The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (23 page)

As long ago as 1986 I published an article on the Prologue
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in which I adopted and developed a thesis put forward much earlier (1964) by Paul Lamarche that the subject of John 1:3 is not creation, as is widely assumed, but that this verse “is essentially concerned with the realization of the divine plan.”
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Apart from the briefest of notes by Craig Evans,
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my article lay disregarded until it was eventually picked up in 2006 in a book devoted to the Prologue by Peter M. Phillips.
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Phillips does not discuss all my arguments, and his treatment of those he does discuss is unconvincing. Since the issue is clearly an important one, affecting not just the interpretation of the Prologue itself but (as I will show in chapter 8) that of the Gospel as a whole, it must be covered properly.  I will first cite Lamarche’s arguments as set forth in my translation of his original article;
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then, after following these up in each case with further reasons of my own, I will deal with Phillips’s attempted rebuttal.

1. Lamarche challenges the standard interpretation of John 1:3:

“Does v. 3 really speak of creation? The word here is not κτίζω (“create”) as in Colossians (1:15) or in Revelation (4:1; 10:6), nor even ποιῶ (“do/make”), but γίνομαι, which means not “to be created” but “to become/to happen.” If the central perspective of the Prologue is indeed God’s universal plan, it is clear that the very wide meaning of this verb can perfectly express God’s activity by means of his Logos throughout the history of the world, starting, of course, from the creation, right up to the Incarnation, and including Israel’s election and the natural law of the Gentiles. Everything that has happened—the history of salvation as well as the creation—happened through the Logos.

Arguments in support of the very wide meaning that must be given to γίνομαι include the following:

a. The use of this verb in the Prologue as a whole ought to shed light on its meaning in v. 3. No doubt in v. 10 the world has “become,” that is, has been “created,” unless this refers rather to the world of human beings, which has just come about in history. But in any case this is just one aspect of “becoming” in the Prologue. In fact, the same verb is used for John the Baptist, who “comes”; for Christ, who “came” before John and who “becomes” flesh; for the grace and truth that “come” through Jesus Christ; and for the faithful, who “become” children of God.

b. The same (historical) use of the word is found in the first verse of Revelation: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place [γίνεσθαι]” (cf. Rev. 1:19; 4:1; 22:6).

c. The same usage is found in the Septuagint, particularly in a passage in the book of Judith: “For you have brought all this about [ἐποίησας] and everything that preceded and followed; you have planned [διενοήθης] both present and future. and all that you planned has come to pass [ἐγενήθησαν ἃ ἐνενοήθης]”
 
(Jdt. 9:5-6).
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Let me now deal with Phillips’s attempted refutation both of Lamarche’s arguments about the meaning of the verb γίνεσθαι, and of the support I gave them in my own article: “Ashton notes,” he says, “that καὶ ἐγένετο is used in the standard Greek phrase as a reflection of the Hebrew narrative conjunction ויהי— ‘and so it came to pass that. . .’.” “The use in this verse [1:3],” he admits, “could act in a similar way—‘all things came to pass through him.’ ” He goes on to point out, however, that where the word ἐγένετο is used in this sense in the Gospel (and he instances John 1:6, 28; 2:1; 3:25; 5:9; 6:16, 21; 7:43) it is used without καί. So, he concludes, there are clearly problems with the suggested rendering of John 1:3, “since the relevant conjunctive particle is missing and ἐγένετο is not found at the beginning of the phrase.”
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I find this argument very puzzling indeed, not least because I did not write the sentence he attributes to me. What I wrote was this: “the verb γίνεσθαι, without contextual support such as it finds in Genesis 1 [where indeed the Hebrew ויהי is always rendered by the Greek καὶ ἐγένετο] does not naturally refer to creation.” The opening of John 1, ’Εν ἀρχῇ, is unquestionably a reference to the opening of Genesis, but subsequent translators were mistaken when they concluded that what follows must also concern creation. (Lindars, commenting on the words 
were made
 in John 1:3, says that “the verbs in this sentence are the historic past ‘was,’ or ‘came into being’,” yet in his subsequent comments he retains the “were made” of the RSV.)
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In twelve of the twenty instances of καὶ ἐγένετο in Genesis 1 it is found (twice in each case) in the standard phrase used to indicate the end of each of the six days of creation: καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί. In the other eight instances, although the reference to creation is obvious, the English translation is not “And it was made” but simply “And it was so”—or, in the first occurrence, v. 3, “And there was (light).” What Phillips calls “the relevant conjunctive particle [καί]” (present in all the references to creation in the Genesis story) does not occur either in John 1:3 or in any of the other Gospel instances that he cites (nor does ἐγένετο come at the beginning of the phrase).  Most if not all of these instances, such as 6:16, ‘Ως δὲ ὀψία ἐγένετο (“When evening came”) tally nicely with what I believe to be the correct rendering of 1:3: “everything came to pass through him.” So Phillips’s observation, far from counting against my argument, actually supports it.

2. Another of Lamarche’s arguments concerns an ancient Gnostic text that loosely paraphrases the Prologue—the Valentinian writing known as the 
Gospel of Truth
:

“Nothing happens without him, nor does anything happen without the will of the Father” (37:2ff.). Here is the context of this passage: “Each one of his words is the work of his one will in the revelation of his Word. While they were still in the depth of his thought, the Word which was first to come forth revealed them” (37:4ff.).
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In this passage the Coptic is variously rendered “happens” or “comes into being.” There is nowhere any suggestion of creation.

