the new word

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' - Gospel according to John, chapter 1 verse 1, King James Version.

Now don't panic! If you are a Christian I am happy for you and I won't try to convince you otherwise. If you are not a Christian I am also happy for you and I won't try to convince you otherwise either. But it does seem to me that something strange is happening in the bible and this particular verse hints at that strangeness.

Read the verse again. It does not start, 'in the beginning was God', it states clearly that 'the Word' was the first thing in the beginning. It goes onto state that this 'Word' is in fact 'God', it does not say a white man with a beard on a cloud was God, it states 'the Word was God'. Think about that.

So are we getting a view of the earliest times and how perhaps something more abstract is at work and not a grand wizard? So what is this 'Word'?

This Gospel was written in Greek. This verse reads ... 'En arche en Logos, kai Logos en pro Theos, kai Logos en Theos.' The Greek uses the word 'logos' and this gets translated as 'word'. 'Logos' however means more specifically 'reason', if the author had wanted to mean 'word' he would have used the Greek word 'lexis'. So the verse reads ... 'In the beginning was the Reason, and the Reason was with God, and the Reason was God.'

'Reason was God'. Is that not strange? So we should not be praying to some old fool with a beard but rather we should worship at the alter of Reason.

The bible is strange not because it tells us so little about God but because it tells us so much about man.