
18Riches and honor (are) with me, 
surpassing wealth and righteousness.
19My fruit is better than gold, even purified gold, 
and my yield than choice silver.
20In the road of righteousness I walk, 
among the paths of judgment,
21To endow my lovers to inherit wealth, 
and their storehouses will I fill.

   ¶22YHWH erected [qanah, created, so LXX] me in the beginning of His way, 
before His works of old [qedem]
23From everlasting [me'olam] was I set up [nasaq], 
from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth [miqedem mey-eretz].
24When there were no depths I was brought to birth [chul, so LXX, genna me], 
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25Before the mountains were settled, 
before the hills I was brought to birth [chul, so LXX, genna me].
26While He had not yet made the earth and the fields, 
and the first dust of the world.
27In His establishing the heavens, there I (was),
in His inscribing a circle on the face of the deep, 
28in His strengthening the clouds above, 
in His establishing the springs of the deep,
29in His setting for the sea its statutory boundary [choq], 
so that the water not pass over His command [peh, lit. mouth], 
in His inscribing the foundations of the earth
30Then was I (at) His side, a master worker; 
and I was His delights day (after) day; 
making merry [sachaq] always before Him
31Rejoicing [sachaq] in (the) world [tebel], His earth [LXX, oikoumenyn], 
and my delights (were) with the sons of men.

   ¶32And now, O sons, listen to me: 
Happy are they who keep my ways. 
33Hear instruction and be wise, 
and do not dismiss it.
34Happy is the man who listens to me, 
waking daily at my gates, watching beside my gateposts.
35He who finds me finds life, 
and obtains favor from YHWH.
36But he (who is) sinning against me injures his own soul. 
All who hate me love death."
   ¶9:1Wisdom has built her house, 
She has hewn out her seven pillars;
2She has slaughtered her slaughter, 
she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.
3She has sent out her maidens, 
she calls from the tops of the heights of the city:
4"Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!" 
To him who lacks understanding she says,
5"Come, eat of my bread 
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6Forsake the foolish and live, 
and walk in the way of understanding."

Jesus alluded to 'lady wisdom' in Proverbs by saying that John the Baptist and the Son of man were among deeds or children of her by which she is vindicated (Q: Matt. 11:16-19 = Luke 7:31-35). 

 Proverbs 8-9 is a poem personifying an expressive attribute of God, 'wisdom' chokmah (a feminine noun), hence it is easy to personify as a woman (Rigsby, 1979), 'lady wisdom.' When another poem in the 1st century CE (John 1) personified God's word and wisdom using a rich word, logos (a masculine noun), it became easy in the post-biblical church period of neo-Platonic philosophical speculation (late 2nd- 3rd centuries CE) and especially after the Greco-Roman creedal councils (4th-5th centuries CE) to miss the personification and to turn logos into a separate divine being in typical Greco-Roman tradition. In both cases however, we are looking at poetic personifications in the best Jewish wisdom tradition.

Possibly among the proverbs compiled by 'the men of Hezekiah' (Prov. 25:1) who were undertaking a Yahwist campaign against idolatry, the 'high places,' and asherim during the late 8th century BCE while collecting the literature of the 'golden age' – the kingdom united under David and Solomon (Schniedewind, 2004). We suggest below that this poetry personifying the divine wisdom of the one God of heaven, YHWH 'Elohim of hosts of Israel were in part responses against the syncretic asherah cult of YHWH.

v1 – Two other poems also personifying wisdom precede ch. 8-9 in the collection:

1:20Wisdom sings out in the street, 
She lifts her voice in the square;
21Above the din [of the streets] she calls out; 
At the city gates in the city she utters her sayings:
22"Until when, O simple ones, will you love simpleness? 
and scoffers desire scoffing? 
and fools hate knowledge?
23Turn back at my warning, 
Look! I will pour out my spirit [ruach] on you; 
I will make known my words [davar] to you.
24Because I called and you refused, 
I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention;
25And you let go all my advice 
And did not want my reproof;
26I will also laugh at your calamity; 
I will mock when your dread comes,...
27When your dread comes like a storm 
And your calamity comes like a whirlwind, 
When distress and anguish come upon you.
28Then they will call on me but I will not answer; 
They will seek me diligently but they will not find me,
29Because they hated knowledge 
And did not choose the fear of YHWH....
33But he who listens to me shall live securely 
And will be at ease from the dread of evil."

