Had John desired to emphasize 'the eternal Sonship' of Christ, he would

most surely have avoided such a term.  This verb, ginomai, was one that

was known among the Greeks as the keyword of the philosophy of

Heraclitus, whose teaching was that all things are 'becoming' and so

'Into the same river no man can enter twice'.

'The Logos existeth from all time'.

These words of Heraclitus

were written over four hundred years before Christ,

and inasmuch as John uses

the very title 'Logos' in the opening of his Gospel

and then affirms that the

Logos became flesh, it is evident that, writing as

he did to the descendants

of the Philosophers, he used these words with

discretion and intention.

'Dwelt', skenoo.  This word is derived from skene, 'tabernacle'

(Matt. 17:4), and the English 'scene' has come into our language from the

word that meant a stage or part of a theatre, which was in early days a tent.

A tabernacle was a temporary dwelling, as compared with a city (Heb. 11:9),

it is the earthly house that will be dissolved (2 Cor. 5:1,4).  It was but a

temporary dwelling place for the Deity, for the outworking of the redemptive

'Glory'.  The glory that the disciples beheld is defined as doxan

hos monogenous para patros.  The absence of the article 'the' must be

'We beheld His glory, such a glory as one would associate with One Who

was an Only Begotten of such a Father'.

The glory that was beheld by the wondering disciples was not the glory

which the Saviour had 'before the world was'; that glory was veiled while He

walked the earth; it was the glory of the Only Begotten, monogenes.  This

word occurs nine times in the New Testament  and four times in the LXX, and

as the diction and vocabulary of the Greek Old Testament lies at the basis of

the doctrinal language of the New Testament let us first of all acquaint

ourselves with its usage in that version:

'She was his only child' (Judges 11:34).

'Deliver ... my darling from the power of the dog'  (Psa. 22:20).

'Have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted' (Psa. 25:16).

'Rescue ... my darling from the lions' (Psa. 35:17).

It will be seen that one occurrence refers to 'an only begotten' child,

namely Jephtha's daughter, and the remaining three use the word figuratively

of something exceeding precious, 'my darling', or very much alone,

'desolate'.  The Hebrew word thus translated is yacheed, employed in Genesis

22:2,12,16 of Isaac, 'thy son, thine only (son) Isaac' and, elsewhere, found

in Proverbs 4:3; Jeremiah 6:26; Amos 8:10 and Zechariah 12:10, where it is

translated 'only' and 'only son', and in Psalm 68:6, where it is rendered

'the solitary'.  The LXX translate yacheed in Genesis 22:2, ton agapeton,

'beloved', and in verses 12 and 16, tou huiou sou tou agapetou, 'thy beloved

son'.  The same word agapetos is found in all the other passages except Psalm

68:6, which uses monotropos, 'one that lives alone'.  It will be seen that

the title, monogenes, which is given to Christ in John 1:14, includes both

primogeniture and preciousness, or as it is extended in Genesis 22:2, 'Take

now thy son, thine only son ... whom thou lovest'.