Conservative Friends Bible Study of The Gospel of John #1
Henry launches this podcast series of the Gospel of John with a quick overview. What follows is a bulleted list of his introductory comments, then Henry’s comments on verses 1-5 of Chapter 1.
- The Gospel of John was written in Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the time. Koine is a language descendent of Attic Greek, spoken about 300-400 years before.
- Because Henry has extensive training as a speech pathologist and linguist, he often looks at the language of Holy Scripture from a linguistic point of view.
- There is some possible disconnect between the last verses of Chapter 20, and Chapter 21 of John’s Gospel. The multiple, disjointed changes back and forth in pronoun from “I” to “we” in these two chapters seem to indicate either additions, or changes in the text. It is possible Chapter 21 was added some time later.
- Henry goes on to discuss some of the issues concerning the authorship of the five works in the Holy Scriptures attributed to John: the Gospel of John, the three Epistles of John and the Revelation of John. While these five are usually attributed to the same John, it should be noted that the Greek in the Book of Revelation is somewhat rougher in grammar and usage than the Greek of the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John.
- The intended audience for the Gospel was largely Greek-speaking, and thus when Aramaic words are presented, there are translations for those to enable the Greek-speaking audience to understand what is being said.
- There are frequent contrasts presented in the text: light/darkness; truth/deceit; the day of Jahweh/the day of Jesus to name a few.
- There is a realized eschatology in the Gospel so that eternal life and the kingdom of God are not confined to the afterlife, but can be realized in the present, earthly life before physical death.
- The Koine Greek language was written in capital letters, with no punctuation nor spaces between the words.
Verses 1-5
John 1:1 intentionally parallels Genesis 1:1 verse.
The Greek word “logos” is a rich, multi-meaning term with meanings such as these:
- Any kind of verbal utterance: a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a whole speech or talk. In modern Greek, “logos” has the same meanings.
- Reason/wisdom coming from within. The English word, “logic” has its root in “logos”.
- The noun form is “logos” and the verb and adjective form is “lego”.
The Bible is frequently called “the Word” by many Christians. However, the term, “word” is always and only used in the Holy Scriptures to refer to Christ. Early Friends were adamant about not referring to the words of the Holy Scriptures as “the Word”, but instead only referring to Christ as the Word.
The advice in our introduction is from page 33 of the Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline.
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