This is from Dr Arnold Fruchtenbaum's audio tape,
The life of Christ from a Jewish Perspective, transcribed at
http://icgod.com/Main.htm#1.%20The%20‘LOGOS’. Dr F is a Hebrew Christian or Messianic Jew and founder of Ariel Ministries
www.ariel.org/.
1. The
LOGOS John Chapter 1.
The Gospel of John is often accused of being the most Gentile of the four Gospels. But a more careful study of his Gospel shows that it is just as Jewish if not more so than some of the others. John begins his Gospel with the famous sentence in verse 1 of chapter 1, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Now most of you probably know that the term John used here is the Greek word
Logos which in English would mean “Word”. But because he used the Greek term
logos many commentaries on John at this point go into a rather lengthy deviation to explain what exactly
logos meant in terms of Greek philosophy. They may take a few pages to do it or they may take many pages to do it depending on the size of the commentary, but in the end they all say basically the same thing.
And what they say is this; That the
logos in Greek philosophy had two concepts. These were the concept of reason and the concept of speech. After telling us that in Greek philosophy the
logos had these two concepts of reason and speech they then try to point out that what John is doing in these first 18 verses of his gospel, is to show how Jesus comes to fulfil the goals of Greek philosophy.
In that by reason he was the very idea of God and that by speech he was the very expression of God. That’s all well and good to know but what these commentators forget is that by profession John was not a Greek philosopher, but he was a Jewish fisherman. What he really has in mind is not Greek philosophy, but the Jewish theology of that day. In the Rabbinic literature of that day there was a concept that they had developed called the
Memra. It is an Aramaic term that means “word”. And since John was writing his gospel in Greek, he of course needed a Greek term to translate the Jewish word
Memra. The only Greek term he could use adequately was
logos but when he says logos, he does not mean the logos of Greek philosophy, but rather, the
Memra of Jewish theology, and we will see this very quickly.
Now if you read through the Rabbinic literature of that day you will discover that the Rabbis taught six things about the
Memra. Six things were true about the
Memra, and all six things come out one way or the other in these 18 verses.
First of all, the rabbis said the
Memra was sometimes the same as God, but sometimes distinct from God. They did not try in their writings to explain away the obvious paradox. How could the
Memra on the one hand be the same as God, but on the other hand be distinct from God? They taught both statements as being true, and left it at that. Notice how verse one reads, “In the beginning, was the word, the word was with God”, therefore he was distinct from God, but then he says, “the word was God”, meaning he is the same as God. Like the rabbis at this point, John does not try to explain away the paradox. How could this word be with God, distinct from him, but then at the same time be God? This is explained later only in the terms of the tri-unity, in that the One he is writing about is distinct from God in that he is not God the father, nor is he God the Holy Spirit, yet he is the same as God in that he is God the Son, the second person of that tri-unity. Only in that way, in terms of the tri-unity, could this paradox of the
Memra be explained.
The
second thing that Rabbis had been saying about the
Memra was, The
Memra was the agent of Creation. Whenever God created, it was always by means of, or through the
Memra, by means of his word. Without the word, the
Memra, nothing would exist that now does exist. In verse 3 John says, “all things were made by or through him, and without him was not anything made that had been made.” What the rabbis had said about the
Memra, John says is true of this
logos. He is the agent of creation. All things were made by or through Him and without Him nothing would exist that now does exist.
The
third thing that the rabbis had been teaching about the
Memra was that the
Memra was also the agent of salvation. Whenever God saved, it was by means of the
Memra. For the most part, in the Rabbinic writings the concept of salvation was in the realm of the physical.
Whenever God saved Israel physically such as the exodus, out of the land of Egypt, He did so by means of His
Memra, by means of his word. In verse 12 however, we are given a more spiritual dimension of the same truth. In verse 12, “But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name.” Concerning this
logos, John says in verse 12, it is those who believe on him, those who receive him; those are the ones who become children of God; they are the ones who receive spiritual salvation, because this one is also the agent of salvation.
The
fourth thing the rabbis had been saying about the Memra was that the Memra was the means by which God became visible in the pages of the Old Testament. As you read through the OT, you find that periodically God takes on some type of a visible form. This is often referred to in Jewish literature as the
Shekinah. When the rabbis spoke of the
Shekinah, it emphasised a visible manifestation of God’s presence. Whenever the invisible God became visible, whenever the omnipresence of God took on a localised form, this visible localised form was the Shekinah Glory. On most occasions it appears as a light or as a fire, or as a cloud or some combination of these three things. That is not the only way it appeared, but in the majority of cases that is the way it appeared — light, fire or cloud. And this was the visible manifestation of God’s presence, this was the
Shekinah, and the
Shekinah was frequently connected with the glory of God hence the title
Shekinah Glory.