To Lamarche’s point about the Coptic 
Gospel of Truth
 may be added an argument from the Syriac (Curetonian) translation of the actual text of John 1:3, which reads, in F. C. Burkitt’s rendering, “Everything came to pass in Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came to pass.”
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The translator of this version,  unlike some others, including that of the Old Latin, followed by Jerome, was not misled by the allusion to Genesis in the first verse; 
facta sunt
 in v. 3 means something very different from “came to pass,” and it may well be that not only the translators of the King James Bible but others too had an eye on the Latin when they missed the real meaning of ἐγένετο (rendered accurately by the Syriac “came to pass”) and chose something closer to 
facta sunt
—the English “were made” being a case in point.
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An interesting parallel is to be found in 
4 Ezra
 6:6: “then I planned these things and they came into being through me and not another,” for where the Syriac (in Michael Stone’s translation) has “came into being,” the Latin, just as in John 1:3, has 
facta sunt
.
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3. My next argument (not used by Lamarche and ignored by Phillips) concerns the crucial difference between πάντα and τὰ πάντα. Ignace de La Potterie had already pointed out that in New Testament times the regular expression for the created universe was τὰ πάντα.
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Commenting on John 1:3, Bultmann said that “the concept κόσμος is here represented by πάντα—everything that there is—whereby 
no account is taken 
of the fact that this can be summarized as τὰ πάντα (τὸ πᾶν), whether it be as a whole over against God, or as the unity of the divine cosmos in itself.”
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As parallels he cites Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 2:10. In the last of these instances, which all have τὰ πάντα, the author takes up a phrase from Ps. 8:7 quoted a couple of verses earlier: πάντα ὑπέταξας ὑποκάτω τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ (“you have placed all things under his feet”), but then proceeds to 
correct
 it, speaking of him “for whom and through whom 
the universe
 (has its being)”: δι’ ὅν 
τὰ 
πάντα καὶ δι’ οὗ 
τὰ
 πάντα, a deliberate reference to the whole cosmos. Clearly aware that the psalmist was thinking of all creation in submission to God, the writer used the phrase he knew (τὰ πάντα) to express this.  With this in mind we can recognize that Col. 1:16, ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα (“because the entire universe was created in him”), far from being a genuine parallel to John 1:3, has probably contributed to a continuing misunderstanding.
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The evidence from the Septuagint is complex but points in the same direction.
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In Gen. 1:31, which tells how God surveyed the now completed creative work (“God saw everything that he had made”) the Greek is τὰ πάντα, one of more than a dozen examples of the use of this term in the Septuagint to refer to the created universe; whereas Ps. 8:7, which I have just quoted, is one of only a very few instances where the simple πάντα has the same reference. A telling example of the felt difference between the two comes in Wis. 7:27, where it is said of wisdom that μία δὲ οὖσα πάντα δύναται καὶ μένουσα ἐν αὑτῇ τὰ πάντα καινίζει. Here, unfortunately, the English translator of the RSV failed to notice the difference: “Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things.” A better translation would be: “Even alone she is omnipotent, and quite unaided she restores the entire universe.”

Added to Lamarche’s first two arguments, this evidence, from both parts of the Bible, is decisive. The standard rendering of John 1:3, “all things were made through him,” is simply wrong.
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4. Lamarche, however, has one more argument, based on texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls:

And at this point Lamarche adds an important explanatory note:

Lastly, a little further on, Lamarche adds a final clinching quotation from 1QS 11:11:

Commenting on this passage, I observed that a better parallel than the texts cited by Lamarche is to be found in the famous epilogue to the prophecy of Second Isaiah: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts (מחשבותי) than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9), which is directly followed by the declaration concerning every word that goes forth from my mouth (דברי). This declaration harks back to the introduction to this prophet’s message, “the word of the Lord abides for ever” (Isa. 40:8), and forms a literary inclusion. “The whole of the prophet’s message,” I concluded, “is bracketed by these two statements concerning the word of God, which may fairly be said therefore to signify the divine plan Second Isaiah is anxious to promulgate, a plan which involves the superimposition of creation upon history.”
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Phillips questions whether 1QS 11:11 is a genuine parallel to John 1, arguing that “the contexts are entirely different. The text from the Community Rule comes from a section dealing with the iniquity of humankind, whilst the Prologue discusses the transcendence and immanence of the divine.” Yet he admits that 1QS 11:11 “provides a straightforward acknowledgment that God’s intention is behind everything that happens”
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—close enough to the meaning Lamarche and I find in John 1:3 to make it surprising that he refuses to admit the parallel.

The case for the relevance of 1QS 11:11 and of the other passages that Lamarche cites from the 
Community Rule
, especially the beginning of the section on the Two Spirits, 1QS 3:15, can now be reinforced by appealing to Carol Newsom’s brilliant discussion of this section and its allusions to the first chapter of Genesis. Introducing her discussion, she observes that the source of all is expressed in 1QS 3–4 not simply as “God” but as אל דעות, “God of knowledge.” “What endows the world with meaning is not the impulse of an acting/reacting deity but that set of structured relationships called מחשבות
כבודו, ‘His glorious plan.’ ”
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She goes on to point out, as I remarked in an earlier chapter, that “where Genesis 1 is concerned with creation, 1QS 3–4 is concerned with the מחשבה [i.e. the plan, literally thought, of God] that grounds creation.”
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