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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781426750489 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2011 |
| Series: | Abingdon New Testament Commentaries Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 985,286 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Moody Smith, a George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at The Divinity School, Duke University.
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Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: John
By D. Moody Smith
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 1999 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-5048-9
CHAPTER 1
Commentary
The Prologue of the Gospel (1:1-18)
The first task of exegesis is to delimit a text to be studied, and here the prologue presents no problem. It clearly delimits itself. The simple, elegant, almost poetic style that is set out in verse 1 continues, with a few interruptions and shifts through verse 18, where the prologue ends. In verse 19 the mention of the testimony of John marks a turning point, as the narrative of the Gospel proper begins. Yet the prologue is a narrative too, the narrative of the Word, which began in creation (1:1-3), became flesh (v. 14), and is finally named Jesus Christ (v. 17). After the prologue the Word in this sense disappears, for Jesus in whom the Word is present or may be encountered, is now the center of attention.
The prologue's elevated, hymnic style is at two points (1:6-8; 1:15) interrupted by rather prosaic references to John the Baptist, which set off the basic quasi-poetic pattern even more. Within the hymnic portion there are differences: 1:1-5 and 1:9-11 fall into doublets of fairly brief strophes, while the periods or sentences are longer in the latter portion of the prologue (vv. 12-14, 16-18). In 1:1-5 and 1:9-11 there is a remarkable chainlike sequence of terms in which the last word of one strophe becomes the first word of the next. Translating literally:
In the beginning was the word
and the word was with God
and God was the word. (v. 1)
In him was life
and life was the light of human beings; (v. 4)
And the light shines in darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. (v. 5)
Such a pattern, called a sorites, is found also in the Wisdom of Solomon (6:1720). Its appearance there is doubly significant in view of the apparent conceptual relationship between the role of the Word in John's prologue and that of wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon and similar Jewish wisdom writings (see below, pp. 51-52). Yet despite this distinction, the basic hymnic portions seem similar vis-à-vis verses 6-8, 15, not to mention the rest of the Gospel. Are they portions of, or derived from, an ancient Christian hymn? It is worth noting that there are hymnic passages in other New Testament books that deal with Christology and particularly Christ's preexistence. In fact, Col 1:15-20 and Phil 2:6-11 are set out in strophic form in the latest (Nestle-Aland 1993) edition of the Greek New Testament (although John 1:1-18 is not).
The prologue falls into three parts, divided roughly by the statements about John the Baptist (who is never called "the Baptist" in John) in 1:6-8 and 1:15. The first part presents the role of the Word in creation (1:1-5); the second the appearance of the Word in history (1:9-13); the third part the Incarnation and its benefits (1:14-18). The last part differs decisively in that the author and those who are united with him speak in the first-person plural, adding a note of personal confession to what has been said. As commentators have long noted, verse 14 is central theologically, in that it summarizes what is said in verses 9-13, but it also lays the basis for the statements about Jesus Christ in the remainder of the prologue. Yet verses 12-13 are pivotal (see Culpepper 1980), because they state, albeit still in the third person, the effect of the Word's appearance on the historical plane, and thus they prepare for the confessional statement of verse 14. That statement is then elaborated with respect to the effect of Christ upon the Christian community (v. 16), his relation to Moses and the law, (v. 17) and finally his relationship to God the Father (v. 18).
The Word in Creation (1:1-5)
The opening phrase, "in the beginning," is reminiscent of Gen 1:1, where God speaks, creating a world out of the formless chaos. That light and darkness figure prominently (vv. 4-5) also recalls the creation scene of Genesis, where God creates light over against the darkness (Gen 1:3-5). Moreover, the Gospel of Mark begins similarly: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ ..." (1:1). But John is actually much closer to Genesis, in that both John and Genesis are giving a narration about creation (Borgen 1983, 13-20, 95-110). Although in Genesis God speaks, while, in John, Jesus is his Word, there is an ancient Targum (translation of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic) in which God's speaking is personified, or reified, as his Memra or Word (Gen 1:13): "From the beginning with wisdom the Word of the Lord created and perfected the skies and the earth.... And the Word of the Lord said: "Let there be light and there was light according to the decree of his Word." (The translation of the Targum Neofiti is helpfully given by Malina and Rohrbaugh [1998, 36], who draw upon the work of McNamara [1992, 56].) Interestingly enough, in the closely similar prologue of 1 John 1:1-3, "the beginning" is no longer the primordial beginning, but pretty clearly the beginning of the Christian story (cf. 2:7; 3:11).
