Please show me where in John 1:1 “Jesus” is mentioned, referenced, or otherwise acknowledged.
“In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God.”
The “beginning” of which John speaks (in 96 a.d.) is not the beginning of creation. John had already referenced the beginning of creation in “The book of Revelations” in 69 a.d. and he did not replicate that greeting in his gospel.
There is no evidence that whoever wrote the Gospel of John was also the author of the Book of Revelation. Scholarly generally agree that the person who wrote Revelation is distinct from the person who wrote the Gospel of John, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. We simply don’t really know who John of Patmos is. As Richard Bauckham points out in his Theology of the Book of Revelation (2003, Cambridge University Press), pg. 2;
Virtually all we know about John, the author of Revelation, is that he was a Jewish Christian prophet. Evidently he was one of a circle of prophets in the churches of the province of Asia (22:6), and evidently he had at least one rival: the Thyatiran prophetess whom he considers a false prophet (2:20).
I’d like to see you offer any evidence that whoever wrote the Gospel also wrote Revelation. Consequently, it would be a fundamental error to claim that John 1:1 is not talking about the beginning of creation. It obviously is. You also make some strange Greek transliteration mistakes – for example, “In the beginning” is ‘en arche’, not ‘en arxh’.
John 1:1-3: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
So, this is clearly talking about the beginning, the moment when all things were made. Since it is situated at the very beginning of the Gospel, the phrase “In the beginning” clearly calls the readers attention to Genesis 1:1.
HERE IS A COMPARATIVE SAMPLE FROM SCRIPTURE
Compare with John’s opening in his gospel -
“En arxh” “En arxh” [Jn 1:1]
“Teen arxeen”[Jn 8:25]
“ap arxees” [John 15:27]
“arxees” [John 16:4]
Sorry, but I don’t see the relevance of any of this. Is your point that the Greek is read in different spellings? That’s because of inflection, not the use of different words/meaning terms.
“The Logos which was God” referenced by John, was NOT in the beginning at creation. The proof of this is found early in the Old Testament. The Logion of God preceded the Logos of God by centuries and eons of time. Not until the law was given to Moses, did the Logos spoken by God become an issue.
Psalm 105:16 “Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread. 17 He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: 18 Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: 19 Until the time that his logon (word) came; the logion (word) of the LORD tried him. 20 The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. 21 He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance:”(Psalm 105:16-19)
This just looks like a strange misprint of the actual text. Here’s the NRSV translation, there is no Logos figure here. This translation is clearly a fabrication, since Logos is a Greek word that can be written in John because John was written in Greek, but the Hebrew Old Testament has no word ‘Logos’. It does have a different Hebrew word for the word ‘word’, but in these verses, this just means ‘words’ in the normal sense. There is no “Logion” in the Old Testament, let alone a “Logion” that precedes the Logos. Thus, your arguments really make no sesne at all. “In the beginning” has nothing to do with the beginning of the Gospel itself, obviously, since it’s juxtaposed with creation in the second and third verses and evokes Genesis later on. The final sword in your theory is the fact that the concept of the Logos predates the Gospel of John itself, and is found in earlier literature (such as the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria in the early to mid 1st century), and the Logos in those texts is referred to exist in the beginning of time, creation. So considering what John itself says, as well as its historical context, there can be no doubt that John 1:1 is literally about the beginning.