THE PROLOGUE
OUTLINE
25
IN
F 9.
True light cometh into the world
(erchomenon).
G 10,11. Received not (paralambano).
G 12,13. Received (lambano).
F 14.
The Word made flesh dwelt among us
(eskenosen).
E 15.
JOHN. Witness (martureo).
D 16.
Out of His fulness (ek).
C 17.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (egeneto dia).
B 18.
No man hath seen God at any time.
A 18.
c GOD. God only begotten (The Word was God).
b BOSOM. The bosom of the Father (With God).
a DECLARED. He hath declared Him (The Word).
The reader is asked to note the correspondences in this outline. We
have already drawn attention to the balancing members at the
beginning and end. Passing to verse 3, we see that it corresponds with
verse 17, the two passages revealing Christ as Creator both in nature
and in the realm of grace. The words egeneto dia, `came to be
through', are used in each case. In the members marked E E we have a
double reference to the witness of John the Baptist, while erchomen,
`coming', verse 9, is echoed by eskenosen, `dwell' or `tabernacle', in
verse 14. The central passages revolve around the thought of
reception.
Having sketched out the conditions under which John wrote his
Gospel, and having given in outline the structure of the prologue and
of the Gospel as a whole, we are now ready to undertake the joyful
task of opening up some of the treasures of wisdom, and grace, and
glory, that are to be found in what is perhaps the last book in the Holy
Scriptures.
`In the Beginning was the Word' (1:1)
Within the ambit of human experience, two conditions are
inseparable from existence and action - the conditions of time and
space. It is true that in a certain sense `thought' is free from the
conditions of space, for thought cannot be regarded as occupying so
many cubic inches, but, on the other hand, there can be no thought