The Transformation of Wisdom. A Study of the Prologue of John's Gospel

Abstract

There are two fundamental questions concerning the Prologue, one literary, the other historical. The literary question was raised by Bultmann in his seminal article for the Gunkel Festschrift of 1923:‘Wie weit ist von dem prāexistenten Logos die Rede, von wo ab von dem in der Geschichte auf-tretenden, d.h. von Jesus?’The commentators, remarks Bultmann, disxsxsagree on the answer to this question, and this disagreement has persisted. For Bultmann the main difficulty arises from the fact that although v. 14 offers the firstexplicitstatement of the Incarnation, the Christian reader cannot but take vv. 10 f. as an allusion to the life of Jesus, and consequently also v. 5 (which is parallel to it) and probably v. 4 also. Bultmann's solution was to see the Prologue as a pre-Christian Gnostic hymn, stemming from Baptist circles and subsequently taken over by the evangelist and adapted to form the opening of the Gospel. There have been many different answers since.