Originally posted by Nemesio
Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).
The word for 'word' is logos, a Hellenistic construct with a much
greater significance than 'word' (although there isn't a good single-word
translation for it). However, the translation 'and the Word was ma ...[text shortened]... .
Nemesio[/b]
The word for 'word' is logos, a Hellenistic construct with a much greater significance than 'word' (although there isn't a good single-word translation for it).
Apparently, the Stoics understood it as either “an all-pervading force” or as “the rational principle” that is responsible for the coherence of the world. (Gregory Hays,
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, from Hays’ introduction.) Hays too claims that
logos has a semantic range so broad as to be almost untranslatable.”
Re, your identification (as I understood you anyway) of
logos with
pneuma, Hays indicates a similar kind of identification for the Stoics:
“But the
logos is not simply an impersonal power that governs and directs the world. It is also an actual substance that pervades the world, not in a metaphorical sense but in a form as concrete as oxygen or carbon. In its physical embodiment, the
logos exists as
pneuma, a substance imagined by the earliest Stoics as pure fire, and by Chrysippus as a mixture of fire and air.
Pneuma is the power—the vital breath—that animates animals and humans. It is, in Dylan Thomas’s phrase, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” and is present even in lifeless materials like stone or metal as the energy that holds the object together—the internal tension that makes the stone a stone. All objects are thus a compound of lifeless substance and vital force.”
I would not see it in quite this sense—but it is interesting anyway. The wind/fire notion is the basis for my poetic rendition of John 3:8 (wherein
pneuma is usually rendered as “wind” in the first occurrence, and “spirit” in the second):
Wind-fire where it wishes blows;
the sound of it you hear, but do not know
whence it comes nor where it goes—
those who are born of wind-fire wayfare so.
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However, the translation 'and the Word was made flesh' is inaccurate, or rather insufficient. Better capturing the words of the author, it should read 'and the Word was enfleshed.'
> NRS John 1:3 All things came into being (
egeneto) through him, and without him not one thing came into being (
egeneto)....
This word
egeneto is interesting. It is different from poieo, to make, construct or form (the word used in the Greek LXX to translate
bara, “created,” in Genesis 1:1, for example); and from ktizo, to create, found or establish. It’s root is ginomai—to become, to be born, to happen, to appear, to arise, to be produced or engendered. It is the same root that is translated as “beget.”
John gets a lot of further play out of this word—
> NRS 1:3-4 What has come into being (
gegeonen) in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
> NRS John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world came into being (
egeneto) through him; yet the world did not know him.
> NRS John 1:14 And the Word became flesh (
egeneto) and lived among us...
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Add to this mix the fact that the Greek writers insist that
monogene ought to be translated as “unique,” and
not as “only-begotten” (which would be
monogente). Since all things are engendered by the
logos, Jesus would not be unique in
that sense—but perhaps in his “sacramental” realization and actualization—imaging—of that
logos in humanity; i.e., as the
eikon par-excellence, the exemplar. And that is reflected in his title of
ho Christos.
This parallels what CB is saying, I think, but it could also be said in a Trinitarian framework as well (and in fact is).
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One more point, if the author of the 1st Letter of John is the same as the author of the Johannine Gospel, then there is a further identification:
ho theos =
logos =
pneuma =
agape.
In both John 1:1 and 1st John 4:8, the identified words are both in the nominative case.
Text and Tradition
31 Mar '07 23:32
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