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John 1:1-4

The prologue of the Gospel of John reasserts the word theology of Genesis 1 and the prophets.

Ask any Jew of the first or second century to finish the sentence, “In the Beginning . . .” and they would say, “. . .God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).  The first verses of the Gospel of John are meant to remind the reader of the creation account of Genesis 1.  John says, “In the beginning was the Word.”  Genesis 1 records that God created the world through word: “And God said, ‘let there be . . .’”  John’s prologue describes how the Word, being God, created the world.

Genesis 1 was placed at the very beginning of the Hebrew Bible during or after the exile in Babylon.  The Jews learned through the failure of the Judean monarchy and their subsequent exile that the way of the world -  the way of kings, armies, domination and violence – is not God’s way.  In the exile, they began to draw on more ancient stories in their past and developed a different way, a different theology: a nonviolent, prophetic theology of the word.

Finding themselves in the midst of the Babylonian empire, the Jews recognized there the theology of domination and violence that had led them astray.  The Babylonian state found it’s spiritual grounding and impetus in a story of domination and violence.  The central myth of the society told of a war between the gods by which the world was created.  Specifically, the leader of the winning faction, a male god named Marduke, created the world by tearing apart the body of a female god, named Tiamat.  The winning gods then created humans to be a slave labor force for them.

This story mythologically buttressed the political establishment of Babylon.  Marduke and his warrior gods represented the emperor and the ruling class who came to power through violence and domination.  The human beings, the mere mortals, of the story represented the common people, whose labor the ruling class exploited.

The Jews recognized this mythology as the partaking of the same spirituality that had led them astray, so they articulated a different version of how the world was created.  They told the story of a God who created through word, not through violence.  In their story, God created humans as the pinnacle of creation, in the divine likeness, and to have dominion, not to be dominated.  Their story reflected the theology and spirituality of the word.

This theology emerged from the Hebrew prophetic tradition.  The prophets spoke the Word of Yahweh.  They had warned the Israelites not to follow the ways of the nations, the ways of the world.  The word they spoke revealed sin, tore down kingdoms and recreated the world to be a place of justice and freedom, like the world of Genesis 1.

The prophets were not always recognized in their own time as true prophets speaking the Word of God, but the Jews, through their experience in exile, began to affirm their prophetic voice and claim it as their own in the midst of a hostile empire.  The Jews began to understand themselves as a prophetic people, a people of the word, not a people of empire and violence led by a series of autocratic kings.

The Gospel of John draws on this Jewish tradition to begin telling the story of Jesus.  Jesus is not a worldly king with an army.  Jesus is the Word of God, a force more powerful, a force that will shine a light and reveal the sins of the world, a word that will recreate the world and give life to all people.  Jesus is the consummate Hebrew prophet; he not only speaks the Word, he is the Word.