John 1:1

content/bible_journal/_template.txt

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-title = "2 Chronicles $1:$2–$3"
+title = "John $1:$2–$3"
 date = "{}"
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-### [Read the passage.](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/2Chronicles$1.$2-$3)
+### [Read the passage.](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/John$1.$2-$3)

content/bible_journal/john/1:1.md

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+title = "John 1:1"
+date = "2025-10-27"
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+
+### [Read the passage.](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/John1.1)
+
+The Gospel of John wastes no time with introductions or purpose statments, but gets right to the heart of theology.
+Perhaps surprisingly, he links the Jewish religion with ancient Greek philosophy.
+The "Word", or "_Logos_" (Λόγος) was what the philosophers settled on calling the fundamental underpinnings of existence.
+Some had thought it was fire or water, but later thinkers recognized that materials could not account for the immaterial things we experience.
+John brings this thinking around to the truth by equating the _Logos_ with the eternal God.
+However, he also says "the Word was with God", which implies a distinction between them.
+Still, the repeated echo of [Genesis 1:1](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Genesis1.1), "in the beginning", tells us that the Word is eternal, having existed from the very beginning.
+
+Though the new Arians like Jehovah's Witnesses will try to argue that John 1:1 should be translated with an indefinite article, saying "the Word was a god", this argument tries to use a rule of Greek grammar while ignoring a more important one.
+The idea is that Greek doesn't have a word for "a" or "an". Either there's a definite article, like "the", or there isn't.
+John 1:1 has "the" in "the Word was with [the] God", but not in "the Word was God".
+First century Greek also was only capital letters, so there isn't the hint of the difference between "God" and "god" as in English.
+But first century Greek doesn't rely on word order to indicate meaning the way it does in English.
+("Dog bites man" is a very different headline from "Man bites dog".)
+Instead, word order is used to indicate emphasis, and when the predicate of a sentence or phrase is put first, the definite article can be implied.
+This is what happens in John 1:1.
+(The [Interlinear Bible](https://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/1-1.htm) shows the word order in the original Greek.)
+The second occurrence of "God" is put at the beginning of the phrase, making it more obvious and more clear that John intends to say that the Word is the very same God that the Word was with.
+
+* * *
+
+Singular in essence, triple in personhood, You are the only God, without beginning or end. Show us how to love You as You have loved each Other.