according to Moxnes, is not only geographical but also social, cultural, and ideological (ibid., 4).
34. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 21.
35. Ibid., 22.
36. Ibid., 26.
37. Cahill, “The Johannine Logos as Center.”
38. Stendahl, Energy for Life, 28.
39. Mogensen, Således elskede Gud verden, 51–52; cf. Stendahl, Energy for Life, 28: “The life of faith is the eternal life, it is a life called eternal since it is in communion and continuity with the eternal One. To John ‘eternal’ does not refer to the quantity of time, but to the quality of life (cf. 5:24).”
40. Cf. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel; and MacRae, “The Fourth Gospel and Religionsgeschichte.” Other scholars think that the Gospel has a sectarian character. According to Meeks (“The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism”) the Gospel reflects a docetic tendency in Christology and ecclesiology.
41. See also Vellanickal, “The Gospel of John in the Indian Context,” 149: “John’s language has a distinctive and strongly universalistic character. This is particularly evident in his practice of employing words which have a double—Jewish and Hellenist—background. John’s ideas and terminology may have developed within the Palestine heterodox Judaism under the influence of pressing Hellenism. But the very choice of such heterodox Judaistic language shows that John is deliberatively moving towards a wider world which seems approachable to him only through the kind of ‘open-ended’ language we find in John.”
42. Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, 189.
43. Ibid., 190.
44. Ibid., 196.
45. Mogensen, “Symboler og symboldidaktik,” 247.*
46. To be noticed is the parallel of the Areopagus speech in Acts 17:17–34. The Athenians are described as being very religious people (17:22) and it is said that “they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him” (17:27); see also Nissen, New Testament and Mission, 61–65.
47. Mogensen, Således elskede Gud verden, 120.
48. Bjerg, Øjnenes faste, 124.
3
The Word
Historical Perspectives
The Structure of the Prologue
The Prologue sets the tone for the rest of the Gospel.49 It is the conceptual center from which all other dimensions radiate.50 From this center light is thrown on other parts of the book and on all its important issues. These include an understanding of both the human quest for the meaning of life and the relation between the universal and the particular elements in Christianity. The relation between the universal and the specific Christian elements is crucial to understanding the structure of the Prologue. This text has a twofold character: on the one hand its structure is concentric; on the other it reflects a progress from the universal to the specific Christian. Both these aspects have relevance for contemporary interpretations of the Gospel.
The first approach may be characterized as literary; it reflects a spacious understanding. The structure of the Prologue is concentric, as is seen from the following scheme:
A. The Word was with God (vv.1–2)
B. All things were made through the Word (v. 3)
C. The Word was life and light for human beings (vv. 4–5)
D. John witnessed to the light (vv. 6–8)
E. The true light came to the world (vv. 9–10)
F. He came to his own (people)—they received him not (v.11)
F. Whoever received him . . . he gave power to become children of God (vv.12–13)
E. The Word was made flesh (v. 14)
D. John witnessed to the Word, who was before him (v. 15)
C. From his fullness we have received grace (v.16)
B. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (v. 17)
A. The only Begotten Son—himself God—has interpreted God for us (v. 18).
In this structure a special emphasis is placed on the beginning (A) and the end (A), which correspond to each other, with the center at F-F, where it is underlined that those who have received Jesus have become God’s children (vv.12–13). The Prologue is about the Word, but in the last two verses it is clarified that Christ is the only Begotten Son, himself God. In this way the Prologue describes a movement from God to God with the incarnation of the Word as a turning-point. The aim is that all those who receive the Word become part of this divine movement.51 According to this understanding the main emphasis is on soteriology, the understanding of salvation.
The structure reflects John’s understanding of God. In a number of passages God is presented as the ground of all being and the source of all life (cf. the paragraph “Witness” in Part Two). In this sense God is greater than anything else.52 This observation is relevant to how we nowadays can be engaged in a dialogue of religions, since the transcendence of God is underlined by other religions than Christianity, e.g., Islam. But the Gospel of John does not stop there of course. The book not only says that the Son is subordinated to the Father, but it also insists on the unity between Father and Son. And the crucial point in the last verse of the Prologue is that the Father has revealed himself in the Son. This may be interpreted as a critical concern for other religions, including Islam.
The second approach is the traditional historical-critical analysis, which is based on a temporal conception: a chronological axis, where v. 1 and v. 18 constitute the frame, and the climax is v. 14. The emphasis here is on Christology:
v.1 v. 14 v.18
According to this understanding the Prologue reflects a course or a progress. It has two major parts and a transitional passage. In the first half of the Prologue John uses general terms like Logos, God, all things, life, light, darkness, world etc. In the second half
