John 1 - NIV First Century Study Bible
1:1 In the beginning. This is identical to the opening lines of Genesis in the Septuagint (the pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament). The reader is given a glimpse into the moments before the creation account (see second note on Ge 1:1). It was a common belief in the ancient Greek and Jewish world that divine Wisdom predated creation. The opening prologue of John may have been an early Christian hymn or liturgical prayer. This would explain the highly poetic nature of the text and why there are many grammatical and philosophical questions that scholars have argued about for centuries.
1:3 All things were made. Even though John was saying Jesus is the logos of God, that is not quite the same as saying that the incarnate person of Jesus made all things. John may have had in mind the more mysterious notion that divine Wisdom/logos, not the person of Jesus, created the world. Perhaps John intended to communicate that the pre-incarnate Jesus (whatever that may have been) is one and the same with divine logos, by which all things were made. In the first century, to connect Jesus with creation would have been radical and subversive.
1:4–13 The true light. Light and darkness were important symbols for the Dead Sea Scrolls community. They believed that the world was divided into the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness” and that in the approaching final battle, darkness would be defeated. The author’s emphasis on “true light” echoes themes found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
1:14 Word became flesh. This powerful line is the climactic point of John’s opening poem. “Flesh” (Greek sarx) was a crude term, alluding to the earthiness and grittiness of humanity. The flesh-spirit dualism of Gnosticism, in which flesh is evil and spirit is good, does not harmonize with the theological implications of John’s claim. Logos became flesh, the turning point of human history—an affirmation that God dwelled in the created order, in flesh itself, which was good. This was also the beginning of the church’s understanding of Jesus’ divinity. Yet Trinitarian doctrine, which developed later in the church, is not spelled out in these verses. The church eventually understood that the divine logos of God was the pre-incarnate person of Jesus. There was a progression from John’s theology to the Nicene Creed, which states that Jesus is “true God of true God.”
1:14 Made his dwelling. This literally meant to pitch a tent (Greek skenoo). John leaned heavily on the Old Testament notion that God dwelled, or tented, among his people (see note on Ex 40:34–35).
1:21 The Prophet. John the Baptist denied being Elijah and “the Prophet” (see notes on Dt 18:15; Mt 11:14).
1:24–26 John’s Baptism. John the Baptist appears to have been interested not in ritual purity but in recapitulating the crossings of the Red Sea and the Jordan, which were far more political and prophetic acts (see notes on Mt 3:6; Mk 1:3). He was on the shores of the Jordan River, inviting those who repented to enter the waters once again, as their ancestors had done, not in order to enter the promised land, but to enter into the kingdom of God and the rule of the coming Messiah. Typically baptism was a part of ritual cleansing in the mikveh (see note on Jn 3:3 and word study on Ac 2:38). But John’s baptism was something like a conversion rather than simply ritual purification.
1:29 The Lamb of God. John the Baptist may have been alluding to the image of the Passover lamb (see Ex 12 and notes). It’s also possible he was alluding to the apocalyptic lamb that was said to overcome evil in Jewish books like the Testament of Joseph and the Book of Enoch. However, the lamb “led . . . to the slaughter” in Isa 53:7 seems to powerfully fit the narrative of Jesus as both a deliverer and atoning sacrifice; perhaps John was making such an allusion. Bishop Melito of Sardis in the second century ad wrote that Jesus was “led forth as a lamb, sacrificed as a sheep, buried as a man.” (Quoted in Brown, John I–XII, 29:59.) Jesus was not just an apocalyptic figure; he was the Pascal mystery of God (see also Jn 19:14; 1Co 5:7; Heb 9:28; 1Pe 1:18–19; Rev 7:17).
1:35–51 Jesus calls the disciples. John’s Gospel reveals a more organic picture of Jesus’ calling of the disciples than that found in the other Gospels. Instead of a single encounter along the lake, the disciples have several encounters with Jesus.
1:46 Nazareth! Can anything good come from there? Nazareth was so small that it does not appear in Josephus’s detailed list of cities and villages in Galilee.
1:48 Fig tree. In rabbinic literature, sitting under a fig tree was a euphemism for studying the Torah (the Pentateuch). However, it’s unlikely that Jesus was alluding to a rabbinic metaphor that probably developed later. It’s far more likely Jesus was alluding to the Hebrew Scriptures. The fig tree was a symbol of God’s shalom (“peace”) and the Messianic age (see 1Ki 4:25; Isa 36:16; Mic 4:4; Zec 3:10).
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