In the Beginning of What?

John 1:1 through 18 is one of the most-loved passages in all of Christian scripture. It is also one of the most philosophically over-read. For seventeen centuries, most commentators have approached the Prologue as a metaphysical treatise: a statement of the eternal pre-existence of a divine Son, the second Person of the Trinity, who became incarnate as Jesus Christ. The reading has become so standard that most Christians no longer notice they are reading philosophy into the passage; they simply see the philosophy as what the passage is saying.

But John did not write philosophy. John wrote a Gospel. And the Gospel opens with a carefully constructed Jewish prologue that uses Jewish categories to make a Jewish theological point: the creator God has acted again in history, through his own Word, and the Word has taken flesh in the person of Jesus the Messiah.

This page offers the Biblical Unitarian reading of the Prologue. It is not a hostile reading. It does not dismiss the passage's grandeur or its Christological significance. What it does is return the Prologue to its first-century Jewish context, where the grammatical and historical methods show the passage to be speaking a different language than the fourth-century Greek philosophy that has been projected back onto it.

Four load-bearing moves. Each can be checked against primary sources.

Move 1: "In the beginning" as an LXX echo

The Prologue opens with three Greek words: En archē. "In the beginning." Every first-century Jewish listener who heard these words, read aloud in the synagogue or the house church, would have heard an immediate echo.

The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, used universally in the Greek-speaking Jewish world of the first century) opens Genesis with the same three words: En archē epoiēsen ho theos ton ouranon kai tēn gēn. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

John is opening his Gospel with a conscious echo of Genesis 1:1. This is not an accidental similarity of vocabulary. John is signaling, on the first line, that what follows is a new creation account. Just as Genesis began with En archē at the creation of the world, John begins with En archē at the creation of something else. The question John is opening is: in the beginning of what?

Genesis 1 describes the first creation. John is describing a new creation. The same God who spoke the first creation into being is now speaking a new creation into being, and the agent of the new creation is the Logos.

The parallels with Genesis 1 run through the whole Prologue. Darkness and light. Life from the Word. A seven-day pattern in the first chapter of John (though contested, a defensible reading sees John 1 as structured around a week of days). The Prologue is, in its form and content, a Jewish new-creation manifesto. It echoes Genesis not as a coincidence but as a deliberate theological move.

Move 2: The Memra in the Targums

The Greek word logos, usually translated "Word," has a rich background in Hellenistic philosophy. Stoic thought used logos for the rational principle ordering the universe. Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish philosopher writing in Greek in the first century, used logos as a bridge between Jewish monotheism and Platonic philosophy. Because of these backgrounds, Christian commentators from the second century onward have often read John's logos primarily against a Greek philosophical horizon.

But John was writing for a Jewish audience as well as a Greek one. And for the Jewish audience, there was a richer and more immediate background. That background is the Targum tradition.

The Targums are Aramaic translations (more accurately, paraphrases) of the Hebrew Bible, produced for use in synagogues where congregants no longer understood biblical Hebrew fluently. The three major Targums of the Pentateuch are Targum Onkelos (relatively literal), Targum Neofiti (more paraphrastic), and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (most expansive). Although the surviving manuscripts are later than the first century, the traditions they preserve date back to the Second Temple period and were in oral circulation during the time of Jesus and the apostles.

In these Targums, a specific reverential substitution is made when the Hebrew text describes God acting directly in history. Where the Hebrew reads "Yahweh did X" or "the Lord spoke Y," the Targum often reads "the Word of the Lord did X" or "the Word of the Lord spoke Y." The Aramaic term for this divine Word is Memra (from the Aramaic root 'mr, "to speak").

A handful of examples will show the pattern.

Genesis 3:8. Hebrew: "They heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." Targum Neofiti: "They heard the voice of the Memra of the LORD God walking in the garden at the turn of the day."

Exodus 19:17. Hebrew: "Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God." Targum Onkelos: "Moses brought the people from the camp to meet the Memra of the LORD."

Exodus 33:9. Hebrew: "Whenever Moses entered the tent... the LORD would speak with Moses." Targum Onkelos: "The Memra of the LORD would speak with Moses."

Deuteronomy 4:7. Hebrew: "What other great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us?" Targum Neofiti: "What other great nation has God so near to them as the Memra of the LORD our God is near to us?"

The Memra is not a distinct divine being. It is the reverential way of speaking about Yahweh's own agency in the world. When Yahweh acts, the Targums say his Memra acts. When Yahweh speaks, his Memra speaks. The Memra is God, in his self-expressive, active, communicating aspect. It is God doing what God does.

This is the background to John's logos. When John writes En archē ēn ho logos, "In the beginning was the Word," a first-century Jewish listener would have heard Memra. The Word is God's own self-expressive agency. The Word was with God at the beginning. The Word was what God was.

