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The Logic of the Logos Hymn: A new View*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Ed. L. Miller
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Type
Short Studies
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1983 , pp. 552 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

[1] The literature on the Prologue of John is vast. At the risk of some arbitrariness we may note here a sampling of recent and general discussions which are not only important in their own right but, in varying degrees, reflect previous works and provide further bibliographical direction: Boismard, M. E., St. John's Prologue, tr. Carisbrooke Dominicans (London: Blackfriars, 1957)Google Scholar; Ernst, Haenchen, ‘Probleme des johanneischen “Prologs”’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 60 (1963), pp. 305 ff.Google Scholar; Raymond, Brown, The Gospel according to John: I–XII (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 1 ff.Google Scholar; Ernst, Käsemann, ‘The Structure and Purpose of the Prologue to John's Gospel’, in New Testament Questions of Today, tr. W. J. Montague (London: SCM Press, 1969), Ch. 6Google Scholar; Rudolf, Bultmann, The Gospel of John, tr. G. R. Beasley-Murray et al. (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1971), pp. 13 ff.Google Scholar; Sanders, Jack T., The New Testament Christological Hymns (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 20 ff. and Ch. 2Google Scholar; Barrett, C. K., ‘The Prologue of St. John's Gospel’, in New Testament Essays (London: SPCK, 1972), Ch. 3Google Scholar; Rudolf, Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, tr. Kevin Smith (New York: Herder, 1971–), I, pp. 221 ff.Google Scholar; Peder, Borgen, ‘Observations on the Targumic Character of the Prologue of John’, New Testament Studies, 17 (1970), pp. 288 ff.Google Scholar; Hamerton-Kelly, R. G., Pre-Existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 200 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mathias, Rissi, ‘Die Logoslieder im Prolog des vierten Evangeliums’, Theologische Zeitschrift, 31 (1975), pp. 321 ff.Google Scholar; Culpepper, R. Alan, ‘The Pivot of John's Prologue’, New Testament Studies, 27 (1979), pp. 1 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[2] I hope soon to publish a monograph on the subject.

[3] We leave out of account the chronological placing of II and III John and of John 21. These do not bear on the present issues.

[4] Our general view of the Prologue as composed separately from the Gospel proper and yet as being one with it both literarily and theologically, and as partly modelled after 1 John 1. 1–4, has much in common with the view expressed by Robinson, J. A. T., ‘The Relation of the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John’. New Testament Studies, 9 (1962–1963), pp. 120 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Generally, we resist certain recent proposals to dissect and dissolve the Fourth Gospel into sources, strata, redactions, dislocations, and influences, as being largely speculative, often radically divergent from one another, and introducing unnecessary complications. We agree with Oscar Cullmann that in regard to such proposals what is called for is restraint (cf. The Johannine Circle, tr. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), Ch. 1, passim). In any event, it appears that the dissecting and dissolving onslaught has not (at least not yet) carried the day against those scholars who have argued persuasively for the fundamental unity of the Johannine Gospel, most notably Ruckstuhl, E. in Die literarische Einheit des Johannesevangeliums (Freiburg in der Schweiz: Paulus, 1951).Google Scholar

[5] Note, for example, Bernard, J. H., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, ed. McNeile, A. H. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), I, pp. cxliv ff.Google Scholar; Bultmann, , The Gospel of John, pp. 19 ff.Google Scholar; Haenchen, , ‘Probleme des johanneischen “Prologs”’, pp. 305 ff.Google Scholar; Käsemann, , ‘The Structure and Purpose of the Prologue to John's Gospel’, pp. 138 ff.Google Scholar; Rudolf, Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, I, pp. 224 ff., and his earlier ‘Logos-Hymnus und johanneischer Prolog’, Biblische Zeitschrift, 1 (1957), pp. 69 ff.Google Scholar; Brown, , The Gospel according to John: I–XII, pp. 21 ff.Google Scholar; Sanders, , The New Testament Christological Hymns, pp. 20 ff.Google Scholar; Rissi, , ‘Die Logoslieder im Prolog des vierten Evangeliums’, pp. 324, 331. Of course one cannot help but be struck by the lack of unanimity in these attempts to identify the alleged and extended Logos hymn.Google Scholar

