Clyde's presentation and notes are intended to be guides toward a different, but complementary, exegesis of John. The sound explanations of this passage previously offered by a study of Greek grammar and of the oft used literary device of personification sufficiently demonstrate that the preexistence or God-ness of Christ is not John's message. Our proposal offers additional evidence demonstrating that same conclusion.

A recent and welcome trend in biblical studies has been the "Whole Bible Approach" or "Canonical Approach" toward understanding Scripture. "Canonical Criticism," as it is called by scholars, sees the Bible as connective and complementary, not divisive and disjunctive. The end product of canonization, the whole Bible, needs to be understood as a whole without the artificial labels of "Old" and "New" applied. The very shape of the canon (meaning "rule, measuring line"; i.e., the authoritative books that God inspired his servants to include) is itself viewed as presenting a consistent, cohesive message: One God, One Way, One Plan being worked out in various ways within various cultures from Genesis to Revelation. The canonical approach (CA), pioneered by the scholar Brevard Childs, doesn't accept the popular notion that the Bible is simply a disparate collection of history and stories frequently unconnected or at odds with each other. Rather, the CA seriously means that the canon has authority, is normative, and is the product of the same inspiration upon its editors and assemblers as upon the prime authors of the books themselves. This means that the Bible is or should be the rule of faith and practice. Further it means that the content of the Bible is not to be found somewherebehind the text, butin the text.

This approach relates to our study of John 1:1-14. The canonical approach takes the Hebrew Scriptures seriously. Historically, Christianity confronted first-century Judaism through the Greek form of the Jewish scriptures, and thus the NT is stamped indelibly by the Septuagint. Yet the theological issue of how Christians relate to the Jewish scriptures is not a Greek enterprise. One of the main reasons the Christian church included the Hebrew text of the OT rather than the Greek form was its theological concern to preserve this common textual bond. NT writers may have written in Greek, but their theological thought world was Hebraic. They were Jews writing to, for the most part, other Jews, or a mixed audience of both Jews and Gentiles. Their writings were informed by the only Scripture available to them, the OT. The NT continues the time-conditioned revelation of the Holy One of Israel. Much of the NT is simply quotes or allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures. The NT continues with new and greater works of God, long predicted and long awaited: The Christ Event. The OT is not simply a foil for the NT allowing Christians to pick it over, looking for the fresh among a largely wilted bowl of lettuce. As Childs warns, "As the history of exegesis eloquently demonstrates, a Christian church without the Old Testament is in constant

danger of turning the faith into various forms of Gnostic, mystic, or romantic speculation." Unfortunately, this is the case with popular presentations of John 1:1-14.

In this presentation we suggest John's presentation of God, the Word, and of Christ is best understood in the context of his theological worldview: the Hebrew Bible.

(For further study on the CA, see The Flowering of Old Testament Theology, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1992, pp. 321-345; or any of the numerous books by Brevard S. Childs. See also a thorough article on the CA by Dr. Charles V. Dorothy, August 1989 ACD Newsletter; write for a free copy.)

without accepting that Jesus Christ preexisted his human birth. Although we will draw the conclusion and submit there is but one God and Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, our hope in this split presentation is to suggest an alternative explanation with very little if any change in the traditional translation.

Our New Testament texts of the Gospel of John come down to us in Greek, while the thought world of John was Hebraic. In fact, Professor Marvin Wilson writes:

"In this chapter we have emphasized the importance of understanding the Bible through Hebrew eyes. The writers are Hebrew, the culture is Hebrew, the religion is Hebrew, and the concepts are Hebrew."1

Professor Wilson states it well. The cradle from which the gospel (good news) of God through Jesus Christ sprang was the bedrock of the Hebrew Bible. The apostle John was a Hebrew, and our purpose is to go behind the Greek and see John 1: 1-14 through Hebrew eyes.

We ran our paper by Professor George W. Buchanan, who speaks and writes Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. His comments sprinkled throughout the paper were most encouraging, and his final comment to the entire paper was that "it seems reasonable."

The Apostle John's thought world was Hebraic, yet we have his Gospel as copies of copies in Greek. It makes little difference if John penned his Gospel in Greek or oversaw a Greek scribe in the transliteration of his Hebraic thought world into Greek. The Torah, Prophets, and Writings were the cradle from which the gospel [good news] of God was brought into the world.

We suggest that in John 1: 1-2 the apostle John (1) legally and (2) figuratively places Jesus Christ in the beginning-much in the same way that John in Rev. 13:8 legally and figuratively places the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. In God's salvation history Jesus Christ the Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world at the founding of the world. This was in the plan of God from the beginning. This is typical Jewish Midrash commentary, using figurative or allegorical language, pointing toward a fact, a reality.

The Talmud teaches that the name of the Messiah was one of the seven things that were created before the world was created. This is a Midrash on Psalm 72:17; 93:3. The essence of this is said best as "calling things that are not as though they were."2

The other six things in addition to (1) the name of the Messiah that were created before the world was created were (2) the Torah, (3) repentance, (4) the Garden of Eden, (5) Gey-Hinnom, (6) the throne of glory, and (7) the Temple. It would not be strange at all in Hebraic thinking for John to place the Lamb of God as though he were slain from the foundation of the world.

It would be typical Jewish Midrash for John to place the Messiah as the Word of God's eternal light and life in the beginning. The believers of John's day from their Hebrew worldview would have recognized John's rhetoric in 1:1-2 as a figurative Midrash. The other six things figuratively created before the world was created may be pointing to the fact that whatever was in God's plan was as good as done, even if it had yet to come to pass in the course of time.

In Hebrew thought, things like (1) calling things that are not as though they were, (2) John's teaching of the Lamb of God slain from the foundation, or (3) the Messiah being the Word of God's eterna1light and life in the beginning would never have been taken as literal by the believers in the Hebrew worldview of John's day.

The Greek Church fathers' Hellei1istic worldview, while ignorant of the Hebrew worldview, took literally what John was presenting as figurative, to bring the Word of light and life to the conclusion of the Word made flesh in John 1: 14. Can you imagine the Christology the Hellenistic Church fathers would have come up with had they taken "Jesus Christ as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world" literally?

A Midrash is a commentary that can have a mixture of (1) literal, (2) allegorical, and (3) figurative language, and even the esoteric mysteries. If your eye offends you pluck it out. Or if your hand offends you cut it off. Does this sound familiar? Do we take it literally, or is it figurative? I think we get the point. Jesus was using shocking figurative language that pointed to the reality of putting sin out of people's lives. What then in John 1: 1-14 is literal, and what is allegorical, to be taken figuratively?