The Christian tradition has sometimes claimed that the Memra is proto-Trinitarian, an incipient second Person of God already present in Jewish tradition. This reading is defended by some evangelical scholars. It does not hold up under examination. The Memra in the Targums is not a distinct Person. It is a way of speaking about Yahweh. When a text says "the Memra created the heavens," this is not "a second divine Person created the heavens"; it is "the creative agency of Yahweh created the heavens." The Memra is Yahweh's acting. It is not Yahweh plus one.

John's logos fits this Memra pattern exactly. The Logos is God's self-expressive Word. The Logos is with God (in the sense that God's own speech is his own), and the Logos is what God is (not "a second divine Person named God" but "the Word that God was, namely, God's own self-expression").

Move 3: The qualitative grammar of John 1:1c

John 1:1c is probably the single most-debated verse in the entire Bible for Christology. The Greek reads:

καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος

kai theos ēn ho logos

Word for word: "and God was the Word."

The verse is syntactically unusual. The predicate theos comes before the verb ēn, and the subject ho logos comes after. In English, the standard translation flips this to "and the Word was God." This is grammatically defensible, but it makes a critical decision about what theos means in this context.

Notice that theos here lacks the definite article. In the verse immediately before, John 1:1b, we have pros ton theon, "with the God." There, theos takes the article and clearly refers to the Father. In 1:1c, theos is anarthrous (no article). Does the absence of the article matter?

In 1973, the Greek scholar Philip B. Harner published a landmark article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, volume 92, titled "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1." Harner examined every similar construction in the Johannine corpus and concluded that when a predicate noun without the article precedes the verb, as theos does in John 1:1c, it typically carries a qualitative rather than definite force. The construction tells us what something was, in terms of nature or character, rather than identifying it as the particular instance of its class.

On Harner's analysis, the best English rendering of John 1:1c is not "the Word was God" (identifying Logos with the Father) or "the Word was a god" (making Logos a created lesser divine being, the New World Translation reading), but something like: "what God was, the Word was," or "the Word was divine," or "the Word was fully what God is."

The qualitative reading holds the Memra framework together. The Word is not identical with the Father (Trinitarian ontological identity); the Word is not a second god (a Jehovah's Witness reading); the Word is God in his self-expressive aspect. The Word is God doing what God does.

Here is the full qualitative reading of John 1:1, with the grammatical moves visible:

En archē ēn ho logos: In the beginning was the Word (Memra-echo; the Word was there at the beginning, as in Genesis)
kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon: and the Word was with God (the definite article on theon; pointing to the Father; the Word was in relationship with the Father as his own speech is)
kai theos ēn ho logos: and the Word was what God was (no article on theos; qualitative; the Word shared the nature of God because the Word was God's own self-expression)

This is the grammar, and it is not a Biblical Unitarian reading imposed on the text. Harner's analysis has been accepted by many mainstream Greek grammarians. The significance of the qualitative reading for theology is that it removes the need to choose between the standard Trinitarian reading ("the Word was the one true God, a second divine Person") and the Jehovah's Witness reading ("the Word was a god, a created divine being"). The qualitative reading says neither of these. The Word is what God is, in his self-expressive aspect, because the Word is God speaking.

Move 4: The Shaliach and the incarnation

Having set up the Memra framework and the qualitative grammar, John moves to the climax of the Prologue in verse 14:

καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν

kai ho logos sarx egeneto kai eskēnōsen en hēmin

"And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us."

The verb egeneto is the aorist of ginomai, "to become." It is the same verb used throughout Genesis 1 in the Septuagint: "Let there be light, and light egeneto." The Word becoming flesh is the decisive act of the new creation. What God has been speaking from the beginning has now taken up residence in history as a human being.

The second verb eskēnōsen comes from skēnē, "tent" or "tabernacle." The Word "pitched his tent" among us. This is an unmistakable reference to the Tabernacle of the Exodus, where Yahweh dwelt among his people in the tent of meeting. The Word, which is Yahweh's self-expressive agency, has now come to dwell among his people not in a tent of fabric but in a human being.

Who is this human being? Verse 17 tells us plainly:

ὅτι ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη, ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο

"For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Jesus Christ is the one in whom the Word became flesh. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the anointed and sent one of God. The Shaliach framework from our study of 1 Corinthians 8:6 applies here exactly. The Word is God's own self-expression; Jesus is the human Messiah in whom the Word has taken flesh. The two are not the same kind of thing. The Word is God speaking. Jesus is the man in whom God's speech has come to dwell.