[6] For example, Culpepper, , ‘The Pivot of John's Prologue’, pp. 1 ff.Google Scholar, and Peder, Borgen, ‘Observations on the Targumic Character of the Prologue of John’, pp. 288 ff.Google Scholar

[7] For the most exhaustive treatment of this textual problem to date, see Kurt Aland, ‘Eine Untersuchung zu Joh. 1:3–4: Üer die Bedeutung eines Punktes’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 59 (1968), pp. 174 ff.Google Scholar An abbreviated version of this study appeared in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament, ed. Daniels, Boyd L. and Suggs, M. Jack (Salt Lake City: 1967), pp. 161 ff.Google Scholar See also Potterie, I. de la, ‘De Interpunctione et Interpretatione Versuum Joh. 1:3–4’, Verbum Domini, 33 (1955), pp. 193 ff.Google Scholar

[8] For the sake of brevity we have cited here as examples only one proponent of each of these interpretations. Cf. Augustine, , In loannis Evangelium, I, 16–17Google Scholar; Bultmann, , The Gospel of John, pp. 38 ff.Google Scholar; Boismard, , St. John's Prologue, pp. 16 ff.Google Scholar; Aland, , ‘Eine Untersuchung zu Joh. 1:3–4’, pp. 207 ff.Google Scholar

[9] Pollard, T. Evan, ‘Cosmology and the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel’, Vigiliae Christianae, 12 (1958), pp. 147 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[10] See the forays by Bruce, Vawter, ‘What Came to Be in Him Was Life (Jn. l:3b–4a)’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 25 (1963), pp. 401 ff.Google Scholar, and Frederic, Schlatter, ‘The Problem of Jn. 1:3b–4a’, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 34 (1972), pp. 54 ff.Google Scholar

[11] It is easy to appreciate the eventual intrusion of καί θєòς ήν ò λόγος (vs. 1c) as a gloss on the previous line and emphasizing (over against the ππός of that line) the unity of the λόγος and θєός and also ου¯τος η¯ν є`ν άρχη¯ πρòς τòν θєόν(vs. 2) as a gloss clarifying (over against a possible misunderstanding arising from vs. la–b) that it was already є`ν άρχη¯, rather than some later time, that ò λόγος η¯ν πρòς τòν θєόν.

[12] The terms ‘stanza’ or ‘Verse’ may seem more appropriate, but the movement or ‘turning’ of ideas in these lines suggests to me the word ‘strophe’.

[13] On this see Miller, Ed. L., ‘The Logos Was God’, Evangelical Quarterly, 53 (1981), pp. 73 ff.Google Scholar

[14] That the creation of the world is in view at least in vs. 3 would seem clear on independent grounds, but also because it fits our proposed logic of the passage. The same logic, however, excludes the possibility of finding allusions to Gen. 1 throughout vss. 1–5, as Boismard claims to find (St. John's Prologue, pp. 5 ff.).

[15] We would suggest that ‘in him was life’ is here simply a circumlocution for ‘he was life’.

[16] Lightfoot, R. H., St. John's Gospel: A Commentary with the Revised Version Text, ed. Evans, C. F. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 79.Google Scholar

[17] Aland, , ‘Eine Untersuchung zu Joh. 1:3–4’, p. 206.Google Scholar

[18] Aland, , ‘Eine Untersuchung zu Joh. 1:3–4’, p. 207.Google Scholar

[19] Aland, , ‘Eine Untersuchung zu Joh. 1:3–4’, p. 207.Google Scholar

[20] Theodor, Zahn, Das Evangelium des Johannes, fifth and sixth eds. (Leipzig: Mohr, 1921), p. 52.Google Scholar

[21] Howard, W. F. (with Gossip, A. J.), The Gospel according to St. John (New York: Abingdon, 1952), p. 465.Google Scholar

[22] Blass, F. and Debrunner, A., A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, tr. and rev. Robert W. Funk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), sec. 333.Google Scholar

[23] Contra, for example, W. H. Raney who labels the Prologue ‘prose poetry’, in common with additional extended sections of the Fourth Gospel (The Relation of the Fourth Gospel to the Christian Cultus (Giessen: Topelmann, 1933)Google Scholar), and also C. K. Barrett who describes the whole Prologue as ‘rhythmical prose’ (The Gospel according to St. John, second ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), p. 150).Google Scholar

[24] Pliny, Epistola, X, 96, 7.