Interpreters of John have exhausted every conceivable possibility in an effort to understand the background, meaning, and implications of the Greek word logos. "Word" is the most obvious and safest translation, but logos has numerous other meanings. In the Greek philosophical tradition logos had a long history already, beginning with Heraclitus in the late sixth century BCE and coming to a head with the Stoics, who saw in the logos the principle of intelligent order governing the universe. The ideas of reason as well as communication are therefore basic. In Scripture one thinks immediately of the word (Heb. dabar; LXX logos) that moves the prophet to speak and is the content of his message (Jer 1:2, 4; Ezek 13:1; Hos 1:1; Zech 1:1). Clearly in the prophets, as in John, the word is a revelatory concept: it has to do with God's revelation. Thus in the New Testament, apart from John, the word can be the equivalent of the good news, the gospel. (See Acts 4:4; Rom 9:6; 1 Thess 1:6, 8, where logos is used. In 1 Pet 1:25 exactly this equation with the gospel is made, although there one sees not logos but the synonym rhema, following LXX of Isa 40:8.) That John was aware of such biblical usage, whether rooted in Israel's prophetic tradition or earliest Christianity is altogether probable. Yet the meanings found there do not make the point that is essential to John: the Word's participation in God as the extension of God's creativity and revelation into the universe (or world; Gk. kosmos). There are other, and closer, parallels to John's usage.
That the Word was, and is, closely related to God is not only stated (v. 1), but reiterated (v. 2). Even God does not antedate the Word. Indeed, "the Word was God." It immediately becomes clear that the Word has played a key role in creation (v. 3). The Word's coexistence with God at the beginning affords a contrast with the Baptist's clear statement that Jesus (the Word) was before him (1:15, 30), a significant indication of the latter's superiority. Thus the Word's being present with God in the beginning betokens his equality with God.
At this point first-time readers would not know that the Word was to be identified with the Incarnate One (v. 14), Jesus Christ (v. 17). The evangelist slowly opens the curtain onto who this person is. One could read through verse 11 or even 13 or the assumption that the Word was not identical with a single person, but was perhaps personified by the prophets. But by verse 14 it becomes clear that the Word has become flesh in a single individual, to whom John the Baptist has testified (v. 15). Probably most readers or hearers would have known the gospel, or at least the Jesus story, and would have recognized the allusion to Jesus, at least as early as verse 5 or 10. If, in fact, the prologue was based on an early Christian hymn, recited or sung by congregations, this would have been all the more likely. That the reader would not have found the idea of the preexistence of Christ, and even his role in creation, strange or unfamiliar is proven by the existence of similar hymns or hymnlike passages (Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20) already cited. Early Christianity did not begin with a low Christology and move by degrees to a higher one. Within the first generation the apostle Paul writes that through Jesus Christ we and all things exist (cf. also 1 Cor 8:6), even as he identifies Jesus Christ with the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).
Although Paul does not spin out a theory of Christ as the wisdom of God, his use of the term is quite suggestive and may help explain the ease with which John so quickly assigns to the Word a role in creation. In the wisdom tradition of Scripture and ancient Jewish literature there is precedent for the Johannine conception of the Word's playing such a role.
In Prov 8:22 wisdom speaks and describes herself (sophia is feminine) as the Lord's first creation, "at the beginning of his work" (v. 23). When God created the earth in all its parts she was beside him "like a master worker" (v. 30), presumably assisting him in his work. In Wisdom of Solomon wisdom is said to be "the fashioner of all things" (7:22). Moreover:
For she is a breath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light.... (7:25-26)
Of course, the terms glory, eternal, and light are also important in the Gospel of John, and glory and light appear in the prologue. Indeed, wisdom and word are found in synonymous parallelism in Wis 9:1-2:
O God of my ancestors and Lord of mercy,
who has made all things by your word,
and by your wisdom has formed humankind.... (AT)
Obviously wisdom and word can be used interchangeably, and the Word is God's agent in creation. (Wisdom and law are also closely related, as in Wis 6:18 and Sir 19:20.) At this point the writings of Philo, the late-first-century Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, Egypt, also become relevant (see Borgen 1983, 15). In a discussion of "Sons of God" (Deut 14:1), who are "they who live in the knowledge of the One," Philo writes:
God's First-born [is] the Word (logos), who holds the eldership among the angels.... And many names are his, for he is called "the Beginning," and the Name of God, and His Word, and the Man after his image and "he that sees," that is Israel.... For if we have not yet become fit to be thought sons of God yet we may be sons of His invisible image, the most holy Word. For the Word is the eldest-born image of God. (Conf. Ling. 146-47)
Borgen also cites other examples of ancient Jewish exegesis, for example, Gen. Rab. III, 1-3, on Gen 1:3. That God created "all things" through the agency of the Word, an idea set forth and reiterated (v. 3), is therefore rooted in biblical ideas of word and wisdom and Jewish exegetical traditions. In view of the similar roles of word and wisdom in Jewish sources of the period, where wisdom is often more prominent than word, why does John use "Word" rather than "wisdom"? For one thing "word" has connotations from its use in Scripture and early Christian tradition that "wisdom" lacks (see above, pp. 49-50). Moreover, logos is a masculine noun and the Greek (as well as the Hebrew) word for wisdom (sophia) is feminine. Jesus was, of course, a male, as most prophetic figures were, and the use of the masculine pronoun would have already conveyed to the knowledgeable reader the reference to Jesus.
