Below is an excerpt from "The Unvarnished New Testament."
Gaus, Andy. The Unvarnished New Testament (New Translation from the Original Greek) . Red Wheel Weiser. Kindle Edition.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, and God was what the Word was. It was with God in the beginning. All things happened through it, and not one thing that has happened, happened without it. Within it there was Life, and the Life was the light of the world." (Gaus did not include verse numbers and this is John 1:1-4)
It is now my belief that we have misunderstood the beginning of John chapter one. I do not believe that the passage speaks of Jesus per se' until verse fourteen where it states that the word/logos became flesh and dwelt among humanity. Prior to that it was speaking strictly of the Logos/Word of God. So let's examine what the Logos is. The Logos is the word which is in reality the conscious expression or the expression of consciousness. God's Logos/word is in reality God's consciousness. It could be literally be called the MIND of God. We can see here that it is the mind of God that created the universe. So then, it is more accurate to call the Logos it than to call it he or him. The reason is that the Logos, mind and word of God is neuter in gender.
So why is it important to make this distinction you may be thinking to yourself? It has great importance with verses ten, eleven, and twelve. Here it is from David Bentley Hart's translation: (9) "It was the true light, which illuminates everyone, that was coming into the cosmos. (10) He was in the cosmos, and through him the cosmos came to be, and the cosmos did not recognize him. (11) He came to those things that were his own, and they who were his own did not accept him. (12) But as many as did accept him, to them he gave the power to become GOD’s children—to those having faith in his name," (The New Testament (p. 169). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition, Translation by David Bentley Hart.)
Even here, Hart refers to the Logos as it. He shifts to he in verse ten because he/Hart assumes that Jesus is now the referent. But is that the case? I have always assumed that when it states that "he came unto his own and his own received him not" that it is referring to Jews. I no longer think that is the case. So then, if the Logos came unto its own what would that be? I think we can find a clue in Genesis 1:26. Humans are created in God's image. What is that? God is spirit, energy and consciousness. So then we are spirit and consciousness. That is the essence of imago dei. The essence of being image bearers is conscious, creative spirit.
John 1:10 states that the Logos was in the world prior to the incarnation. It says prior to the incarnation that the Logos came to its own. What was its own? Conscious humanity! So, I see a case for what the bible has translated as "his own" not being just ethnic Jews, but humanity in general. So what about the "as many as received him?" Who were they? I strongly believe that it was all mystics that received the Logos over history. For example, the Logos came to Heraclitus and the stoics in 500 BCE. At that same time, the Logos came to Lao Tzu, and Lao Tzu called it the Tao. All of the mystics knew of their familial connection with the Creator God. They may not have expressed it as such but knew it just the same. The Logos was in the world but most of the humans in the world did not recognize it.
This is the place where Jesus of Nazareth became the first born of many siblings. It finally states in John 1:14 that the Logos became incarnate. The Logos was in the world before the Logos became incarnate. Jesus was not in the world before he was incarnate. It was the Logos. The main reason for the linguistic confusion by the many translators stems from confusing Jesus with the Logos eternally. There is a way that the Logos is God's son. Andy Gaus expresses it this way in the Unvarnished New Testament in verse 18, "No one has seen God ever; God's only son who has been on his Father's lap, he himself explained that to us." (Gaus, Andy. The Unvarnished New Testament (New Translation from the Original Greek) . Red Wheel Weiser. Kindle Edition.) Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnation is the one that explained that to us.
Jesus further explained to the Apostle John that we are the incarnate Logos as well. John expressed it this way. 1Jn 4:17 "In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world." He further punctuates the concept with this. 1Jn 3:2 "Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is." It is my belief that the Christ, has appeared in his saints. It is in this way that we can come to fruition as the incarnate word.
The question is asked in the title, misinterpreted or misled? I will let you be the judge but for me I will give the benefit of the doubt and believe that it was just confusion.
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