From: dalmatia@eburg.com
Date: Wed Jul 08 1998 - 13:39:31 EDT
Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> The problem with "Marshal" is that it remains a limited version of LOGOS;
> it relies overmuch upon one etymological derivation of LOGOS from LEGW when
> others are possible and legitimate and despite the fact that usage within a
> cultural tradition and common parlance is a much more important factor in
> meaning conveyed by any particular word in a given context. The fact is
> that LOGOS has so rich a cultural heritage in both Greek philosophy and
> Jewish scripture that scholars cannot readily reach a clear consensus on
> which items, if any, of the two backgrounds, may legitimately be IGNORED in
> the endeavor to understand exactly what LOGOS means in the Johannine
> prologue.
That's the truth!! Thanks Carl.
When I first read John I was faced with trying, as a
non-Christian-educated reader, to render an understanding of LOGOS
from a Greek philosophical frame of reference. So I went to the word
KOSMOS ~ And in John there is no usage of its opposite, CAOS. LOGOS
would have made a great intermediary between KOSMOS and CAOS in Greek
cosmogony. But it simply is not there in John. So I muddled...
Established a back burner system of thinking so try somehow to make
sense of the text. Muddling and back burners are an integral part of
my thinking in John. For me, everything is tentative in understanding
this text.
>From the Greek philosophical side, the best I could come up with for
LOGOS in John 1:1 was "Divine Intelligence." And it is that at
least!! It is so much more, as the OT and NT both attest. Any
attempt to 'encompass' this word's denotation in any language will
fail. The text of John is but an introduction to it... An awesome
introduction...
The best word I have been able to come up with to translate hO LOGOS
is Logos!!
> To summarize, then: in my view, it's not that "Marshal" is an illegitimate
> sense for LOGOS but that it is too narrow a delimitation of all that LOGOS
> may and probably does mean to convey in the Johannine Prologue.
I would add that John is a Jew writing in Greek, and that both sides
of the meaning of LOGOS will be properly kept in mind in any approach
to its understanding. And I agree with you that narrowing one's
understanding to any single thread of derivation of its meaning will
lose the meaning of the word in John...
George
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