The words Behind the Word

Is John 1:1 a pun?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1).

This is all very clearly a callback to Genesis, right?

If you know the four Gospels, you know they each have their own personality. Mark is stripped down and raw. It cuts straight to the chase. You get to see Jesus in Mark with almost no commentary to get in the way. I love it. John, though, John is the other side of the spectrum. John is all commentary. If Mark is story, John is speculation. If Mark is narrative, John is theology. And probably one of the best ways to think about it is that Mark is the foundation, and John is what Christianity builds on top of that story.

But what we see in John is that what Christianity builds is this conviction that the whole long story is leading us to the life of Jesus. And the life of Jesus in turn changes everything about how we read the story.

See, John does this brilliant thing where he plays with words in his opening. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And that word “word” is the Greek word logos. Now, logos means word, but it also has this rich philosophical subtext.

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