Proverbs 8:30

Hebrew Bible

22 The Lord created me as the beginning of his works, before his deeds of long ago. 23 From eternity I have been fashioned, from the beginning, from before the world existed. 24 When there were no deep oceans I was born, when there were no springs overflowing with water; 25 before the mountains were set in place—before the hills—I was born, 26 before he made the earth and its fields, or the top soil of the world. 27 When he established the heavens, I was there; when he marked out the horizon over the face of the deep, 28 when he established the clouds above, when he secured the fountains of the deep, 29 when he gave the sea his decree that the waters should not pass over his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him as a master craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, rejoicing before him at all times, 31 rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and delighting in its people.

John 1:3

New Testament

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. 2 The Word was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. 5 And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it.

 Notes and References

"... the Logos of the Prologue like the theological Logos in general, in accord with the view of Burrus cited above - is the product of a scriptural reading of Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8 together. This reading will bear out my conclusion that nothing in Logos theology as a doctrine of God indicates or even implies a particularly Christian as opposed to generally Jewish, including Christian, kerygma. 'The dialogical play of scriptural interpretation' to which Burrus refers is acted out on the stage of Jewish traditional hermeneutics, on which non-Jesus Jews, Jesus Jews, and those exotic Jews/Christians that we call Gnostics all had a part in the play ... In order to see this, however, we must pay attention to the formal characteristics of midrash as a mode of reading Scripture. One of the most character istic forms of midrash is a homily on a pericope, or extract from the Pentateuch that invokes, expliitly or implicitly, texts from either the Prophets or the Hagiographa (specifically, very frequently Psalms, Song of Songs, or Wisdom literature) as the intertextual framework of ideas and language that is used to interpret and expand the Pentateuchal text being preached.36 This hermeneutical practice is founded on a theological notion of the oneness of Scripture as a self-interpreting text, especially on the notion that the latter books are a form of interpretation of the Five Books of Moses. That is, it is a scriptural, indeed, an interscriptural practice. Gaps are not filled with philosophical ideas but with allusions to or citations of other texts. The first five verses of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel fit this form nearly perfectly. The verses being preached are the opening verses of Genesis, and the text that lies in the background as hermeneutic intertext is Proverbs 8:22-31 ..."

Boyarin, Daniel Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (pp. 94-96) University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007

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