Another poem (ch. 3) personifies wisdom as an instructor and confidant in contemporary life of humankind as well as the attribute of God at creation:

3:13How blessed is the man who finds wisdom [chokmah]
And the man who gains understanding.
14For her profit is better than the profit of silver 
And her gain better than fine gold.
15She is more precious than jewels; 
And nothing you desire compares with her.
16Long life is in her right hand; 
In her left hand are riches and honor.
17Her ways are pleasant ways 
And all her paths are peace.
18A tree of life is she to those taking hold of her, 
And those holding her fast are happy.
19YHWH by wisdom founded the earth,
He fixed the heavens by understanding,
20By His knowledge the depths were broken up,
and the clouds dropped down dew.
21My son, let them not vanish from your eyes,
keep sound logic [tushiyah] and discrete planning
22So will they be life to your soul,
And grace upon your neck.

Instead of a direct poetic personification of an attribute of God, Job 28 contains an even older 'primordial wisdom' oral tradition captured within our current recension of Job, where God goes searching for wisdom (Kugel, 1999) during creation and finds it. The deep, the sea, destruction, and death are all personified.

1-11 – <Human search for gold & riches in the mines of the earth>
12"But where can wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
13Man does not know its value, 
Nor is it found in the land of the living.
14The deep says, 'It is not in me'; 
And the sea says, 'It is not with me.'
15Pure gold cannot be given in exchange for it,
Nor can silver be weighed as its price.
16It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
In precious onyx, or sapphire.
17Gold or glass cannot equal it,
Nor can it be exchanged for articles of fine gold.
18Coral and crystal are not to be mentioned; 
And the acquisition of wisdom is above pearls.
19The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it,
Nor can it be valued in pure gold.
20Where then does wisdom come from? 
And where is the place of understanding?
21Thus it is hidden from the eyes of all living 
And concealed from the birds of the sky.
22Abaddon [Destruction] and Death say, 
'With our ears we have heard a rumor of it.'
23God understands its way, 
And He knows its place.
24For He looks to the ends of the earth 
And sees everything under the heavens.
25When He imparted weight to the wind 
And meted out the waters by measure,
26When He set a limit for the rain 
And a course for the thunderbolt,
27then He saw it and declared it; 
He established it and also searched it out.
28And to man He said, 
'Look! the fear of the Lord ['Adonai], that is wisdom; 
And to depart from evil is understanding.'
Text
John 1
Context
1In the beginning was the word and wisdom [logos], 
and the word and wisdom was with God, 
and the word and wisdom was what God was 
[kai Theos en 'o logos, i.e., the word was divine].
2This [outos] was in the beginning with God;
3Everything through it came to be,
and without it nothing came to be that came to be.
4In this was life,
and the life was the light of men.
5The light shines in the darkness, 
and the darkness has not overcome it.

6There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7He came to testify – to testify to the light – that all might believe through him. 
8He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.

9There was the true light 
enlightening every man coming into the world.
10In the world (it) was, 
and the world through it came to be, 
yet the world had not recognized it [aorist, historic past].
11Into its own [world] (it) had come [aorist], 
and its own [people] had failed [aorist] to embrace it.
12But as many as had embraced it [aorist], 
to them it gave the right to become children of God, 
even to those believing in (this) name of His [i.e., God's name],
13who [came] not from blood 
and not even from physical desire [thelymatos sarkos] 
nor from male willfulness [thelymatos andros], 
but from God were born.
14And the word and wisdom became human, 
and lived among us [eskynosen en 'ymin], 
and we saw his glory, 
glory as of an only begotten from a Father 
[monogenous para Patros], 
brimming with grace and truth.

15John bore witness to him, and cried, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.'"
16And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace.

17For the law through Moses was given,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18No one has ever seen God; 
the only-begotten Son ['o monogenes 'uios], 
who is in the Father's bosom – [present tense]
that one [ekeinos] has disclosed Him.

19This is what John testified when the Judeans sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?"
20And he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, "I am not the Christ [Messiah]."
21They asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" And he said, "I am not." "Are you the prophet?" [Deut. 18] And he answered, "No."
22Then they said to him, "Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?"
23He said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said."

