In the Beginning; John 1:1-5

I love language. It's a tangible, tactile thing in my mind. It has texture and color. Sometimes it is fluid, other times it can be very solid, or silky, or harsh, or lush, or as dry as a stone-filled field. I love to play with it, to create with it.

One thing I have enjoyed doing over the past two years of blogging is to occasionally paraphrase scripture. My versions may suffer from my total ignorance of Koine Greek and of Hebrew. But I do have access to at least 21 different English translations and paraphrases. So I can study the various English language expressions of a verse and puzzle out my own understanding of what the various scholars are trying to convey. And then it's my task to try to put it together in a way which both makes sense to me and is pleasing to my ear. (And to finally proof-read it, because I always make typos or forget about partially done edits.)

So that's what I have done with the first five verses of the Gospel of John, chapter one. My intention today is that I will continue doing this with each successive sets of verses until I have completed the book of John. Then I probably will move on to one of the Pauline epistles. But then again, maybe tomorrow I will determine that this is a foolish exercise.

Why am I doing this, apart from the pleasure I derive from it? I do so because I desire to spend time in the Word for the purpose of getting to know the Triune God.

The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, verses 1 through 5

In the beginning,
before the concept of time existed,
when the universe
had not yet been formed,
the One Word existed.

The One Word,
He Who is
the ultimate, primal source
of all meaning,
all thought, and
all reason.

And the One Word
totally shared His presence
with God Most High,
and God Most High
totally shared His presence
with the One Word.
And the One Word was God Most High.
The One Word
and the God Most High
were One
at the very inception of time.

The One Word was the source
of all expression of thought.
By the creative will of the One Word,
everything that is
was brought into existence.
Not even one thing
came into being apart from Him.

And so, it is the Light of His Life
which illumines and animates
all living things.
In every human being
there shines the Light of the One Word.

Light shines on in the darkness.
For the darkness
cannot even comprehend,
let alone overpower, the light.