Notice what he writes in verse 14, “And the word became flesh”. The word that back in verse one was in the beginning with God, was God, at a certain point in human history, became visible. But this time not in the form of a light, or of a fire, or of a cloud, but this time the word became flesh and John continues to write, “and dwelt among us.” Now of the two words that are often used to describe “dwelling” in Greek, John does not use the regular word for dwelling in verse 14.
Instead he uses a unique word that is really a borrowed word from the Hebrew, it is a word that comes from the word
Shekinah. When the Greeks came in contact with the Jewish world after Alexander the Great they came in contact with this word
Shekinah, and realised what it conveyed. They liked the term and wanted somehow to incorporate the term into the Greek language, because in Greek mythology, you had the Gods periodically coming down from Mt Olympus in some visible form and intermingling with human beings.
There was one problem and the problem was this; The Jews have a letter in their alphabet the Greeks do not have. The letter
shin with which they made the “sh” sound. In English you have to combine two letters “s” and “h” to get the “sh” sound, but in Hebrew just one letter is enough. However, in Greek you cannot combine any number of letters to get that “sh” sound. The Greeks had a hard “s”; they could say “s” but they couldn’t say “sh”.
But what they did was to take the Hebrew word for
Shekinah and incorporate it into Greek. They Hellenised it and the Greek word used here is
skeinei which is the Greek or Hellenised form for Shekinah. Literally, it does not mean to dwell, but to “tabernacle”. It has its origins in
Exodus 40 where the
Shekinah Glory in its visible form took up its residence within the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle and for centuries it tabernacled with Israel. But now the
Shekinah Glory has returned. (It disappeared from Israel in the days of Ezekiel) Now it has come back, this time in the form of flesh and once again it has tabernacled among us. You notice how in the next ( - - -unintelligble - - - ) said with the glory of God, “we beheld his glory, glory of the only begotten from the Father full of grace and truth.” The clear statement of verse 14 is that the one John is going to be writing about, Jesus of Nazareth, is the new, visible manifestation of God’s presence. Once again God is in visible form, this time as a man in flesh, and he dwelt, or tabernacled among us. So he was the new visible manifestation which came by means of the word, by means of the
Memra.
The
fifth thing the rabbis had said about the
Memra was that the
Memra was also the agent of revelation. Whenever God revealed himself, he did so by means of his Memra, by means of his word. In verse 18 John writes, “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father has declared him.” According to verse 18, one of the ministries of the logos is to come to declare, to reveal the Father. The main theme that runs through the gospel of John is, Jesus the Messiah the Son of God, but John also has several sub-themes that run through his gospel and one of these sub-themes is that Jesus came for the purpose of revealing the Father to men.
That is why John more than Matthew, Mark and Luke combined, tells us more what Jesus taught, while the others seem to be more concerned with what Jesus did. John is more concerned with what Jesus taught and said. We have more discourses in John than in the other three gospels. In these discourses, what Jesus is doing, is revealing the Father to the people of Israel. That is why it is John, rather than Matthew, Mark or Luke that records the question one disciple asked, “Show us the Father,” and Jesus turned to the disciple and said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” All that is true of the nature of the Father, is true of the divine nature of the Son as well, therefore he is the revealer of the Father. The same point is made by the writer to the Hebrews chapter one verses one, two and three, where the writer says that “while in the past, God had revealed himself in various ways (in various portions), has in these last days revealed himself by means of the Son.” He is the agent of revelation.
The
sixth and last thing the rabbis had been teaching about the
Memra, is that the
Memra is also the means by which God signed his covenant in the Old Testament. Of the various covenants made in the OT, either with the world in general, or with Israel in particular, these were signed and sealed by means of the Shekinah Glory.
Now this sixth point does not come out as clearly as the other five points do, but he does hint at it in verse 17 when he says, “The Law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The Law came as the result of the Mosaic covenant, which was signed and sealed by the
Shekinah Glory, in the book of Exodus chapter 24. The new manifestation of grace that came with the Messiah is the result of the new covenant, which will be signed and sealed by the death of the Son of God, the
Logos or the
Memra.
So what John is doing in these 18 verses then, is not showing how Jesus fulfilled the goals of Greek philosophy, but showing that he came to fulfil the Jewish Messianic hope. The very things the rabbis had been teaching about the
Memra, is true of this Logos that John will be writing about.
We can summarise what John wrote here in these 18 verse in four simple points.
Number 1, the Word. The
Logos, the
Memra came in visible form.
Number 2, sadly, the world in general didn’t recognise him.
Number 3, even more sadly, his own Jewish people didn’t recognise him either.
Number 4, those Jews and Gentiles who did, have become the children of this new
Shekinah Glory Light.
This then is one example of several that will follow, that if you look at a passage from the Jewish frame of reference it was written in, you can get the full impact of what the writer was trying to say.
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Did Jesus Christ preexist His birth in Bethlehem?
I'd recommend it for this topic.
