A History of the Word: Texts
Proverbs 8. 22 – 31 (Hard to date – the earliest texts in proverbs could go back to the 10th Century, but
this section is probably a later addition)
(Wisdom Speaks) The Lord created me when his purpose first unfolded, before the oldest of his works.
From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning before the earth came into being. The deep was
not, when I was born, there were no springs to gush with water. Before the mountains were settled,
before the hills, I came to birth; before he made the earth, the countryside, or the first grains of the
world’s dust. When he fixed the heavens I was there, when he drew a ring on the face of the deep,
when he thickened the clouds above, when he fixed fast the springs of the deep, when he assigned the
sea its boundaries –and the waters will not invade the shore-when he laid down the foundations of the
earth, I was by his side, a master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at
play everywhere in the world, delighting to be with the sons of men. (Jerusalem)
6th Century BC
Ezekiel 2. 16 – 17 After seven days the word of the Lord was addressed to me as follows: Son of Man, I
have appointed you as sentry to the House of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from me, warn them in
my Name.
Isaiah 40. 6 – 8
‘All flesh is as grass and its beauty like the wild flower’s. The grass withers, the flower fades when the
breath of the Lord blows on them. The grass is without doubt the people. The grass withers, the flower
fades, but the word of our God remains forever.’
Isaiah 55.10 – 11
Yes, as the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the
earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the
word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and
succeeding in what it was sent to do. (Jerusalem)
Heraklitus of Ephesus
Though this word is ever present, humanity fails to understand it before they hear it or when they hear
of it for the first time. For though all things come into being according to this word it seems as if they
fail to experience it even as they are experiencing the words and the works which I am trying to expound
as I analyse everything according to its nature and how it is. (Diels Kranz 22B1) 3rd Century AD
quotation.
Though the word is shared by all, most people live as if their power of thought was a private thing (DK
22 B72 2nd Century AD quotation)
(people) separate themselves from this very word by which they most continuously communicate and
which runs through the totality of all things. [Diels, Berlin 1909, 72]
The thunderbolt steers all things (Diels, Berlin 1909, 64)
5th Century BC
Genesis 1. 1 – 3 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless
void, there was darkness over the deep and God’s spirit hovered over the water. God said, ‘Let there be
light’ and there was light.
Exodus 20. 1 – 3 Then God spoke all these words. He said, ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no God’s except me.
4th Century BC
Plato
At the beginning of this story we divided each soul into three parts – two aspects of which were like
horses and one like a charioteer. Lets continue with that...One of them is in a more honourable
condition; its appearance is upright and its joints sound... a lover of honour with self-control and a sense
of respect, a companion of true belief, needing no blows it is guided simply by command and the
reasonable word (logos). The other is twisted, fat, carried off after whatever sounds plausible, stiffnecked, a friend of violence and depredation, shaggy-eared and deaf, only with difficulty yielding to the
whip and spurs. (Phaedrus 253 d – e)
I was afraid that I might completely blind my soul by looking at things with my eyes and trying to touch
them with each of my senses. And so I decided that I had to take refuge in words and in them examine
the truth of all that is [like someone watching an eclipse in water, rather than looking directly]. And it
may well be that some things aren’t as I approximate them to be; but I do not entirely agree that
someone who examines reality by arguments (logoi) is examining it more according to approximation
than someone who is examining it in action. (Phaedo 99e – 100a).
And might a man be thirsty, and yet unwilling to drink? Yes, he said, it constantly happens.
And in such a case what is one to say? Would you not say that there was something in the soul bidding a
man to drink, and something else forbidding him, which is other and stronger than the principle which
bids him? I should say so. And the forbidding principle is derived from reason, and that which bids and
attracts proceeds from passion and disease? Clearly. Then we may fairly assume that they are two, and
that they differ from one another; the one with which man reasons, we may call the rational principle of
the soul, the other, with which he loves and hungers and thirsts and feels the flutterings of any other
desire, may be termed the irrational or appetitive, the ally of sundry pleasures and satisfactions?
(Republic 440). [The word for reason is ‘logos’ and the rational principle is ‘to logistikon’.
Aristotle
One way in which we use the term ‘cause’ is to mean the material from which something comes into
being, which continues to be in it, like the bronze of the statue and the silver of the jar and that sort of
thing. But another way is when we refer to the form and the type, and this is the ‘logos’
(word=account/definition) of the what-it-is-to-be and that sort of thing (like the ratio 2:1 in the octave
and number in general) and the parts within the account (logos). (Physics 194b 23 – 29)
3rd Century BC
Cleanthes the Stoic, Hymn to Zeus
It is you the whole world wheeling round the earth,
obeys whatever way you lead it, and it is mastered by you willingly.
You have such an instrument in your unconquerable hands
twin edged, fiery, ever-living thunderbolt.
Beneath its blows all works of nature have submitted,
With this you direct the shared word which through all things
goes to and fro mingling with the great and the little lights.
1st Century BC
Book of Wisdom 7.24 – 8.1
Wisdom is quicker to move than any motion; she is so pure, she pervades and permeates all things. She
is a breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; hence nothing impure can
find a way into her. She is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God’s active power,
image of his goodness.
Although alone she can do all; herself unchanging she makes all things new. In each generation she
passes into holy souls, she makes them friends of God and prophets; for God loves only the man who
lives with Wisdom. She is indeed more splendid than the sun, she outshines all the constellations;
compared with light, she takes first place, for light must yield to night, but over Wisdom evil can never
triumph. She deploys her strength from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things for good.
1st Century AD
Philo of Alexandria On the Migration of Abraham 4 – 6. ‘Leave your father’s house’
But do not be surprised if he (Moses) has called the word (speech/discourse) a house of the mind in a
human being for he also says that the mind of all things, God, has as a house his own word (reason) ...
...[the house of God] is invisible, eternal, only grasped by a soul as soul. And what could that possibly be
except the word, the first born of all that received an origin, with which the steersman of all things,
grasping it like a rudder, steers the totality of things, and when he was shaping the universe used this
as an instrument for the construction of all things that were made without further cause?
Letter to the Hebrews 1.1 – 2
At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the
prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son...
John 1. 1 – 3
In the beginning was the Word; The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the
beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.
4th Century AD
Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 1.2
In this way we will demonstrate to those who suppose Christianity is new and foreign, and never seen
before, the antiquity and the divinity of its history. No speech could be sufficient to express the lineage
and worth, let alone the being and nature of Christ; for the divine spirit says in the prophecies ‘who shall
expound his ancestry?’. And that just as no-one knew the Father except the Son, and again no-one
knew the Son in truth, except alone the Father who begot him, and who but the Father could rightly
conceive the light from before the world, the intelligible and real wisdom before the ages, the living
Word that in the beginning was with the Father as God... the craftsman of all things with the Father, the
second cause of all things after the Father?