NECESSITY FOR ETYMOLOGY
As summary, we’ve gone through quite a bit already and you should, by this time, have a general OBJECTIVE understanding of what is being stated in John chapter 1. If you’ve done what you were supposed to do so far you should be able to agree with me that John Chapter 1 deals with an ‘introduction’ of who the rest of the book is about. You should have a general understanding of the relationship between this ‘word’ and Jesus as well as a general relationship with this ‘word’ and God. We have a glimpse of who this ‘word’ is and that he is God (at least that is what it states fairly straightforwardly so far and simply taking this chapter only without including supporting verses). The next step is to find any grammatical supporting information concerning the chapter and the words found therein. I mentioned, in my last post, about the meaning of the word ‘word’ as used in this chapter. Now, we’re going to do a little bit more analyzing concerning this one word.
This is where things get a little tricky. In a previous post, I’ve mentioned that because something is not in the bible does not necessarily make it ‘not true’. This is where that statement actually comes into play. This is where etymology comes into play. Etymology is the study of the history of a word, its’ meaning throughout history and its’ changes. Also, the outright meaning of a word does not necessarily mean that it is the only way that word was used. The word ‘word’ as used in this chapter is one of those words. Also, please remember, for the sake of space and time, I am simplifying this as best I can and using only one word without taking into account other grammatical questions. I simply, at this time, wish to show how to accomplish a stable etymological study of a word (any word) by using the word ‘word’ as used in this chapter.
The first place I look is my Strong’s Exhaustive dictionary, the Greek Textus Receptus (for Greek you need to know how a particular word begins or ends and that is given in the Textus Receptus and not in Strong’s) and use Robinson’s Morphological Analysis Codes to tell me the ‘simplest’ meaning and syntactic (syntactic – how words are structured together to make sentences or meanings of some sort) use of which I will now place here:
word = λογος
- It is a noun.
- It is Nominative which means that it is the referent to the subject of a sentence. This is where the prefixes and suffixes take effect and changes the word itself. Other ways would be accusative (pointing directly to someone or something rather than refer to them. Plural accusative of the same word = Logous). Simply put, if you see the word ‘the’, ‘a’, or ‘an’ before a noun, it is nominative. If you see the word ‘you’, ‘your’, ‘their’, etc…, the noun is accusative.
- It is masculine (in this case, that doesn’t really matter but in other cases it does. In the Greek (as in Spanish) the male gender is usually (not always since many nouns have a female gender on it’s own) used and is generally inclusive of the female gender. In generally (not always), as in Spanish so in Greek, any noun (in it’s root word) that ends in an ‘a’ or an ‘i’, the noun’s gender is female. If it ends in any other vowels or ends in a consonant, the noun is generally (not always) male.
- It is singular – plural form = Logous
What did we get out of all of this? Simply put, it means exactly what is stated in our bibles. What does this do? It supplies us with the ability to defend the written word as written in our own language. There is NO WAY that this word means ‘words’, ‘language’, ‘study’, ‘divine revelation’, etc… Does it really matter you may ask? Well, for this word, this particular exercise wouldn’t matter too much but the word ‘God’ as used in John 1:1 has everything to do with this. In John 1:1 – there are those that would claim that what this really says is that the word was ‘a god’ and not singular and specifically saying ‘God’. They are wrong there since the word one needs to study is the words ‘pros ton’ (the statement ‘was with God’) which is immediately before the word ‘Theos’ in the statement just prior to ‘was God’. I’ll let you guys delve into that if you wish but I used the word ‘word’ because it is simple. To defend the deity of Christ with John 1:1, it takes a lot more than just to define one particular word and look for some history on it so, please forgive me for not delving into that any further. Suffice it to say that the exercise I’m explaining is necessary to get a better understanding of the scriptures though the word I’m picking on (‘word’) doesn’t really have much relevance to the general outlook but may be interesting to note the inflections of the word. In other words, I’m answering why John picked the word ‘word’ to describe Christ rather than his name or the title ‘Christ’. John used the word ‘word’ for a specific reason.
Ok, we have the ‘normal’ meaning of the word ‘word’. Nothing there really tells us what that has to do with why John chooses that word to point to Jesus. So, what do I do next? We have a wide source of information, both secular and religious, on the internet before we even go to our other resources. In this case, I’m going to search for the word ‘logos’.
http://courses.durhamtech.edu/perkins/aris.html – implies logical reasoning processes that defend, by reason, a particular subject for the Greeks. It is a bit more than just a word but it implies a word that is persuasive, argumentative and reasoning. This type of meaning is used much by Aristotle (a Greek philosopher).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo – Hebrew to Greek. Philo attempted to congregate both the Hebrew religious belief and the Greek philosophies together with this word. Hence, for the Hebrew, the word means God’s reasoning (God’s word) and for the Greek ‘God’s reasoning’ (the reasoning for God so to speak).
Essentially, from what I’ve found so far, the ‘word’ used here means reasoning for, about, and of God. Jesus, therefore, is the reasoning or the argumentation for God. It is the ‘proof’ of God as well as being of God as well as being God himself. Interesting to note that in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos which is where I first went, that the real word to translate ‘word’ should be ‘lexis’ and not ‘logos’. Logos is grammatically equal to ‘reasoning’ and not necessarily the word ‘word’.
For the Hebrew, same inflection but a different idea. This refers a bit more to the whole body of truth as related in the Old Testament which is the ‘reasoning for, about and of God’.
In other words, this chapter deals heavily with the reasoning that should be given about, for and of God, the personification of same being Jesus Christ.
Also in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos it is stated: “The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.”. In other words, Logos is the sustainer of creation more in tune with a ‘power’ than with a person. It is that divine power that sustains creation.
Wow, so much meaning in just one word. Now, notice that I did not use one single commentary yet. This is strictly secular and objective facts used so far. Do that with a few other words in this chapter and see what you come up with? Also notice that I did not use the bible to figure this out at all. This brings me to a point that I’ve mentioned before. Because something is not in the scriptures does not necessarily make it untrue.
I would challenge you to do that with John 1:1 about the difference between the Watchtower translation and the King James Version and see what you come up with the difference of ‘a God’ rather than ‘was God’. Remember to take into account the previous statement (ην προς τον θεον και θεος). In other words, try translating the whole statement together along with ην ο λογος which follows immediately after.
This exercise would help you start to get more in touch with the specifics of a word or sentence and thereby get a better idea of what the whole statement says rather than what we were doing which was macro interpreting scripture. We are beginning to micro-interpret scripture now. We need to find out the meanings of the words themselves as the original readers and writers understood them and not how we understand them today. We’ll go more into that on my next post.
Bible Questions and Answers 