Here the 4th gospel's account of John the Baptist's proclamation coincides with Q: Matthew 3:3 = Luke 3:1, 4(-6); continuing in 3:7-10 = 3:7-9; Greer, 2005)

 The logos of God exists in stages: (i) God's purpose 'in the beginning,' (ii) God's promises to humankind, (iii) God's person, Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God (Graesar et al. 2003). The logos poem is contained in v1-18. 

v1 – 'kai Theos en 'o logos' Barclay (1962, a Trinitarian) recognizes that the lack of a definite article ('o) before Theos prevents a strict equivalence between God and the logos, but makes Theos primarily adjectival, so that the NEB is most accurate, "what God was the word was" or "the word was divine" (Moffat). Other scholars have recognized this as well. When the 1st epistle of John says, "God is love" it does not assert the exact equivalence of love and God (i.e., love is not God), so similarly in John 1. Both 'agape' and 'logos' are entirely expressive of God. (See Buzzard & Hunting, 1998). The transcendent God's self-expressive activity in the world, His immanence (Dunn, 1989). 

v2 – outos pronoun demonstrative nominative masculine singular; [UBS] outos, auty, touto demonstrative pron. and adj. this, this one; he, she, it; tout estin that is, which means. See Summers, 1995. 

Hebrew wisdom tradition allusions-parallels in the logos poem (1:1-18) – more to be posted:

  • v1 – "With You is wisdom, who knows Your works and was present when You made the world" (Wisdom 9:9; cf. Prov. 8); logos is "the elder son... at the side of Him [God]" (Philo, Immut. 31ff); cosmos is 'God's son' and logos is "God's firstborn" (Philo, Conf. 146; Spec. Leg. I:318)
  • v3 – "YHWH by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens" (Prov. 3:19); "By the word of YHWH were the heavens made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth" (Ps. 33:6); "O God of my fathers and Lord of mercy, Who has made all things by Your word, and by Your wisdom has formed man.... Who has learned Your counsel, unless You have given wisdom, and sent your holy Spirit form on high?" (Wisdom 9:1-2, 17 note interchangeable parallelism between 'word' 'wisdom' and 'spirit'); Wisdom is "the firstborn mother of all things" (Philo, Qu. Gen. IV.79); 
  • v4 – "Whosoever finds me [wisdom] finds life, and obtains favor of YHWH" (Prov. 8:35; cf. Sirach 4:12); "All light comes from her [wisdom]" (Aristobulus, Greek poet, cited by Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XIII.12.10) 
  • v11 – "Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men, and found no dwelling place" (I Enoch 42:2); "when (God?) will have begotten the Messiah among them" (1QSa 2:11ff; cf. Luke 1:35)
  • v14 – "The One who created me [wisdom] assigned a place for my tent [skynyn]. And He said, 'Make your dwelling [kataskynoson] in Jacob'" (Sirach 24:8)
  • v17 – Moses was "the law-giving word" (Philo, Migr. 23ff), by contrast
  • v18 – "when (God?) will have begotten the Messiah among them" (1QSa 2:11ff); "he [prob. Messiah] shall be hailed (as) the Son of God, and they shall call him the Son of the Most High" (4QpsDan A; cf. parallelism in Luke 1:35)
The word logos is used >300 times in the NT and translated "account, appearance, book, command, conversation, eloquence, flattery, grievance, heard, instruction, matter, message, ministry, news, proposal, question, reason, reasonable, reply, report, rule, rumor, said, say, saying, sentence, speaker, speaking, speech, stories, story, talk, talking, teaching, testimony, thing, things, this, truths, what, why, word and words" (Graesar et al. 2003). For the ancient world it included the idea of wisdom and God's activity in the world.

