Land and Bible

To hear the full podcast for these notes click here . In this episode we continue a discussion with Rivers of Eden interpreting the first verse of the Gospel of John. Today’s episode is called “… and the word was with God”, a Commentary on the Gospel of John 1:1b.   In keeping with the methodology described in the two previous podcasts on John 1:1, we look at how the phrase “with God” is used in the Gospel of John and in other biblical literature to determine what the author meant by the phrase.   I start by pointing out that even though John 1:1 is a favorite proof text for Trinitarians, there is no Trinity described in John 1:1. The word or title “God” in John 1:1, does not mean the Trinity. In fact, nowhere in John’s Gospel does the word “God” mean a Trinity. This is very strange for the book that is often appealed to as the main text as evidence that God is a Trinity. Strange. “God” in the Gospel of John is never a Trinity.   The discussion in this episode gets a b...

Outline notes for One God Report Podcast #18 To hear the full podcast click here . In the previous podcast, Rivers and I reviewed reasons for understanding the first phrase of John’s Gospel “In the beginning” as a reference to the new beginning that God is bringing about through Jesus the Messiah. 1. In this podcast we consider how to best understand what or who John meant in by the word “word” in the phrase: “In the beginning was the W/word ”. The Greek word for “word” is logos . We will often refer to the word, “word” using this Greek term, logos . 2. As with the phrase “in the beginning” the meaning of logos, “word” in John’s prologue is best understood and defined first and foremost by other uses of the same word in John’s Gospel. We shouldn’t ignore or dismiss how the author himself uses logos and go looking for its meaning in other extra-biblical literature.   Logos and in its various forms occur nearly 40 times in the Gospel of John, and in the vast majority of occu...

Notes for One God Report Podcast #17.   Exegesis of John 1, part 1 “In the beginning was…” Bill Schlegel with Rivers O Feden To hear the podcast click here .  As we begin an exegesis of the Prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18), in this podcast we give more evidence (see this previous podcast ) for why the Prologue should be understood as an introduction to the ministry of Jesus the Messiah, and not as a direct reference to the Genesis creation. The topics discussed in the podcast include, but are not limited to the following: 1.        The phrase “In the beginning” and the word “word” of John 1:1 are best interpreted by comparing them first and foremost with other uses in the Gospel of John, in other Johannine literature, and then in other New and Old Testament literature. "In the beginning" occurs other times in the New Testament, and over 30 times in the Old Testament, none of which refer to the Genesis creation. When this comparis...