From: Jim Beale (jbeale@gdeb.com)
Date: Thu Feb 01 1996 - 16:24:35 EST
On Thu, 1 Feb 1996 Will Wagers wrote:
> How is that extra-biblical references to the Logos are readily
> acknowledged as coming from this or that Greek philosophical
> school, but the antecedent of Logos of John 1:1 is usually ignored
> or specifically disavowed?
What makes you think that it is ignored or disavowed? If one were to
read through Kittel's TDNT or Colin Brown's DNTT, it seems to me that
it would be found that the full classical background is recognized.
Surely John and the author of Hebrews were not writing in a vacuum,
and must have certainly been aware of the development from Heraclitus,
to Plato, and Proverbs 8, and Wisdom 18, Philo, etc. It even seems to
me that the Logos has the same attributes as Heraclitus named, specif-
ically, the rational ordering principle, the mind which orders and
ordains all things. The main difference it seems that John wanted to
claim for the true Logos is in vs. 14 where it is said that the Logos
becomes flesh, which is something that would probably not have been
acceptable to Heraclitus or Plato either for that matter.
I think that John was writing with the classical background in mind;
in opposition to the classical background to a point, but surely with
the explicit intent of showing that Christ is the true Logos, and that
He became incarnate as a man.
-- In Christ, Jim Beale _______________________________________________________________________The Logos is the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world. (John 1:9)
And this is the true end set before the Soul, to take that light, to see the Supreme by the Supreme and not by the light of any other principle -- to see the Supreme which is also the means to the vision; for that which illumines the Soul is that which it is to see -- just as it is by the sun's own light that we see the sun. (Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, Third Tractate) _______________________________________________________________________
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