A sampling of scholars recognizing that the poetic start of John is likely referencing the logos as the expressive (etc.) attribute of God rather than a separate preexistent being: Arndt & Gingrich, 1957; p. 480); AE Harvey (1982; App III, pp. 176-7); James DG Dunn (1980, p. 243; 1989): "The conclusion which seems to emerge from our analysis [re John 1:1-14]... is that it is only with verse 14 that we can begin to speak of the personal Logos. The poem uses rather impersonal language (became flesh), but no Christian would fail to recognize here a reference to Jesus – the word became not flesh in general [contra Chalcedon, 451 CE] but Jesus Christ. Prior to verse 14 we are in the same realm as pre-Christian talk of Wisdom and Logos... we are dealing with personifications rather than persons, personified actions of God rather than an individual divine being as such.... if we translated Logos as "God's utterance" [as did the early Christians] instead, it would become clearer that the poem did not necessarily intend the Logos of 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 not only the transition in the thought of the poem from preexistence to incarnation, but also the transition from impersonal personification to actual person." CJ Wright (1938; 707) "When John presents the eternal Word he was not thinking of a Being in any way separate from God, or some ‘Hypostasis.’ The later dogmatic Trinitarian distinctions should not be read into John’s mind  … in the light of a philosophy which was not his …. We must not read John in the light of the dogmatic history of the three centuries subsequent to the Evangelist’s writing." John Lightfoot (1700s; 1989 reprint ed.); James Denny (1920; 121-125); CJ Wright (1953; 677); Morris (1971; 102); Birdsell (1975; 715); Cupitt (1979; 92); FF Bruce (allows for possibility in a 1981 personal communication, AF Buzzard & Hunting, 1998); JAT Robinson (1985); Leonhard Goppelt (1992); Colin Brown (1991); Karl-Joseph Kuschel (1992; 381); WA Beardsley (1993); James DG Dunn (1980, 1989); etc. Even the Trinitarian People's New Testament Commentary (Power BibleCD 3.7) while holding forth on the logos as a separate, pre-existent divine being, yet admits that all such thought is mysterious and too deep, but nevertheless acknowledges the real Hebraic background of these verses: 

  • "The first chapter of Genesis helps us to understand its [logos, word] meaning. God said, "Let there be light" [Ge 1:3], "Let there be a firmament" [Ge 1:6], "Let the earth bring forth" [Ge 1:11], etc., and it was done. God exhibits his creative power through the Word, and manifests his will through the Word. There are mysteries belonging to the divine nature and to the relation between the Son and the Father that we have to wait for eternity to solve [time out for a little neo-Platonic mystification!...]. They are too deep for human solution [!?], but this is clear: that God creates and speaks to man through the Word. As we clothe our thoughts in words, God reveals his will by the Word, and when that Word is clothed in flesh, as the Teacher of men, we recognize it as Jesus Christ" (emphasis added). A Unitarian Christian could hardly have said it better!
For about 40 translations and paraphrases in English over the last 500 years recognizing the same, see below.

v18 – Out of numerous Greek manuscripts, the earliest (Alexandrian) texts instead of "the only-begotten Son" render it "the only-begotten God" ('o monogenes theos; a slight change in letters). The following are reasons for preferring the more common reading (Graesar et al. 2003):

  • The variant reading is found almost exclusively in the earliest Alexandrian text types (i.e., 4th century CE; Westcott & Hort usually defended the Alexandrian texts, but felt that this was a corruption)
  • Virtually all other readings in the other textual traditions, including the Western, Byzantine, Caesarean, and secondary Alexandrian texts, read 'uios, “Son.” 
  • All other Johannine usages are of "the only-begotten Son" ('o monogenes 'uios), John 3:16, 18; I John 4:9. Also in 1:14, "an only begotten of a Father" (monogenous para Patros) illustrates that monogenes can be well-translated, 'only begotten' or 'uniquely begotten,' and not merely, 'unique, one of a kind' as many suppose.
  • Also, the contrast between Father and Son in v14 seems to demand Son, and also make a 'theos' reading out of harmony with the Johannine insistence that the Father is the One who alone is God in 5:44 and 17:3, besides being virtually untranslatable (Robinson, 1985; holds that the theos reading is a simple mistake)
  • Many church fathers, Irenaeus, Clement, and Tertullian, quoted the verse using “Son” and not “God” when they might have desired the alternate reading had it been available to them
  • The alternate theos reading fits a general pattern of altering texts to prove the emerging 'binitarian' and later 'trinitarian' views, a pattern well established by textual criticism (for a more detailed analysis of John 1:18 and other texts, see Bart Ehrman, 1993; The orthodox corruption of Scripture: The effect of early Christological controversies on the text of the New Testament, pp. 78-82. 
v19 – The logos poem (contained in v1-18) may be pre-Johannine (v19 may even be an attribution of it in some form to John the Baptist). 
(Our translation of John 1 is indebted in large part to the Scholars' Version, Funk et al., 1993, for its particular accuracy and beauty, as well as to other authorities).

