In the beginning was…

Was the apostle John a Greek philosopher… or a Jewish fisherman?

Are you a serious student of the life and ministry of Jesus? Then you must be aware of the life and practices of first century Judaism. The gospels cannot be properly understood apart from their Jewish heritage. The Bible is a Jewish Book!

But anti-Semitism in the Church has created an aversion to all things Jewish. A Hellenised Church caused Christians to embrace the life style of Greek philosophers and call it Biblical; the Old Testament was seen as too Jewish, so the Church claimed it was exclusively New Testament (NT), an error that severed it from a major portion of God’s intended purpose.

The NT cannot stand on its own! It’s incomplete without the Old which is quoted 855 times in the New.

It follows that too much emphasis is put on Greek culture. After all, the NT was written in Greek! This is true as Greek was the ‘lingua franca’ of the time. Does that mean the writers had Greek mindsets? No! They were Jews with Hebraic mindsets.

The Word …

An excellent example of these kinds of errors is found in John’s prologue to his gospel, Jn.1:1-18. By the way, John’s gospel quotes the OT 40 times and was of course written in Greek. John starts “In the beginning was the Word…” and the Greek word here is ‘logos’, but it doesn’t just mean ‘word’; it encompasses two concepts of Greek philosophy, something that numerous commentaries attempt to explain, often in many words; the concept of reason, and the concept of speech.

What these commentaries attempt to show is that the Messiah came to fulfil the goals of Greek philosophy in both reason and speech; by reason Jesus was the very idea of God and by speech, the very expression of God. There’s only one problem with this analysis. John was not a Greek philosopher, but a Jewish fisherman.

What went on in his mind wasn’t Greek philosophy but Jewish theology which, in this context, was embodied in the Aramaic for ‘word’ – ‘memra‘. Aramaic? Why so? Well, since the return from the Babylonian captivity, Aramaic had become a widely spoken language and the Hebrew Scriptures were paraphrased into Aramaic, in the Targumim (meaning ‘to translate, to explain’), the best known being Targum Jonathan and Targum Onkelos.

The Jewish Encyclopedia defines Memra as “The Word, in the sense of the creative or directive word or speech of God manifesting His power in the world of matter or mind; a term used especially in the Targum as a substitute for “the Lord” when an anthropomorphism is to be avoided.”

The Divine Word …

How then did Judaism answer some of the questions concerning Divine disclosure – the hidden God making Himself known – by using the concept of the divine ‘Memra’, the Word? Sometimes God’s word is an extension of Himself as in Ps.107:20, “He sent forth his word and healed them” or Is. 55:10-11 which speaks of God’s word going forth from His mouth, accomplishing its mission, and then returning to Him. Also, right at the beginning God created by speaking, by His Word.

This concept of the Divine Word became greatly developed in the Aramaic Targumim, spoken and read in the synagogues. When reference was made to God drawing near or interacting directly with man, very often the Targumim didn’t say it was God as such who did these things, but His Memra, His Word. To illustrate, here are a couple of examples comparing the Hebrew to the Targum:

Ex. 20:1 – The Lord spoke all these words. The Word of the Lord spoke all these words.

Is. 45:17 – Israel will be saved by the Lord. Israel will be saved by the Word of the Lord.

They were SO close …

The Targumim were read in the synagogues for centuries; week in week out, the people heard about this walking, talking, creating, saving, delivering Memra. So, in John’s time this is the sort of thing that would have been in the Jewish mind whenever the Memra, the Word was referred to, hence: “In the beginning was the Memra, and the Memra was with God, and the Memra was God. He was with God in the beginning.”

It was not based on Greek philosophy, but upon all these OT understandings that the rabbis came to six specific theological truths about the Memra: It is sometimes distinct from God, sometimes the same as God. It was the agent of creation. It is the agent of salvation. It was the means through which God became visible. It is the agent of revelation. It was the means by which God signed His covenants.

