 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
If you were like me you grew up being taught that the Logos in the prologue of John's Gospel was Jesus. It seemed so simple; that is until I began serious study into the Bible and the Hellenistic literature within it which I found out was passed off as the religion of Jesus. Jesus is a Jew and did not have much in common with Athens or Rome. It is a shame to live your whole life before God and die and find out that you have lived as an idolator and blasphemer because you did not "rightly divide" the Bible you were given.
There are many ways to understand the concept of the "Logos" and how the ancients and the writer of the Gospel of John understood it and for our inquiry in this series of articles it is pertinent for us to understand if Jesus is to be understood as the LITERAL "Logos" and part of God or only as a picture of the "Logos" as described by his followers as they understood him to be the best that humanity had to offer because of his life and teachings and therefore was to be understood as the "Logos" in the form of an allegory only. The difference is major; in fact the understanding of the "Logos" in a literal senses as applied to Jesus renders you an idolator and blasphemer. Be not mistaken. Christianity teaches Jesus as God and the Literal Logos!
Answer for yourself: Has Gentile Christianity, as expressed today, forgotten the true meaning of the "Logos" and applied incorrect concepts to Jesus and mistakenly understood him and taught him to billions as the "Literal" Logos in error" and rendered such believers as idolators?
The answer to the above question is "yes." This is what I will attempt to prove to you in these articles. Sadly Gentile Christianity preaches what it does not know or understand. It is way past time to learn the truth about the "Logos" and the concepts connected with it as used in the Gospel of John. It is to this task we now must turn and it my hope you find this challenging set of articles both beneficial and food for your repentance since being taught incorrectly by Gentile Christianity. There is nothing we can do for our loved ones who perished and met God with the sin of idolatry in their lives because of this erroneous teaching but if you are reading these articles there is something you can do about it; thus the need for ministries like Bet Emet Ministries who have devoted themselves to serious study of our inherited Christian faith.
The prologue to the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, which begins with the unforgettable line "In the beginning was the Word," is instinctively recognized by many readers as one of the most beautiful passages in all the sacred texts of humanity. This writing describes the nature of the "Word" as a cosmic forming principle, its mission, and the manifestation of the Word in the figure of Jesus, the avatar of the Christian faith. Unfortunately, despite the beauty and profoundness of the Prologue, most modern readers have not been able to unlock its inner meaning, for they have never been given the necessary key.
Central to the Prologue is the concept of "Word," a very inadequate rendering of the original Greek term "Logos", one of the most important concepts of the Hellenistic world. Notice I did not say this was an important concept to the Jewish world but the Greek world. Let us not forget that Jesus is a Jew and not a Greek. In ancient Greek, Logos has many meanings, but none of them is truly to be understood as "Word," which is based on a translation of a translation. So the writer of the Gospel of John is really not saying the "Logos" is "the Word" but sadly this is the translation we have been given. Understand that often Greek and English are very poor languages for translation of concepts which find their origin in prior languages [such as Hebrew or Egyptian] which express such concepts in a much better way. When the Greek NewTestament was translated into Latin, "Logos" became "Verbum"; and when the English King James translation was made from the Latin version, "Verbum" became "Word," twice removed from the original text.
Since "Logos" has so many meanings in ancient Greek, ranging from the scientific to the mystical, it is best left untranslated, as its nuances resound on many levels. Indeed, as E. R. Goodenough once noted, any student of Greek religion and cosmology "must first of all wipe that meaning ["Word"] from his mind and use the untranslated term "Logos" as he would use a new term in chemistry."
Nothing more true could ever be said as every Christian needs to likewise wipe from his mind all prior concepts he has heard or been taught concering the "Logos" as he has not been taught correctly. Among its many meanings, "Logos" designates the power of "reason," the pattern or order of things, the principle of relationship, and an organized articulation of something. In general, it has the following meanings:
"Logos" has the same meaning as both the Latin words "ratio" and "oratio". "Ratio" is the principle of Reason in its many senses, yet it is also ratio in a mathematical sense, as in continued geometrical proportion. "Oratio" is a discourse, an articulation, a setting forth of the "ratio" or nature of things. "Logos", as a principle, is the natural order of things, the principle of reason, relation, and harmony, which exists both within the natural fabric of the universe and within the human mind. Now understand the prior sentence in "red" is a very, very important concept in understanding the use of "logos" in the Gospel of John as we will see shortly. The key words in the above definition is "reason," "relationship," and "harmony" both in the natural world and within the human mind (the soul which contains the will and emotions of an individual). It is the faculty whereby one thing is related to another through "analogy", or the power of "proportional insight." (Analogia in Greek refers to continued geometrical proportion).Of no less importance in the Greek understanding of the "logos" is mystical and cosmological thought, including early Christian thought, the idea of The "Logos" in a cosmic sense encompassed all of these meanings and refers to the underlying Order of the Universe, the blueprint on which all creation is based.
If we are to appreciate the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel and other Greek mystical writings, all of these meanings must be simultaneously held in mind.