(2) Ascertaining the literary / oral form. Proverbs 8-9 is a poem personifying an expressive attribute of God, 'wisdom' chokmah (a feminine noun), hence it is easy to personify as a woman (Rigsby, 1979), 'lady wisdom.' She is personified as a wise woman, an instructor of humankind and as the primordial companion of God who was brought to birth before the rest of creation and present when He created all things, even at His side as a master worker. Another early example is the Hymn to Wisdom found in Job 28 which has God discovering rather than creating wisdom (Kugel, 1999) after making a primordial search. In this case the animals and birds, and even Sheol and 'destruction' are personified and given a voice.

When another poem in the 1st century CE (John 1) personified God's word and wisdom using a rich word, logos (a masculine noun), it became easy in the post-biblical church period of neo-Platonic philosophical speculation (late 2nd-3rd centuries CE) and especially after the Greco-Roman conciliar creeds (4th-5th centuries CE) to miss the personification and to turn logos into a separate divine being in typical Greco-Roman tradition. In both cases however, we are looking at poetic personifications in the best Jewish wisdom tradition.

(3) Recovering the contemporary historical life situation (setting). Proverbs 8-9 is possibly among the proverbs (attributed to King Solomon, late 10th century BCE; Finkelstein & Silberman, 2001) compiled by 'the men of Hezekiah' (Prov. 25:1) who were undertaking the first Judahite Yahwist campaign against idolatry, the 'high places,' the 'sacred pillars', and the asherim (II Kings 18), during the late 8th century BCE while collecting the wisdom and literature of the 'golden age' – the kingdom united under David and Solomon (Schniedewind, 2004). It is interesting that the Hezekian reform removed the asherim, wooden monuments to Asherah, a Canaanite mother goddess, particularly in light of the inscriptions found at Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom about YHWH and "His asherah" or divine female consort (Lewis, 1993; Ackerman, 1993). It seems hardly coincidental to us that Solomonic poems personifying the divine wisdom of YHWH as His poetic companion would emerge in literary form by this epoch. We suggest that these poems (1:20-27; 3:13-22; 8:1-9:6) which contrast wisdom as the true companion of God and God-fearing men with the seductresses who consort with foolish men (Prov. 7) were a response to or even a polemic against the asherim in ancient Israel. They pit YHWH and His ancient wisdom brought to birth before creation against the syncretic asherah cult of YHWH. Proverbs 8 is an argument that God is one and against a plurality in the Deity.

The logos poem in John 1 is likewise an argument that God is only one and not many, and that His own divine reason, wisdom, purpose, and revelatory action, His very immanence in the world, served as His only companion in creation, was expressed through the prophets as 'the word of YHWH', and fulfilled in eschatological expression in the man Jesus the Christ, God's only begotten Son (v14). "John’s prologue identifies Jesus as he whom the Word of God became (Joh. 1:14)" (Massey, 2005 emphasis original). It in effect replies against the Gnosticism which held that the ineffable Monad sent out two divine emanations 'Elohim and Logos: 'Elohim being the evil God of the OT who created the material world and Jesus being Logos, the good God of the NT who is making a new spiritual creation and redeeming man as spirit from the world of matter (Graesar et al. 2003). John 1 also in effect refutes docetism which held that Jesus was a preexistent divine being who only appeared to be human. John was written probably in the 80s, perhaps ~85 CE (Smalley, 1993).

(4) Meaning of the words and idiom for original author and audience. The Hebrew 'wisdom' (chokmah) and the Greek 'word' (logos) have very broad meanings in their respective languages, and in the post-exilic wisdom literature of the Jewish people, whether in Hebrew-Aramaic or in Greek. The Hebrew 'word' (davar) also included the idea of word as action (cf. von Goethe, Faust; Graesar et al. 2003).

