Caesar and Christ (Story of Civilization, #3)

by Will Durant

In the beginning was the Logos; the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. . . . All things were made by the Logos; without him nothing was made that was made. It was by him that all things came into existence. ... So the Logos became flesh and blood, and dwelt amongst us. Just as Philo, learned in Greek speculation, had felt a need to rephrase Judaism in forms acceptable to the logic-loving Greeks, so John, having lived for two generations in a Hellenistic environment, sought to give a Greek philosophical tinge to the mystic Jewish doctrine that the Wisdom of God was a living being,83 and to the Christian doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah. Consciously or not, he continued Paul’s work of detaching Christianity from Judaism. Christ was no longer presented as a Jew, living more or less under the Jewish Law; he was made to address the Jews as “you,” and to speak of their Law as “yours”; he was not a Messiah sent “to save the lost sheep of Israel,” he was the coeternal Son of God; not merely the future judge of mankind, but the primeval creator of the universe.

John's logos and Christ