New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John Vol. 1. William Barclay
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The Jews had a type of literature called The Wisdom Literature which was the concentrated wisdom of sages. It is not usually speculative and philosophical, but practical wisdom for the living and management of life. In the Old Testament, the great example of Wisdom Literature is the Book of Proverbs. In this book, there are certain passages which give a mysterious life-giving and eternal power to Wisdom (Sophia). In these passages Wisdom has been, as it were, personified, and is thought of as the eternal agent and co-worker of God. There are three main passages.
The first is Proverbs 3:13–26. Out of that passage we may specially note:
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy. The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew. (Proverbs 3:18–20)
We remember that Logos means word and also means reason. We have already seen how the Jews thought of the powerful and creative word of God. Here we see the other side beginning to emerge. Wisdom is God’s agent in enlightenment and in creation; and wisdom and reason are very much the same thing. We have seen how important Logos was in the sense of word; now we see it beginning to be important in the sense of wisdom or reason.
The second important passage is Proverbs 4:5–13. In it we may notice:
Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.
The word and wisdom are both seen as the light of life for all people. The two ideas are amalgamating with each other rapidly now.
The most important passage of all is Proverbs 8:1–9:2. In it we may specially note:
The Lord created me [Wisdom is speaking] at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth – when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always. (Proverbs 8:22–30)
When we read that passage, there is echo after echo of what John says of the word in the first chapter of his gospel. Wisdom had that eternal existence, that light-giving function, that creative power which John attributed to the word, the Logos, with which he identified Jesus Christ.
The development of this idea of wisdom did not stop here. Between the Old and the New Testament, this kind of writing called Wisdom Literature continued to be produced. It had so much concentrated wisdom in it and drew so much from the experience of the wise that it was a priceless guide for life. In particular, two very great books were written, which are included in the Apocrypha and which it will do anyone’s soul good to read.
(a) The first is called ‘The Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach’, or, as it is better known, Ecclesiasticus. It too makes much of this great conception of the creative and eternal wisdom of God.
The sand of the sea, the drops of rain,
and the days of eternity – who can count them?
The height of heaven, the breadth of the earth, t
he abyss, and wisdom – who can search them out?
Wisdom was created before all other things,
and prudent understanding from eternity.
(Ecclesiasticus 1:2–4)
I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,
and covered the earth like a mist.
I dwelt in the highest heavens,
and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.
Alone I compassed the vault of heaven,
and traversed the depths of the abyss.
(Ecclesiasticus 24:3–5)
Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me,
and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.
(Ecclesiasticus 24:9)
Here again we find wisdom as the eternal, creative power which was at God’s side in the days of creation and the beginning of time.
(b) Ecclesiasticus was written in Palestine about the year 100 BC; and at almost the same time an equally great book was written in Alexandria in Egypt, called The Wisdom of Solomon. In it there is the greatest of all pictures of wisdom. Wisdom is the treasure which may be used to become the friend of God (7:14). Wisdom is personified as the creator of all things (7:22). She is the breath of the power of God and a pure stream flowing from the Almighty (7:25). She can do all things, and she makes all things new (7:27).
But the writer does more than talk about wisdom; he equates wisdom and the word. To him, the two ideas are the same. He can talk of the wisdom of God and the word of God in the same sentence and with the same meaning. When he prays to God, his address is:
O God of my ancestors, and Lord of mercy, who have made all things by your word, and by your wisdom have formed humankind.
(Wisdom 9:2)
He can speak of the word almost as John was to speak:
For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed, a stern warrior carrying the sharp sword of your authentic command, and stood and filled all things with death, and touched the heaven while standing on the earth.
(Wisdom 18:14–16)
To the writer of the Book of Wisdom, wisdom was God’s eternal, creative, illuminating power; wisdom and the word were one and the same. It was wisdom and the word who were God’s instruments and agents in creation and who continually bring the will of God to the minds and hearts of men and women.
So when John was searching for a way in which he could commend Christianity, he found in his own faith and in the record of his own people the idea of the word, the ordinary word which is in itself not merely a sound but a dynamic thing, the word of God by which God created the world, the word of the Targums which expressed the very idea of the action of God, the wisdom of the Wisdom Literature which was the eternal creative and illuminating power of God. So John said: ‘If you wish to see that word of God, if you wish to see the creative power of God, if you wish to see that word which brought the world into existence and which gives light and life to everyone, look at Jesus Christ. In him the word of God came among you.’
The Greek Background
We began by seeing that John’s problem was not that of presenting Christianity to the Jewish world, but of presenting it to the Greek world. How then did this idea of the word fit into Greek thought? It was already there waiting to be used. In Greek thought, the idea of the word began way back about 560 BC, and, strangely enough, in Ephesus where the Fourth Gospel was written.
In 560 BC, there was an Ephesian philosopher called Heraclitus whose basic idea was that everything is in a state of flux. Everything was changing from day to day and from moment to moment. His famous illustration was that it was impossible to step twice into the same river. You step into a river; you step out; you step in again; but you do not step into the same river, for the water has flowed on and it is a different river. To Heraclitus, everything was like that, everything