The New Testament background for the wonderful transition from God's eternal wisdom and promise to the long-expected Messiah was the miraculous virginal conception of Jesus the Christ, called "the beginning [genesis] of Jesus Christ... when Mary was found to be with child by Holy Spirit" in Matthew (1:18), and "for that reason [dio kai; Fr. c'est précisément pourquoi] called Son of God" (Luke 1:35; Brown, 1977; Lyonnet, 1967)! The synoptic gospels know nothing of personal divine preexistence; neither we think does John. Other NT passages where the mystery of God's eternal and hidden wisdom, foreknowledge, and decrees are finally manifested in this last times in the Christ and in our salvation include Rom. 8:28-30; 16:25-26; Eph. 1:3-10; 3:4-21; Gal. 4:4-7; Col. 1:1-27;  II Tim. 1:9, 10; Titus 1:2-3; I Pet. 1:1-2, 19-20; Rev. 13:8; cf. I Cor. 1:30 ("Christ made unto us wisdom [sophia]..."). These are fully consistent with the Hebrew view of preexistence and include not only Christ but Christians.

(5) Understanding the total context and historical background. Some of the nuances of the wisdom tradition in ancient Israel have been recognized by many commentators and scholars. Below we cite a few scholars on the subject.

Personification and preexistence among the Hebrews and in the NT.  Many examples of the personification are found in the Hebrew scriptures (see Graesar et al. 2003 for a few). The Hebrew view of preexistence was what existed in the mind and foreordination of God and fulfilled in events and human beings, whereas the platonic Greek view encompassed the literal and incarnation of preexistence of deities and spirit beings. "...when the Jew wished to designate something as predestined, he spoke of it as already existing in heaven" (Selwyn, 1983; p. 124). In Hebrew thought, "everything truly valuable preexisted in heaven" (Schurer, 1979). "Within the Christian tradition the New Testament has long been read through the prism of the later conciliar creeds... Speaking of Jesus as the Son of God had a very different connotation in the first century from that which it has had ever since Nicea [325 CE]. Talk of Jesus' preexistence [in the NT] ought probably in most, perhaps in all cases to be understood, on the analogy of the preexistence of the Torah, to indicate the eternal divine purpose being achieved through him rather than preexistence of a fully personal kind" (Wiles, 1974; pp. 52-3).

The Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible called Targums sometimes also personified "the word of the Lord" (Lightfoot, 1989). Other modern scholars who recognize that preexistence in Hebrew thought and in the NT was not necessarily literal but rather in the purpose, plan, foreknowledge, and foreordination of God: FC Baur (1878; 65); HH Wendt (1892; re John 17:5; 2: 169-72); EC Dewick (1912; 253-4); Dictionary of the Apostolic Church (1916; 2: 264); Charles Gore (1923; 31); James MacKinnon (1931; 375-9); John Knox (1967; 106); Lyonnet (1967; 4: 61); Raymond Brown (1966; 743 re John 17:5; 1977; 140-1, 291); Aaron Milavec (1978; 108, 31); BF Westcott (1981: lxxxiv, lxxxvii); Augustine also, even regarding John 17:5 (Buzzard & Hunting, 1998); Buzzard (n.d. 1-2); etc.

How John 1 has been interpreted since the early centuries. In the first two centuries logos was still interpreted in the Jewish wisdom literature sense among most Christians, although some Greek church fathers were speculating about a literal personal preexistence of the logos. Below we summarize.

Neo-Platonic takeover (late 2nd century-3rd century CE). A speculative philosophy which gradually supplanted the Hebrew view of preexistence in God's foreordination with the Greek neo-Platonic view of metaphysical preexistence began to take place in the 2nd century CE with certain Greek church fathers. Even these though were not Trinitarian but rather subordinationist binitarians (rather like Arians), they acknowledged in effect that the common Christian view of their day was still that logos was God's preexistent, expressive word (not person) finally fulfilled in the man Christ Jesus.

Transition to Trinity (3rd-5th centuries CE). Citations could be multiplied documenting this conciliar change in its various phases. Note also its early Hellenistic elitest and condescending character in the Tertullian quotation similar to the Origen quotation above. Full 'co-equal, co-eternal' Trinitarianism however is a phenomenon of the late 4th and ultimately the 5th centuries with the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE). For a fascinating and disturbing account of the various political maneuvers involved, see Richard Rubinstein's book, When Jesus became God: The struggle to define Christianity during the last days of Rome (1999). For the Hellenistic, neo-Platonist roots of Trinitarian language and the long, tortured history of the rise of 'orthodox' acceptance, see the English translation (2002) of Karl-Heinz Ohlig's book One God in three persons? From the Father of Jesus to the mystery of the Trinity (Ein Gott in drei Personen? Vom Vater Jesu zum Mysterium der Trinität, 1999; 2000).

