Introduction
John 1:1, 14 has been much studied for its background, and different proposals have held their sway in the history of scholarship.[1] Rather than discuss these contextualization theories, we will put aside the question of the relationship of the prologue to its cultural environment for the moment and consider the intertextual links it has within the Bible. The pecking order of what is relevant to the interpretation of John 1 starts with the Johannine writings, then includes other NT writings, followed by those writings held to be authoritative Scripture (now the OT), or vice versa; only after this, should the cultural environment be included.
Not ‘The Word made flesh’
The use of Genesis 1 in John 1 is well known; ‘In the beginning’ is an obvious allusion, but the reference to ‘all things’, ‘the light’, and ‘darkness’ are confirming pointers to the reader that s/he should look for a Genesis background to the Prologue. In our text, “And the Word was made flesh” (v. 14, KJV), we have the same past tense form of the verb ‘to become’ (evge,neto) that is used in the LXX for the ‘was’ statements of Genesis 1: ‘and there was light’ (v. 3); ‘was the evening’, ‘was the morning’ (vv. 5, 8, 11, 19, 23); ‘it was so’ (vv. 6, 9, 11, 14-15, 20, 24, 29-30). The LXX is giving a literal translation of the Perfect form of the Hebrew verb ‘to be/become’ and it is unexceptionable. The translation of John 1:14 above, however, is interpretative; and so some translations render the Greek as “And the Word became flesh” (NASB, RSV), rather than “And the Word was made flesh”, and this is better.
The particular past tense form of the verb ‘to become’ is variously translated. In John 1 we have it as “There was a man sent from God” (v. 6); this is like the Hebraic “And it came to pass” (e.g. Gen 6:1; 27:1; Jud 1:14; 2 Chron 34:19). We also have it in “were made by him” (v. 3); “was made by him” (v. 10); and “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (v. 17). We can see that the form of the verb ‘to become’ is treated flexibly by translators. The normal Greek verbs for ‘to make’ (poie,w) or ‘to come’ (e;rcomai) are not in vv. 3, 10 or 17; just the simple verb ‘to become’. It is our reading assumption as translators/interpreters if we render v. 14 as “And the Word was made flesh”; but it is better rendered as “And the Word became flesh”.
The use of the verb ‘to become’ in Genesis 1 is to state what has happened or come about—there has been a change. We noted above that there is an ‘it was so’ refrain in Genesis 1, and this is part of the pattern, “And God said…and it was so”. God spoke to the effect that such and such should happen or come about and it was so. Following this pattern, when we read that the Word became flesh, our assumption should be that the model for understanding the Word becoming flesh is, for example, “God said, ‘Let there be light’, and the word became light”. This is why the correct translation of the Greek verb in v. 14 is, “And the Word became flesh”.[2]
John 1:14 is not positing that some particular words were spoken and they became flesh,[3] but this does not detract from the model being used in John 1:14, which is affirming that Jesus was begotten of God. A precedent for ‘the Word becoming flesh’ would be Gen 1:26, where we do have the words, ‘Let us make man in our image and after our likeness’, which do lead to a becoming flesh. Genesis presents God speaking and what he spoke coming into being, but the scope of ‘the Word’ is broader than a particular utterance.
When we use Genesis as a background for John 1:14, we do not get a doctrine of incarnation. To say that something should be thus and so and then for that to come about is not for something or someone to become incarnate. This would only be the case if there was something or someone pre-existent as ‘the Word’—then we would get a doctrine of incarnation with the statement, “And the Word became flesh”. If all we have as a model is speech (as in Genesis 1), we cannot infer incarnation.
The Word of Prophecy
Putting the first chapter of John to one side, the use of the word logos in the Gospel everywhere else is for what is said or spoken, a saying or a word (35x, e.g. John 2:22; 10:35).[4] There is no text in John’s Gospel which uses logos for something abstract, a personification or hypostatization, or for an individual. If we were to extend our word search to include all the occurrences of logos in the NT we would come to the same conclusion; the only individual anywhere called ‘the Word’ is Jesus.
