=1. In the beginning.= John begins the Gospel where Moses began the Law. The employment of and the reference to the language of the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis is unmistakable. In that beginning in which God created the heavens and the earth was the Word, and the Word was with God and was God and was the One through whom the act of creation was consummated. So in Prov., chap. 8, Wisdom personified is represented as with God in the creation and from the beginning (see especially verses 23-29). For parallel passages teaching the pre-existence of Christ, see John 8:58; 17:5; Phil. 2:5, 6; 1 John 1:1. In Rev. 3:14 he is described as “the beginning of the creation of God,” but this does not necessarily imply that he was a created Being. See notes there.--=Was the Word.= There are several Greek words meaning _word_; (1 and 2) ῥῆμα and ἔπος, word in the grammatical sense, _i. e._, that which is spoken; (3) μῦθος, word in the rhetorical sense, that which is delivered by words, the subject expressed; (4) ὄνομα, word in a technical sense, strictly a _name_, and only because words are names or appellations; (5) λόγος, word in the philosophical sense, the outward form by which the inward thought is expressed. The latter term is employed here. As the thoughts or experiences of the soul are completely hidden from us till they are uttered, so God is the Unknown and the Unknowable, save as he utters himself, discloses his nature to us, which he does chiefly if not solely through him who is for that reason called the Word, _i. e._, the utterance of God. The metaphor which underlies this phraseology is in part interpreted by the saying of Wordsworth that language is the incarnation of ideas. (2) In the Old Testament we have a partial employment of the same symbolism. In Moses’ account of the creation, God is represented as calling the various powers of nature into being by a _word_. “God said Light be! Light was!” (Gen. 1:3, see also 6, 9, 11, etc.) In the later Hebrew poetry this symbol is made more prominent in the distinct declaration that “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” (Ps. 33:6; comp. 107:20; Isaiah 55:10, 11; see also Heb. 11:3.) The same symbol, in a slightly different form, reappears in Prov., chap. 8, which is connected with that employed here by the language of certain of the apocryphal books, _e. g._, “I (Wisdom) came out of the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth as a cloud” (Ecclesiasticus 24:3). “She (Wisdom) is the breath of the power of God” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:25). (3) The same symbolism was employed as we have seen (Prel. Note above) in the mystical philosophy of Alexandria and of later Gnosticism, with which John was familiar, and of which, Ephesus, his city, was a centre, to represent an eon or emanation for the deity. That the Word here does not mean the Bible or the Gospel is evident both from the connection, since it cannot be said that the Bible became flesh (ver.