When we look at historic Judaism there are many ways in which it was similar to its religious neighbors. They each had multiple religious sites, had sacrificial rituals and employed priesthood. Yet even with all of their similarities there was one great difference. Jews were monotheists. In the midst of cultures which worshiped multiple gods the Hebrews were driven by a singular conviction that God was one and that there would be no other gods before the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is not only the focus of the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me," but it is also the heart of the "shema" from Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear O Israel; the Lord your God is one." While the Hebrews at one time believed in more than one "god" they were always called to worship only one. However as is often the case with all religions a strange thing happened along the way to modernity.
The strange thing which happened was the development of what is called wisdom. In an earlier article I discussed wisdom as "what one discovered at that sacred intersection of God given insight and the living of a Godly life. This means that wisdom was more than ethics and more than practical advice. Wisdom allowed one to live fully into being a child of God such that one reflected the very wisdom of God into the world." There is also a second way in which wisdom is used on the First Testament. In the book of Proverbs Wisdom is personified as the feminine side of God. The role of Wisdom is twofold. First Wisdom helps God create. Second Wisdom is to be the one who brings the light of God to the world and shows human kind how to rightly live. Wisdom is literally the light of God to the world. We see this throughout the book of Proverbs (look at Proverbs 1, 8 and 9 as examples). There are also non-canonical Jewish sources which see Wisdom as its own entity in the very heart of God.
This understanding the Wisdom tradition then helps set the table for Jesus as the Word of God made flesh. When in the Gospel of John we read that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" what we are hearing are echoes of the personification of Wisdom in the First Testament. If we continue in John we also hear of the Word being present at creation and that the Word is the light of humankind. Thus the Word is a new and creative way to speak of the Wisdom of God. What makes John's use of the Word (Wisdom) unique however is when he speaks of it being enfleshed in a human being. John writes of the Word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. This claim separates John (and thus Orthodox Christianity) from Judaism and from much of the Greco-Roman philosophical world. It separates Christianity from Judaism because Judaism can never accept that God could be other than the one, eternal, creative being who is not human. It separated Christianity from the Greco-Roman philosophical schools because they believed that the perfect-divine can never become the imperfect-physical.
These two issues did not deter John from linking Jesus with divine Wisdom (Word) in the most intimate way. By so doing John makes several claims about Jesus. First Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is the very wisdom of God who shows humanity how it ought to live. Second Jesus is the very creative power of God who can bring the dead back to life and usher in a new creation. Third Jesus as co-creator has a claim on all of life. These ideas help us to take hold of Jesus as the way (Jesus as the light of God showing the way), the truth (Jesus embodies the wisdom of God) and the life (Jesus is the one who gives life through creation). For John then (and again for orthodox Christianity) if we want to know the truth about God and what God wants us to know all we have to do is listen to and live like Jesus, who is the very Wisdom (Word) of God in the world. This way of seeing Jesus is far more profound than any other. It is so because it reminds us that Jesus has a claim on our lives; that he is not merely offering us good advice or healing our hurts. Instead as the very Lord of life, we are his and as such we are called to be light to the world, even as he was light to the world.
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