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Re: Logos
>> Any good commentary on this passage will advise, I think, that LOGOS is
>> richer than any single word used to translate it can convey. One
>> "literary" commentary worth looking at (although it gives no
>> explanation), is in the opening scene of Goethe's Faust, where Goethe
>> begins translating it as "In the beginning was the Word," and ends up,
>> after several other suggested versions, with "In the beginning was the
>> Deed." That's perhaps stretching LOGOS, although since part of its
>> resonance is from the OT word DABAR, that's not really altogether wrong,
>> either. But a one-world all-encompassing English word there isn't, IMHO.
Goethe was a romanticist, and rejected the Logic. For him
the idea of Logos as Word or Wisdom being first was absurd.
As he says,
It is written: "In the beginning was the Word!"
Here I'm stuck already! Who helps me go further?
The spirit helps me! All at once I see the answer
And confidently write: "In the beginning was the Act!"
You are far more of a Greek scholar than I am, admittedly,
but it seems to me that Faust is far from a Biblical
concept of Logos there.
Jim