Translating John 1. Despite the conciliar creeds, over the past 500 years a surprising number of English translations and paraphrases (including many by Trinitarians) have recognized that the logos poem in John 1 (at least the opening verses)  references 'the word,' as word, wisdom, reason, idea, plan, expression of God, God’s way of speaking and acting, God's intentions and purposes, etc. and not as a separate pre-existent person (adapted from Focus on the Kingdom, July 2004; Vol 6, No. 10):

Ego eimi.  This phrase which literally means "I am he / she" or "It is I" particularly when missing a named immediate object has been seized upon by by many orthodox apologists as an unqualified statement of self-existence and of divinity. However, with the "I am (he)" statements of Jesus in John's gospel the context always supplies the referent for the 'I am he' / 'It is I' statements, even when an immediate object is not cited (e.g., 'I am the vine,' 'I am the good shepherd,' etc.). Ego eimi never stands alone and unqualified at least by context, not even in Exodus 3:14 (LXX) where God says to Moses, "I am Who I am" (Ego eimi 'o On"): I am the Being; I am He who is; I am the One who is! (cf. Rev. 1:4 for an NT allusion to this text).
 
Some texts with ego eimi
Who is referenced?
Exodus 3:14 LXX (Greek OT) The Lord says to Moses, "Ego eimi 'o On." I am He who is; I am the One who is; I am the Being. (In Hebrew: I am Who I am; I will be Whom I will be)
  1. John 4:25-26 'I who speak to you am (he)'
  2. 6:20 "It is I, don't be afraid"
  3. 8:24, 28, 58 I am (he) 
  4. 9:9 I am (he) 
  5. 13:(3, 13, 18-)19 'that you may know that I am (he)' citing Davidic Psalm 41:9 about betrayal and vindication
  6. 17:14, 16 I am not of this world even as the [disciples] are not of this world
  7. 18:4-5 I am (he)
  1. the Messiah (Jesus to the woman at the well)
  2. Jesus, walking on the water
  3. The uplifted Son of man, before Abraham (as Son of man, i.e., in the foreordination of God) whose historic day was joyfully foreseen by Abraham (not vice versa)
  4. The man born blind
  5. Messianic-Davidic Master and Lord citing David's psalm to predict his own betrayal (knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came from God and was going to God, i.e., God was the One who sent Jesus)
  6. Jesus (with his believing disciples nearby) 
  7. Jesus of Nazareth (in the garden of Gethsemane)

In the rest of the Johannine writings, there is a beautiful consistency with the poetic prologue of the gospel of John and also with the repeated NT affirmation of the oneness of God who is our Father (see Part 5):

There's always more to be said, but the writings of Paul will be considered next.

Discussion – How do you read?

"Historical criticism has the necessary function of bringing into focus the issues that only faith can decide. . . . We must distinguish between clarity as to what the promise is and certainty that God will fulfill it. The former may be aided by the work of the historian; the latter can rest solely on faith"
(Howard Clark Kee speaking in the debt of Wolfhart Pannenberg; cited in Kee, 1970).

A) Questions from history:

B) Questions of personal commitment: How do you read?
References

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Arndt WF & Gingrich FW. 1957. A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Barclay W. 1962. Jesus as they knew him. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Baur FC. 1878. Church history of the first three centuries. London, UK: Williams and Norgate's.

Beardsley WA. 1993. "Logos." In: BM Metzger and MD Coogan (eds.), The Oxford companion to the Bible. New York, NY / Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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____. 2000. "The Son as the Father’s agent in John." http://www.fullerseminary.net/sot/faculty/brown_colin/cp_content/homepage/SonAsAgent.pdf.

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____. 1977. The birth of the Messiah. London, UK: Jeffrey Chapman.

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____. n.d. (2) "John 1:1 Caveat Lector (Reader Beware): 'In the beginning was the word' does not mean 'In the beginning was the Son.'" http://www.mindspring.com/~anthonybuzzard/john1.htm#_ftn20.

____, Hunting CF. 1998. The doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's self-inflicted wound. International Scholars Publications: Lanham, MD; Oxford, UK.

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Dewick EC 1912. Primitive Christian Eschatology, The Hulsean Prize Essay for 1908. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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