Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

The gospel text that does this most urgently is the beginning of the Fourth Gospel, its so-called Prologue. That text speaks simply of the logos, the Word in which God has fully expressed the divine self—and the Johannine Prologue is referring to Jesus Christ. Nearly everything is said of this logos that was said also of preexistent Wisdom in Judaism:

The logos was present with God at the beginning, as a mediator of creation when the world was made. The logos came to Israel as to its own property, its inheritance. It took up its dwelling there—literally, “pitched its tent.” It is absolutely clear that all this is presented according to the same model in which creation’s Wisdom speaks of itself in Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24.

But there are three differences: Wisdom, in Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24, speaks in the first person, while John 1 tells its story in a hymnic third person until, beginning in verse 14, the hymn shifts to the confessional “we” of the community. The second difference is that in contrast to creation’s Wisdom, the logos is not made welcome by all Israel. “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (John 1:11). The third and decisive difference is that, in contrast to creation’s Wisdom, it is not said of the logos that it was created. The logos was with God “in the beginning.” Everything was created through the logos, but the logos was not created.

Passages about John the Baptizer have been inserted into the logos hymn in the Fourth Gospel. If we omit them, the text reads:

In the beginning was the

logos,

and the

logos

was with God,

and the

logos

was God.

It was in the beginning with God.

Everything came into being through him,

and without him not one thing came to be

that has come to be.

He was the life in it [i.e., what has come to be],

and the life was the light of humanity.

And the light shone in the darkness,

but the darkness did not comprehend it. […]

It was the true light

that enlightens every human being—

[the light] that comes into the world.

He was in the world,

and the world came into being through him,

but the world did not recognize him.

He came to what was his own,

but his own did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him

he gave power to become children of God,

those who believe in his Name,

who have been begotten not of blood [of parents]

and not of the will of the flesh

and not of the will of a man,

but of God.

And the

logos

became flesh

and took up its dwelling among us,

and we have seen his glory,

the glory of the only-begotten of the Father,

full of grace and truth. […]

For of his fullness we have all received,

grace following upon grace.

For the Law

was given through Moses,

grace and truth

have come through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.

The only-begotten, who is God

and rests in the bosom of the Father,

he has borne witness. (John 1:1-18)

¹⁰

This speaks explicitly of Jesus’ divinity: “The logos was God” (1:1; cf. 1:18), but this divine predicate is embedded in an idea that at the time was deeply rooted in Judaism, that of Wisdom’s preexistence. Those who say that all this would have been impossible in Jewish-Christian communities have to contend with these texts, and they cannot argue that such statements must be placed very late.

A Song of the Kyrios

Clearly against such a position is the so-called hymn in Philippians 2:6-11, in which the Jewish pattern of exaltation, that is, the eschatological view, and preexistence-Christology, the protological view, are combined. Thus the world of ideas behind the Philippians hymn is also entirely Jewish and feeds on the Old Testament.

The letter to the Philippians was probably written around the year 55 CE, but the hymn it quotes is still older. Between the Philippians hymn and the death of Jesus lay perhaps twenty years. In this hymn Christ is not called God, but he is called kyrios. The whole hymn points toward that confession:

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)

Here Jesus is clearly on the same level with God. How so? The last part of the hymn clearly alludes to a text from Isaiah 45:23: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” In Isaiah it is God who speaks; it is before God that one day every knee shall bend. When the hymn alludes to this statement from Isaiah, Jesus is set in place of God, but in the sense that when every knee bends before Jesus, then God the Father is thereby glorified.