Conversation Points for John 1:1-18

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This section is known as the prologue to John’s Gospel. It differs from the rest of the Gospel in style (the rest, like the other Gospels, is narrative), and introduces vocabulary and images that will be prevalent throughout the rest of the gospel; like life, light and darkness, witness, truth, world, knowledge, acceptance and rejection, children of God, glory, Father and Son.
• Some theologians have speculated that the writer of John’s Gospel drew from early Christian hymnodity for the prologue, similar to the Christ hymn Paul quotes in Philippians 2:6-11. Like a hymn, the prologue evokes rather than explains.
• The prologue consists of four parts
1) v. 1-5, The eternal Word is the Light and Life of Creation
2) v. 6-8, John the Baptist witnesses to the Light
3) v. 9-13, the Light, or Word, came into the World
4) v. 14-18, the Word became flesh and dwells among us
• The Prologue concerns two spheres of God’s presence
1) the eternal, the sphere of the cosmic Word of God
2) the temporal, the sphere of John the Baptist, the world, and the incarnate Word (Word made flesh) The heart of the prologue, and of John’s gospel itself, is the interaction of these two spheres. The Prologue highlights how Jesus is both beyond time and history and also holds a specific place within time and history. John 1 starts with the eternal Word, but as the Prologue goes on, the Word enters into the time-bound world.
• The Greek phrase that starts 1:1, “In the beginning,” is the same phrase the Septuagint translator used for the beginning of Genesis 1:1.
• Logos, which is translated as “Word,” would be better translated as “message” or “communication.” It is the active experience of communicating. In logos, John used a word familiar to both Greek and Hebrew audiences in a new way that drew from both traditions. In Greek philosophy, the word was used to speak about the creative plan of God that governs the world. In the Hebrew tradition, when God speaks, action follows. God spoke at creation, and the world came into existence. God spoke at Sinai, and the Law was delivered to Moses. It also fits with the Jewish wisdom tradition, Proverbs 8:22-31 speaks of how Wisdom had been with God “before the beginning of the earth.”
• v. 5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” could also be translated “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it.”
• v. 14 “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” A better translation is “made his dwelling among us.” “To dwell” is related to the word for tabernacle or tent. One modern translator put it this way, “the Word put skin on and moved into the neighborhood.”
• The word “grace” charis shows up four times in the Prologue, and not again in the rest of the Gospel. John establishes the theme of grace, and then illustrates in throughout the rest of the Gospel without ever naming it again. It reminds me of the St. Francis quote “preach the Gospel at all times, and use words if necessary.”

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail R. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.