It is interesting to notice that John's Gospel is the only one that uses the word Ellen,

"Greeks". With the coming of the "Greeks" and their request: "Sir, we would see Jesus"

(John 12: 20, 21), the Saviour says for the first time: "The hour is come, that the Son of

Man should be glorified" (John 12: 23). To His mother at the marriage feast He had said:

"Mine hour is not yet come" (John 2: 4). To the Samaritan woman He says: "The hour

cometh" (John 4: 21, 23). In chapter 5: He says: "The hour is coming, and now is,

when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God" (John 5: 25).  In 7: 30 and

8: 20, we read that "His hour was not yet come". And then in John 12:, with the

quest of the Greeks, we reach the turning-point of the Gospel: "The hour is come, that

the Son of Man should be glorified." It is clear, therefore, that the Greek point of view

cannot be ignored without serious loss.

As we are not "Greeks", and have not been brought up in an atmosphere of

philosophic discussion, we shall have to pause, at various points, as we go through the

prologue, and acquaint ourselves with some of the ideas that John seems to have had

vividly in mind as he wrote. We all know something of what is intended by the title

"The Word", but how many of us know anything of the history of the quest for the

Logos?

Coming now to the structure of these first eighteen verses, it is at once clear that

verses 1 and 18 are in correspondence.

a | In the beginning was the WORD.

b | The Word was WITH God.

c | The Word was GOD.

c | GOD only begotten.

b | In the BOSOM of the Father.

a | He hath DECLARED Him.

Here the "Word" "declares", and the term "with God" finds its echo in "in the bosom

of the Father". The reading "God only begotten" echoes the statement that the "Word

was God". We defer the proofs for this reading until later.

The structure of the complete section is as follows: