John's prologue in its Jewish context

Although I study and write a lot on theology, I have written very little on the falsehood of the Trinity, despite having spent much time in debates on this issue.

Part of my reason for not feeling the need to write much on this topic is the excellence of books such as ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity’ by Anthony Buzzard and the late Charles Hunting, and ‘They Never Told Me This in Church’ by Gregory Deuble.

Anthony Buzzard has also written other great books on this topic and many very helpful articles.

I would like to put forward a few comments below though, because I believe this aspect has not, to the best of my memory (it's been a few years since reading their books), been covered by any of these authors.

John’s Prologue:

Obviously, Trinitarians see John’s prologue as strongly inferring some preexistence of the Messiah and some sort of inference of his deity.

The classic mistake though that most Christians make is to start with the NT, and especially to start with John’s Gospel, as if the NT stands on it’s own and the context of a Jewish disciple writing about the Messiah Yeshua around 96 CE, is a context with no prior history.

This very serious and very prevalent error is so overwhelmingly common amongst Christians.

This is not where Yeshua started; this is not where the Apostle Paul started. They both relied on the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. Both Yeshua when he repeatedly said ‘It is written …’ and the Apostle Paul when he said “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16) were referring to the Tanakh.

Thus to understand anything in the NT and to appreciate the intent of the NT authors such as John, we need to look first into the Tanakh to understand their perspective and biblical reality, but also to documents from the inter-testamental time, to appreciate common Jewish thinking, understanding and terminology.

In this respect even sectarian works from this period can be relevant. That is, John’s Gospel was not written in a vacuum. As a follower of Yeshua; a member of the Christian sect of the proto-Judaism (to use David Flusser’s term) of his time, the Apostle John was a Hebraist and essentially Pharisaic in biblical orientation.

So with this appreciation, it is worth asking if the concepts and ideas presented in John’s prologue were already existent or even prevalent in the Tanakh and in Jewish thought of his time.

What we find is that John’s prologue, for example John 1:3 "through him (the Word) everything came to be: no single thing was created without him" is not only a common biblical understanding from Genesis on, but was a Jewish ‘commonplace’. That is, it was already part of Jewish writings prior to John.

For example in the Book of Jubilees we read that God "has created everything by His word" (12:4), and so it is also said in Wisdom of Solomon 9:1.

Even more similar to John's prologue is the wording of two sentences in the Dead Sea Scrolls: "By His (God's) knowledge everything came to be, and everything which is happening — He establishes it by his design and without Him [nothing] is done" (1QS XI: 11).

And "By the wisdom of Thy knowledge Thou didst establish their destiny ere they came into being, and according [Thy will] everything came to be, and without Thee [nothing] is done" (1QH 1:19-20).

These two kindred sentences in the Scrolls stress the Jewish sectarian doctrine of predestination and not the Christian ‘hypostatic’ (‘essence’ – a term used to imply a separate personality or second person of God) aspect of knowledge and wisdom, by which everything came to be.

These purely sectarian Scrolls had no interest in a hypostatic point of view and so any later hypostatic interpretation by Christianity would appear to be a seriously flawed and mistaken understanding.

The idea that God created the world through his ‘word’ is a Jewish concept. In fact, the Tanakh informs us that Almighty created the entire universe through ‘fiats’; that is, through His word.

Not only does the ‘word’ of God have a creative function, it also has an analytical function.

Consider for example, Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit. ...and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

Here we see the ‘word’ or ‘logos’ having an analytical function. Interestingly, even the Hellenistic Jew Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE) took this position. In Wikipedia we read: ‘Some scholars hold that his concept of the Logos as God's creative principle influenced early Christology. Other scholars, however, deny direct influence but say both Philo and early Christianity borrow from a common source. For Philo, Logos was God's "blueprint for the world", a governing plan.’ - wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo

So, when we consider the context and historical background and influences that existed in John’s worldview, we should see that any ‘hypostatic’ consideration was far from his mind and intentions. In fact, as many have pointed out, John himself makes this abundantly clear when he states the purpose of his Gospel (and prologue) in John 20:31 “… but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”