[CatherineTorpey]

Hello Bible in the Middlers!

Our Rev. Natalie Perkins is preaching tomorrow on “Into the Unknown.” Her text is John 1:1-9.

The gospel according to John is unique among the four gospel accounts. It is much more abstract and theological in the way it talks about the meaning of Jesus’ life and ministry than the other three gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke).

These opening verses are marvelous and powerful examples of the way John talks about Jesus. If it seems to echo Genesis 1, you are right – this was apparently quite intentional on the part of the author of John.

A couple of short notes about the Greek:

beginning = arche has a sense of both “beginning” and also “chief”, “head”, “top” (it is related to the words arch, archbishop, monarch, architecture, etc)

Word = Logos which has the sense not only of “word,” but “reason” and “intelligence.” (related to our words logic, theology, technology, etc)

God = theos (theology, theism, etc)

all things were made = the word “made” here is (in my non-expert opinion) a questionable translation, as the Greek “egeneto” is a passive construction and means “came into being”. It’s the same construction which is translated elsewhere as “And so it came to pass…”. From the word “egeneto” we get our English words generate, generation, genetics, gene, engineer

That’s all from me — these verses are jam packed with meaning — can’t wait to discuss them with you!

Blessings,
Catherine

[CatherineTorpey]

There were lots of great notes in chat from today’s Bible in the Middle. Here are resources that were put in chat:

1) We read from the translation of the New Testament by David Bentley Hart. His translation is intended to help the English speaker understand the subtleties of the Greek. He himself tends toward a universalist theology and tends to believe that the fundamental message of the Bible is universalist, and so his translation tends to highlight that.

2) Someone recommended “Physics Girl” on YouTube as we were talking about the cosmos.

3) Marty often reads us our texts from the Bible translation called “The Message” by Eugene Peterson. It’s a style of translation called “dynamic translation,” which is where the translator is not worried about matching word for word, but to take the MEANING, and convey that.

4) As we talked about the word “Cosmos,” I put this note in the chat:
What we translate as “world” in the NT is either “oikoumene” which comes from the word “oikos” which means household, and it was used to refer to the known world (like the Roman Empire – the world we operate in). Another word translated to English as “world” is the word “aion” from which we get the word “eons” – it means literally “the ages”. Today’s word for “world”(in John 1) is “cosmos,” which has a sense of an ordered universe, but sometimes also refers to “worldliness” — it’s where we get the word “cosmetics”.

5) Jamie Kaufman pointed out:
Weren’t there at one time, theories that this was a Gospel for Essenes – Those who cloistered themselves away from “the world?” Also, Gnosticism may have trickled in, separating out those with the special “knowledge?”

6) Maeve McBride pointed out:
There’s a nice version of this scripture in A New New Testament, edited by Hal Taussig
7) Barbara made mention of Bart Ehrmann. He is a biblical scholar of the highest caliber. He was a Christian and is now an atheist, but he still has a loving and appreciative stance toward the Bible and Christians. For him, studying the Bible in a scholarly way rocked his fundamentalist upbringing (as it will do!).

8) Marty read a beautiful quotation from Rachel Held Evans, which he has put elsewhere in this portal.

9) Someone recommended the YouTube channel: “The Fall of Civilizations”

10) Someone brought up Karen Armstrong’s book The Battle For God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_for_God

11) Linda B put this link in chat for Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New testament scholar. The link is to the interview where the person keeps trying to convince her to be SAVED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7FaIyDUk34

12) I mentioned the YouTube channel of Henry Abramson, Jewish scholar addressing himself to Jews, but lots of great information for all of us (Jewish or not) about Biblical times https://www.youtube.com/user/hillelabramson

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