Calling Jesus ‘the Word’ is rare in the NT;[5] the phrases, ‘word of God’, ‘word of the Lord’ and ‘the word’ are most often used of the message delivered by OT prophets to the people (John 10:35; cf. Acts 17:13; 2 Cor 4:2), or for the message being preached by Jesus and the apostles. Taking the OT as our background for John 1:14, both individual examples of prophecy (e.g. 1 Kgs 12:22; 1 Chron 17:3), and the whole message (enshrined in Scripture) of God to man is described as ‘the word’ (e.g. Ps 119:9, 105). Our conclusion therefore is that it was the prophetic word about the messiah-deliverer that became flesh in the person of Jesus.
Various OT prophecies about the messiah-deliverer could be cited as relevant, for instance, the virgin birth (Isa 7:14; Matt 1:23). This prophecy specifically predicts that the name of the child of sign will signify ‘God is with us’, which resonates with John 1. Or again, there is the word of prophecy that predicts ‘Unto us a child is born’ (Isa 9:6) which ascribes the title ‘The Mighty God’ to the Davidic king. Micah prophesies that the ruler of Israel would be born in Bethlehem (Mic 5:2; Matt 2:6), but he also records that ‘his goings forth had been of old’ which is a reference to the earlier foreshadowing of this king in Scriptural prophecy and narrative. This means, for example, that the various barren birth stories of the OT should be taken as prophetic of the birth of a child of promise who would be the Son of God (e.g. Isaac; Joseph). And we could broaden our selection of prophecies to include those that predict a deliverer (Isa 11:1); a Suffering Servant (Isa 53:1-12); a Davidic king (Ps 2:7; 110:1); or a Melchizedek priest (Heb 5:6); and so on. Types, patterns and specific prophecies are ‘the Word’ that became flesh in Jesus Christ.
The Word becoming flesh is a natural enough idiom for a claim of fulfilled prophecy, especially if you also want to emphasize that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3; 2 John v. 7). There is no ‘incarnation’ here; the word of prophecy remains the word in the Scriptures—we can see instead that it is manifested in the person and the life of Jesus. The Word that became flesh is made up of all the prophecies about Jesus. In a sense they detail the fact that the purpose of God revolves around Christ.
The Hebrew Scriptures do not know of a being called ‘the Word’. What we do have in these Scriptures is an occasional linguistic hypostatization of the Word of God:
He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. Ps 107:20; cf. 147:15, 20 (KJV)
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Isa 55:11; cf. 9:8; 45:23 (KJV)[6]
Such hypostatization is rare; generally the Word of God or the Word of the Lord is that prophetic word that comes to a prophet (218x, e.g. 1 Kgs 12:22; Isa 38:4). We should follow this majority usage for our background and see in John 1:14 the simple statement that this Word (of prophecy) became flesh.
Conclusion
We have argued that the majority usage of ‘the Word’, or very similar expressions in the OT, is for ‘the word of prophecy’. The assertion that ‘the Word became flesh’ is a natural idiom for the fulfilment of prophecies (types and patterns) that relate to Jesus. Church commentary does not follow this line of exegesis, not so much because of John 1:14, but because of John 1:1.
Church commentary reads John 1:1 as a reference to the primeval beginning and it reads the prologue of John as a progressive chronological sequence affirming that the Word was in such a beginning and then it/he was made flesh in the 1c. It is outside the remit of this article to show where and how this reading of John 1:1 and the prologue is wrong; this may form the subject of a subsequent article.
[1] C. A. Evans, Word and Glory: On the Exegetical and Theological Background of John’s Prologue (JSNTS 89; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).
[2] Similarly, it would be wrong to translate v. 14 as “And the Word was flesh”—a simple statement of fact, because this loses the sense of ‘becoming’ in the verb and fails to reflect Genesis.
[3] We do not know any from John but we do have the utterance of Luke 1:35.
[4] For a study of the thematic links between the prologue and the rest of John see S. R. Valentine, “The Johannine Prologue—A Microcosm of the Gospel” EQ 68:3 (1996): 291-304.
[5] The exact form of words (o` lo,goj tou/ qeou/) are definitely applied to Jesus in Rev 19:13, but elsewhere (Heb 4:12 and 1 John 2:14) it is not certain that they refer to Christ. The shorter phrase ‘the Word’ may be applied to Christ in Luke 1:2. The title ‘the word of life’ (tou/ lo,gou th/j zwh/j) is used of Jesus in 1 John 1:2.
[6] This text may underlie some of John’s language of Jesus being sent; see J. V. Dahms, “Isaiah 55:11 and the Gospel of John” EQ 53.2 (1981): 78-88.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One