Texts in Conversation
John describes the Word helping in creation, similar to Rabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah where creation is shaped by the Torah. Both describe God with a partner, Christian tradition identifying this as Jesus and Rabbinic tradition as the Torah.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
John 1:1
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. 6 A man came, sent from God, whose name was John.
Genesis Rabbah 1
Aggadah
Rabbinic
Rabbi Hoshaya the Great began: “I was with Him as an amon, a delight day after day…” (Proverbs 8:30) – amon means a child’s caretaker, amon means covered, amon means hidden, and some say amon means greatness. Amon means a child’s caretaker, as it says: “As a caretaker [omen] carries a nursing child” (Numbers 11:12). Amon means covered, as it says: “Those covered [ha’emunim] in scarlet…” (Lamentations 4:5). Amon means hidden, as it says: “He was omen Hadassa” (Esther 2:7). Amon means great, as it says: “Are you better than No Amon [which sits in the rivers]?” (Nahum 3:8), which we translate in Targum as: Are you better than the great city of Alexandria, which is located among the rivers? Another matter, amon means artisan [uman]. The Torah is saying: ‘I was the tool of craft of the Holy One blessed be He.’ The way of the world is that when a flesh-and-blood king builds a palace he does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather based on the knowledge of an artisan. And the artisan does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather, he has [plans on] sheets and tablets by which to ascertain how he should build its rooms, how he should build its doors. So too, the Holy One blessed be He looked in the Torah and created the world. The Torah says: “Bereshit God created” (Genesis 1:1), and reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: “The Lord made me at the beginning of [reshit] His way” (Proverbs 8:22).
Date: 500 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The hermeneutical move would be presumably similar to the one made in Bere'shit Rabbah, where we read: "The Holy Blessed One looked into the Torah, and created the world, as the Torah says, 'In the Beginning God created,' and 'Beginning' can mean nothing but Torah, just as it is said, 'H' begat me/made me/acquired me at the Beginning of his way' " (ed. Jehuda Theodor and Hanoch Albeck; Bere'shit Rabbah [Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965]). The difference in the role between the Logos and the Torah is of central importance: the Logos is an actual, personified agent, while for the Rabbis, Wisdom has been captured in a Book, and there is only one agent, but the hermeneutical move that lies behind this midrash and behind the opening verse of the Fourth Gospel is surely the same ..."
Boyarin, Daniel
The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John
(pp. 243-284) Cambridge University Press, 2001
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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