John 1:1

Jonathan Robie jonathan at texcel.no
Sat Jun 20 07:25:16 EDT 1998


At 01:15 PM 6/19/98 -0500, kmesserschmidt at canberra.com wrote:

>Second question, one I couldn't remember with the first post:
>EN ARCHE - does the word arche denote the absolute beginning
>of something, or is there something here that could render it as some 
>kind of beginning that happened after the inital creation of 
>space/time? i.e. the word was with God in the beginning of 
>everything, or the beginning of everything ELSE? Referring directly
>to ideas of the "creation" of Jesus somewhere in that verse.
 
The Greek certainly can mean the absolute beginning, and the same phrase
starts Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint: EN ARCH EPOIHSEN hO QEOS TON OURANON
KAI THN GHN. Grammatically, it *could* mean "in a beginning", and the same
people who argue for "in the beginning was a word" sometimes argue for "in
a beginning" as an interpretation of this verse.

I don't think the grammar prevents either interpretation, but I also don't
think it supports either interpretation. Again, please browse the archives
on John 1:1 to see how much has been written on this!

Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie		jwrobie at mindspring.com

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