This is the Shaliach pattern. The sender and the sent are distinct. The sent one carries the full authority of the sender. What Jesus does, God does. What Jesus says, God says. But Jesus is not the sender. Jesus is the one the sender sent.

The Prologue read straight through

With all four moves in place, here is the Prologue read as a new-creation manifesto in its first-century Jewish setting.

"In the beginning [echoing Genesis] was the Word [Memra, God's own self-expressive agency]. And the Word was with God [the Father], and what God was, the Word was [qualitatively, the Word was God in his self-expressive aspect]. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him [as Genesis 1 says of God's speech], and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

Verses 6 through 13 pivot to John the Baptist's witness and the mixed reception of the Word in the world. Some reject. Some receive. Those who receive become children of God by the new birth.

"And the Word became flesh [the decisive incarnation, the new creation breaking into history] and tabernacled among us [dwelling as Yahweh once dwelt in the Tabernacle], and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son from the Father, full of grace and truth... For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Read this way, the Prologue is not a metaphysical speculation about a pre-existent divine Person who became incarnate. The Prologue is a Jewish account of God acting in history. God's own self-expressive Word, the Memra that has always been with him, has now taken up residence among his people in the person of Jesus the Messiah. This is a new creation. This is what God has done.

The Logos is not a second divine Person. The Logos is God's own speech, the way the Memra was always God's own speech. What has happened in Jesus is not that a second Person of a Triune God has taken human form; it is that the one God has acted through his Word to create, through his Messiah, a new humanity.

Why this matters

The standard Trinitarian reading of the Prologue asserts that John 1:1 through 14 teaches the pre-incarnate existence of a second divine Person who was God and with God from eternity, who became incarnate as Jesus. This reading has deep roots and is widely held.

The Biblical Unitarian reading of the Prologue asserts that John 1:1 through 14 teaches the agency of God's own self-expressive Word throughout history, culminating in the man Jesus, in whom the Word has taken flesh. Jesus is not a pre-existing divine Person; Jesus is the Messiah in whom God's Word has come to dwell.

Both readings engage with the text seriously. The difference is which framework the reader brings to the Greek. A Trinitarian reader brings fourth-century Nicene categories and finds them confirmed. A Biblical Unitarian reader brings first-century Jewish categories (Memra, Shaliach, the qualitative grammar of anarthrous predicates) and finds a different reading.

The question is which framework the Prologue itself signals. The Prologue opens with an echo of Genesis, not of Greek metaphysics. The Prologue uses the vocabulary of tabernacling among, which is Exodus language, not Platonic language. The Prologue concludes by naming the one who came as Jesus Christ, a human Messiah, not a hypostatic union of two natures. The Prologue's own internal signals point to the Jewish framework.

The Biblical Unitarian reading is not a reduction of John. It is a return of John to his own intellectual home. When the Prologue is read as it was written, by a first-century Jewish teacher to a community that included first-century Jews, in the categories that first-century Jewish theology provided, the Prologue is more coherent, more theologically satisfying, and more directly connected to the rest of Jewish scripture than the later metaphysical reading makes it.

A note on originality

One reading in the paragraphs above requires a note. The Biblical Unitarian "Proclaimer" reading of John 1:1c (which some scholars, including Dustin Smith in his Fourth Gospel work, have developed) takes the qualitative grammar one step further, arguing that the verse should be rendered something like "God was the Proclaimer." This reading is original synthesis by the Biblical Unitarian tradition and should be identified as such. It is not yet established scholarship in the broader academic world. It is a proposal that a qualitative reading of theos in 1:1c combined with attention to the Prologue's emphasis on the Word as God's announcement produces a clearer picture of what John is doing.

A reader is not required to accept the Proclaimer reading to accept the larger Biblical Unitarian framework. The qualitative reading of 1:1c (Harner's grammar) is well-established in mainstream Greek scholarship. The Memra tradition is well-documented in Jewish studies. The Shaliach principle is the Mishnah's own teaching. These three moves, taken together, are sufficient to establish the Biblical Unitarian reading of the Prologue. The Proclaimer reading is an additional proposal, which may or may not hold up under further scholarly scrutiny.

The invitation

Read John 1:1 through 18 out loud. Slowly. Once without any theological framework in mind, just listening to what the words are saying. Then read it a second time, holding the Memra framework in your head. Hear the Word as God's own self-expressive agency, with God from the beginning, taking flesh in the Messiah. Hear the Prologue as a new-creation manifesto in the voice of a first-century Jewish teacher.

This is not a different Jesus. This is the Jesus of John's Gospel, read in his own first-century Jewish setting. The Prologue is still one of the most profound passages in Christian scripture. What it is not is a fourth-century metaphysical treatise. It is a Jewish new-creation text, and when it is read as one, the Gospel that follows makes fresh sense.