"And the light shineth in darkness"
καί τό φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καί ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” (King James Version)
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (Revised Standard Version)
Most variations in biblical translations are of little real significance. Some words become obscure and archaic as time passes and usage shifts, and so they are updated in new translations for ease of comprehension. Complicated sentence syntax, similarly, can trip readers up in our age of shortened attention spans, so modern translators often try to find ways to keep things short, sweet, and punchy. But as the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible were set down millenia ago and the English language reached its modern form in the 17th-century–largely as a result of the influence of those foundational Anglican texts, the King James Version of the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer–there is not much meaningful difference between one translation of Scripture and another.
So what, then, do we do with what looks to be a major variation in translations of one of the most important verses in the critical first chapter of the Gospel According to Saint John? Scholars call this passage the Prologue, and we get an awful lot of it in December and January. It is the culminating reading at Christmas Lessons and Carols, the appointed reading on both Christmas Day and the First Sunday after Christmas, and the opening reading at Epiphany Lessons and Carols. Indeed, one old custom appoints these verses to be read as “the Last Gospel” at the end of every Holy Eucharist. That’s a lot of the Prologue!
And it is for very good reason that we hear it so much. The Prologue of John is a passage unique among the accounts of the life of Jesus given by our four evangelists. Mark, urgently and economically racing toward the Cross, begins his Gospel with a short prophetic announcement and then launches into his narrative with the Baptism of Christ. Matthew, keen to demonstrate for Jewish readers that Jesus has fulfilled Jewish prophecy and comes from an unimpeachable Jewish pedigree, begins his Gospel with a genealogy from Abraham to Joseph, who is told in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, even though she is already pregnant by the power of the Holy Ghost. Luke, methodical and analytical, tells his readers that he has carefully consulted eyewitness accounts and all the best sources, and so begins his Gospel not with the conception and birth of Jesus but rather with his cousin and forerunner John the Baptist.
But John the Evangelist is different. His account of the Good News of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ begins at the beginning of all things: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now when John speaks of “the Word,” he does not simply mean some letters arranged on a page or some syllables uttered aloud, the ways we usually mean the word “word.” He is writing of ὁ λόγος–the logos. This is the Greek word from which we derive the word and concept of “logic,” and it contributes to our names for various fields of study: “biology,” the study of natural life; “anthropology,” the study of human beings and human cultures; “theology,” the study of God and the things pertaining to God. The Logos is not just some random utterance out of the mouth of God. He is the full disclosing of the plan and purposes of God. He is the fullness of God’s will, God’s authority, God’s power, God’s love. He is the very logic of God animating and ordering all that is. And, as John says, he is himself divine.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Some folks acknowledge the astonishing wonder of these words by bowing or even kneeling when they hear them read. While we may not all change the posture of our bodies at this announcement, it is a declaration that demands a change in the posture of our souls and hearts. All of who God is and what God desires for what God has made has entered what God has made and lived among human beings as a human being. The whole host of heaven marvels at this staggering announcement.
What makes this declaration so remarkable is that the Logos comes not to humanity as we ought to be–not to humanity as we were made at the beginning, in the Image of God, perfect material reflections of the Logos himself–but to humanity as we actually are in this world. That is the meaning of the Greek verse at the top of this message, and the two translations that I have given below it. In the Word is life, and this life is the light of all humankind, and this light shines in the darkness.
The deep meaning of God enlightens a world constantly descending into meaningless. The deep order of God continually orders our chaotic existence. The deep purpose of God perpetually corrects our twisted plans. The deep love of God claims and redeems our senseless hate.
But to return to the translation question with which we began, what exactly has our darkness done with this Light of the Logos? The Light shines into the darkness of our world and our lives. And the darkness οὐ κατέλαβεν. The Greek word “katelaben,” or “katalambano,” is a compound word meaning “to take hold of” or “to apprehend.” It is sometimes used literally, and sometimes figuratively. Some scholars and translators have proposed the English word “grasped” as a good rendering, as we use it in much the same way. A pickpocket might grasp a wallet, or a student might grasp a subject in school. Either use implies mastery over the thing that is grasped.
And what John intends to tell us is that the Light of the Logos of the Lord has not and cannot be grasped by the darkness of this world. It cannot be controlled or mastered by the powers that would control us and master us. It cannot be stopped even if we, out of fear or hatred, wish to stop seeing it. It cannot be understood according to the warped ways of thinking dominating human minds and cultures. The Light shines into this darkened world, into our darkened souls, and the darkness cannot grasp it, arrest it, extinguish it, or comprehend it.
But still the Light shines. We have heard the Prologue of John often in the last month. This Sunday, we will hear of the Baptism of our Lord from Luke’s Gospel. The Light of God’s Logos shining from before time and forever comes to a certain place of earthly geography at a certain time in human history within the context of a certain human culture and shines into the universal problem of human sin. We know how the story will progress. Sin and death and darkness will attempt to grasp the Light, and snuff it out.
But the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness οὐ κατέλαβεν.