John and Jeremiah’s Scribe
Afterwards she appeared on earth and lived with humankind. Baruch 3:37 NRSV
She – It’s likely that you’ve never read Baruch (sometimes referred to as 1 Baruch). It’s a book in the Catholic and Greek orthodox Apocrypha, termed deuterocanonical, that is, considered canonical books of the Old Testament by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Assyrian, and others but not by Protestant denominations. Named for the scribe of Jeremiah, the extant copies are in Greek but reveal Semitic structure. Scholarship dates the origin between 300 BCE and 100 CE, certainly before the development of Christianity. It is found in the LXX.
Why do we even care about this book? If we’ve left traditional Christianity in its Catholic or Protestant versions and we’ve moved toward a Hebraic understanding of Scripture, what difference does an extra book that may or may not be canonical make to us?
Consider this verse. The topic is a personification and characterization of Wisdom. As you know, ḥokmâ in Proverbs 8 is described in terms of a female divine figure. Baruch follows this lead, developing a midrashic view of “her” role, not just at the beginning as suggested in Proverbs, but in the continuing interaction with men. Wisdom appeared on earth and lived with us.
Hopefully your theological intuition just took a jolt. John’s Prologue describes another personification that appeared on earth and lived with men. John calls this personification “the Word.” Daniel Boyarin draws some important connections:
“. . . the Logos of the Prologue . . . is a 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.”[1]
He shows that the text behind John’s Prologue is Genesis 1 (which we already knew) seen through a midrash based on Proverbs 8. In other words, in the Jewish world, the “Word” is “Wisdom.” There is good evidence for this view. “ . . . [the] Palestinian Targum to this verse, which translates ‘In the beginning’ by ‘With Wisdom God created,’ clearly also alluding to the Proverbs passage.”[2]
“ . . . the famous Latin version of John 8:25, so beautifully read by Augustine as ‘Your Word, the Beginning who also speaks to us,’ once again reading ‘Beginning’ twice. As Augustine paraphrases this tradition: ‘Wisdom is “the Beginning”: and it is in that Beginning that You made heaven and earth.’ For Augustine, as well, it was clear that Word and Wisdom were synonymous parallels.”[3]
“ . . . a pre-Christian world of ideas in which Wisdom was personified and characterized in ways that are very similar to the Logos of Logos theology. They thus offer evidence that the latter is not specifically or exclusively Christian product, but a common ‘Jewish’ theologoumenon, or theological conception, which was later identified with the Christ.”[4]
“In this interpretation, the opening proem of the Prologue is a shared or Koine ‘Jewish’ nonchristological midrashic expansion of Genesis 1:1-5 along the lines of Logos/Memra theology, followed by a Christological (by which I mean only an identification of the Logos with the specific figure of Jesus, the Christ) interpretation and expansion of this inherited midrash.”[5]
Baruch reflects a Jewish idea and John uses the same Jewish idea to introduce his story of the Messiah.
Now we see why we should have read Baruch long ago. The connection between Genesis, Proverbs, Baruch, and John makes it clear that there is no Christian Trinitarian development going on in the Prologue. John is providing his reader with a midrash on a midrash. The Prologue isn’t about a Second Person of the Trinity. It’s about Proverbs 8 restructured to look like Genesis 1. And Jews in the first century knew this. In fact, so did some of the early Church fathers. But by the second century Jewish exegesis was verboten and John became a Christian.
Topical Index: Prologue, Wisdom, Proverbs 8, wisdom, ḥokmâ, John 1, Baruch 3:37
[1] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the Partition of Judeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 95.
[2] Ibid., pp. 96-97.
[3] Ibid., p. 97.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
And thus it is we have the reasonable evidence that those who follow Yeshua of Nazareth’s ministry and teaching and witness of his Father’s Word as his disciples or followers cannot be disconnected (at worst) or even ‘dis-joined’ from one another—whether as “Jewish” or as “Christian” flowers of his ‘incorporate’ ministry in “the fullness of time” that is also replete with testimony that stands to bear a witness to the truth of his crucifixion and resurrection from the dead— in his actions and ministry and work of bearing witness to the Truth of God. No, we must either believe the testimony, or count it as rubbish, or “adapt/modify” it in accordance with our own ground of rationality and critical suggestions. Or we might simply take it as it is presented… as a testimony of witness as experienced by those who claim that it is such testimony… a testimony as to the truth of The Word of God.
We may find throughout the whole of Scripture various patterns or paradigms whereby our understanding of the details of this testimony serve to bear witness to a major paradigm of import; or we may ignore all this, instead considering our own ideas and thoughts as more worthy of consideration than that claimed by Scripture itself… as the very Word and self-revealing of God, the Creator of both the world and the heavens, of all things both visible and invisible. Either way, and whether we identify ourselves as Jews, or as Christians, or as “sheep” or “goats”, or as something else, we must ultimately decide what to do with this testimony and decide what manner of witness it bears for us as individuals who will stand before our almighty Creator, God, for his judgment of the life he has given us.