And all of these rabbinical teachings are found in John’s prologue! Look how John applies them to the person of Jesus:

1. The rabbis never tried to explain the apparent paradox that the Memra was sometimes distinct from God and sometimes the same as God. They just taught both statements as being true and left it there, as does John 1:1; he states it, but offers no explanation. Later he does explain in terms of the triunity, in that he’s the second member of the triunity, God the Son. Only in terms of the Trinity can this rabbinical paradox be explained.

2. The Memra was the agent of creation, i.e. whenever God created anything He did so by means of the Memra, without which nothing would exist that now exists. Look at v.3.

3. The Memra is the agent of salvation and throughout the OT history whenever God saved it was always by means of the Memra, whether physical salvation such as the Exodus from Egypt or spiritual salvation. Look at v.12, it is those who believe in his name who receive salvation from him who is the agent of such salvation.

4. The Memra was the means through which God became visible and again, throughout the history of the OT, God took on some kind of a visible form. In Christian theology this is referred to as a theophany, but the rabbinic term is ‘shekinah’, often connected with God’s glory i.e. the shekinah glory of God. The shekinah glory is the visible manifestation of God’s presence; when the omnipresence of God was somehow localised in a visible way. In the OT it is primarily as fire, light, or a cloud, or some combination of these, but whenever it did come it was always by means of the Memra. Look at v.14, the Word became flesh. The Word, invisible God of v.1, now takes on visible form, but not the intangible fire, light or cloud, rather the very tangible flesh and bone, ‘and dwelt among us’. The word ‘dwelt’ in the Greek comes from the Hebrew for ‘tabernacle‘ which has the same root as the word shekinah and look how quickly John connects the Memra’s dwelling among men with God’s glory, ‘we have seen his glory‘ (Transfiguration). Yeshua, the incarnate word, the visible manifestation of God’s presence.

5. The Memra is the agent of revelation and whenever God revealed Himself He did so by means of the Memra. So what we know about God, we know because the Memra chose to reveal Him. This was based upon so many passages that say the word of the Lord came to this prophet or to that prophet. This one came to reveal the Father to men, v.18. Everything that’s true of the Divine nature of the Father is true of the Divine nature of the Son. To know the Son is to know the Father. The Son, the Word, the Memra is the agent of revelation.

6. The Memra was the means by which God signed His covenants. In the OT God made eight covenants, three with humanity in general and five specifically with the Jewish people, but all were signed and sealed by means of His Memra. This point is not as obvious as the previous five, but look at v.17 where he hints at it. The Law was based upon the Mosaic Covenant which was signed and sealed by the shekinah glory in Ex.24:1-11. But grace is based upon the New Covenant, signed and sealed by the shedding of the blood of shekinah Yeshua and in that sense he is also a covenant signer.

… yet they missed it!

So, is John’s point in these eighteen verses that Jesus came to fulfil the goals of Greek philosophy? No!

Rather He came to fulfil the Jewish messianic hope, and the six things the rabbis had been teaching about the Memra are true of Yeshua of Nazareth, who ‘sustains all things by his powerful word‘, Heb.1:3.

Now, you may well be wondering how the rabbis developed these six particular teachings. It certainly wasn’t based on NT teaching, rather on how the term was used in the OT. Here are some examples:

– Gen.15:1, ‘the word of the Lord came to Abraham‘ – the word is personified as a revealer and God reveals Himself to Abraham by means of His word.

– Ps 33:6, ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made‘ – the psalmist describes the word of God as the agent of creation.

– Is.55:11, ‘so is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty‘ – pictures the word coming and going.

– Ez.1:3, ‘the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel’ – the word came expressly to the prophet.

From such examples did the rabbis derive their understanding of the Word of God, the Memra, which John so aptly ascribes to Jesus, the Word, the Greek Logos, the Latin Verbo, the French Parole, the German Wort, the Hebrew Dabar.

But it was the Targum paraphrase that best reflected the rabbinical teaching that 1st century Jews intrinsically associated with the Aramaic Memra, and that too is indeed John’s understanding, which comes through quite clearly in the prologue to his gospel.

And so it is that the Memra, Yeshua, had very little to do with Greek philosophy,