There is a question about how to punctuate verse 3. (Punctuation in printed texts, whether Greek or English, is a modern device.) Does the full stop come at the end of the verse (RSV) or in the middle, before the final clause (NRSV)? This is not just a question of punctuation, but of how the statement should be understood, and commentators ancient and modern differ. (Contrast Barrett 1978, 156-57; and Schnackenburg 1968, 236-41; who agree with the RSV, with Bultmann 1971, 36-40; and Brown 1966, 3, 6; who agree with the NRSV.) Either way, the indispensable role of the Word in creation is stated unequivocally. In the RSV it is simply reiterated; in the NRSV life is said to have come into being in the word. In favor of the RSV's punctuation and reading is the fact that "all things" have just been said to have come into being through the Word. It is not clear how this squares with the statement that life came to being in him. The RSV's reading may cause an imbalance in the rhythm of the prologue, but there is precedent in verses 1-2, where verse 2, while also creating an imbalance, similarly reiterates what has just been clearly stated in verse 1. Again, in either case the Word mediates life and light to all people (v. 4; cf. 1 John 1:1-2), as the two are virtually equated. At this point light receives the greater emphasis, doubtless because the point is the revelation that Christ the true light (v. 9) brings into a darkened world (v. 5).
The contrast of light and darkness is typical of the Johannine dualism and is reminiscent of the similar phenomenon in the Rule of the Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS3:17-24; cf. Charlesworth 1990, 76-106):
He has created man to govern the world, and has appointed for him two spirits in which to walk until the time of his visitation: the spirits of truth and falsehood [Vermes 1962; Vermes 1995 has "injustice"]. Those born of truth spring from a fountain of light, but those born of falsehood spring from a source of darkness. All the children of righteousness are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of falsehood are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of darkness. (emphasis added)
Obviously John's language and conceptuality were not foreign to first-century Palestinian Judaism, as the Scrolls now demonstrate. But again, Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, also comes close to John's language in his commentary on Gen 1:3 (Somn. 1.75):
God is light.... And he is not only light, but the archetype of every other light, nay, prior to and high above every archetype, holding the position of the model of a model. For the model or pattern was the Word which contained all His fullness—light, in fact, for as the lawgiver tells us, "God said, 'let light come into being'" (Gen 1:3), whereas He Himself resembles none of the things which have come into being. (See Borgen 1983, 15.)
That the light shines in darkness (v. 5) could, outside of this context or up to this point, be taken in a general sense of God's revelation to the world. Probably John means it in that sense, although he has something more specific in view, as we immediately learn (cf. also Jesus' proclamation of himself as the light of the world, e.g., 8:12; 12:35). That the darkness did not overcome the light is probably an allusion to Jesus' death and resurrection. If so, that allusion is better conveyed by the NRSV's "did not overcome it" (reflecting the Greek aorist tense), than by the RSV's "has not overcome it" (which implies a continuing state consequent upon a past event). The old KJV reads, "the darkness comprehended it not," which is a perfectly legitimate translation of the Greek verb (katalambano). John delights in using words with double meaning when, as in this case, both are appropriate. Probably "overcome" is the primary meaning, but "comprehend" lurks in the background. The darkness has no more understood the light than it has overthrown it.
The Word Enters History (1:6-13)
Suddenly the scene shifts to early-first-century Jewish Palestine and the appearance of John (1:6-8). If, however, one reckons with what is suggested in verse 5, the shift is not as abrupt as might otherwise appear. The introduction of John is cast so as to evoke Old Testament language and scenes (e.g., Judg 13:2; 1 Sam 1:1). John is sent from God, like the ancient prophets (cf. Isa 6:8; Jer 14:14). He is a prophetic figure whose sole mission is to bear witness or testimony (the Greek stem is the same for either English word) to the light, that is, to Jesus (v. 7). Unlike the others (cf. Mark 1:6), this Gospel gives no preparatory explanation of who John was or what he did. That all are to believe through John clearly implies that his witness is full, complete, and true. It will later be said that John has been sent to reveal Jesus to Israel through his baptism (v. 31). Probably because John's function was simply to testify he is not called "the Baptist."
John himself was not the light (v. 8). Whether John is simply used as a literary or theological foil or whether the Gospel here drops a hint as to its actual historical setting is a good question. It is probably the latter, given that John's appearances are carefully crafted so that the reader will understand that whoever, or whatever, he may be, he is clearly subordinate to Jesus (1:15, 30; 3:25-30); as well as a witness to him (1:8, 19, 29, 35; 5:33). We know from Acts 19:1-7 (cf. 18:25) that there were disciples of John in Ephesus (the traditional place of origin of the Gospel of John). Were there such disciples in John's close environment? Quite possibly, and if so they would seem to have embraced John as the Messiah, a circumstance that would explain his denials (1:20; cf. 1:15; 30; 3:28-30; cf. Luke 3:15). More than in any other Gospel the Baptist here goes out of his way to define his role, as witness, in relation to Jesus. He is not the light, but came to bear testimony to the light.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: John by D. Moody Smith. Copyright © 1999 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword,Preface,
List of Abbreviations,
Introduction,
Commentary,
Select Bibliography,
Index,