Deconstructing the Prologue

In the beginning...

In him was life... Life was the light of men

"In the beginning"

More than just "when God created": before God created, before the Big Bang...a self-referential alliteration of the most famous first line of the most famous book ever written. A way of saying "for all time": there was never a time when the Word did not exist.

"The Word"

Most know the Word is the translation of the Greek word Logos, the root word of logic. Logos was the central theme of the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus. The following definition from the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a fair synopsis of his thought: "Logos...[is], the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning." "Logos...[is], the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning."

The Prologue is beautiful verse in which John astoundingly appropriates and Greek philosophical construct and bestows it upon Jesus as another name for God. It is hard to imagine anyone except the one whom Jesus loved the most having the audacity to do that.

And it fit – astoundingly well. General revelation inspired a new concept or framework for thinking about God:  reality has an organization and thus a telos.

 “In him was life and the life was the light of men”

Zoe, psyche, and bios are all Greek words for life; bios being bodily organismic, psyche typically translated "breath" as in the 'breath of life' or soul or animating force of a person - today, we might call it "mind" or "will". Here however John uses zoe; as defined by Thayer's Greek Lexicon: "1) the state of one who is possessed of vitality…2) of the absolute fulness of life, both essential and ethical..."

John asserts here that in Jesus was a contagious vitality, characterized by an ethical whole[some]ness that culminated in an absolute fulness of life. And it was this zest and fulness that is a beacon for all people for all time.