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Though occasionally the Memra as a special manifestation of Yahweh or His power appears to be personified, it most cer­tainly was not intended to imply that it is a person apart from Him. Instead, it directs attention to a particu­lar aspect of Yahweh’s Person and work.

On this matter of personification, Jewish Encyclopedia provides a whole section to illustrate this type of use of “Memra” in the Targum. But before we consider it, first we need to be clear what the word “personificat­ion” means. It basically means speak­ing of something as though it were an actual person; thus in Proverbs, Wisdom is often described as if it is a living person. Here is a definition of personificat­ion from Britannica (2003):

Personification is something found frequently in poetic language; it is a characteristic of the vivid language of poetry. Here are some examples from the Scriptures:

Under the general heading “Personification of the Word,” the Jewish Encyclo­pedia has the following:

How exactly is this statement to be understood? How does a manifest­ation function in a mediatorial way? This manifestation of God must stand in some way between God and men, both revealing and concealing at the same time. It would thus be something like the glory of the Shekinah which reveals Yahweh’s glory yet also conceals His Person.

But though we could speak in this carefully defined sense of the Memra functioning in a kind of mediatorial way, it is misleading (to polytheistic Gentiles) to speak of its role in terms of a “mediator” or “mediatorship” with­out giving the impression that one is speaking about an actual person. The Jew knows that there is no such person as the “Memra,” but not the Gentile.

The same is true of such a statement as, “The Memra is the agent of God,” for though “agent” does not necessarily refer to a human being such as an “estate agent” or a “travel agent” and could also refer to a chemical “cleansing agent” such as a detergent, this ambiguity in “agent” leaves the Gentile mind free to select the meaning of his choice, namely, the reference to a person. It is, therefore, important to bear in mind (if we would avoid mis­leading ourselves and others) that Jewish literature never thinks of the Memra as an actual person distinct from God but as “the manifestation of God,” as stated at the beginning of this section.

The Memra is “mediatorial” in the sense of being a “mediat­orial word,” that is, a word that serves to refer to Yahweh without directly mentioning his Name. It is thus a word that “stands between” Yahweh and the speaker or hear­er, and in this sense “mediates” between them. This was done out of reverence for Yahweh by avoiding direct refer­ence to Him. Such mediatorial words and terms are probably found in most languages as a means of avoid­ing the pronun­ciation of the name of the person, out of reverence or respect for that person. Examples of this in English are “Your Majesty” (or “His majes­ty”), “Your Excellency,” “Your Honor”, etc. Similar forms of address are also common in classical Chinese. For example, out of courtesy even to people of not particu­larly high status, people could be addressed by the term “zu xia” which, trans­lated literally, would mean “below your feet” or “to your feet” or “at your feet,” thus respectfully addressing the feet of the person as a “mediatorial” or indirect way of saying “you”.

If, however, the Word is not thought of as an entity or a being distinct from God, then it can be said correctly that the Word was an “agent” in creat­ion in that it was by, or through, His Word that God created all things “in the beginning”. This fact is stated in John 1:3: “Through (dia) him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” All things owe their origin to God: all things are from (ek) God (1Co.11:12); and He accom­plishes His eter­nal purposes through (dia) His Word, His Wisdom, and His power.

It is often asserted that the use of such terms as Memra and Shekinah was to avoid anthropomorphism, but this is not necess­arily supported by the evidence. For example the “anthropomor­phic” reference to God’s “hand” in Dt.32:41 is still translated as “hand” in the Targums, both in this verse and elsewhere. Yet refer­ences to His “face” are consistently changed to His “Shekinah”. So it seems clear that the concern was not primarily with anthropo­morphisms but with direct references to God, which were con­sidered irreverent.

When these texts from the Targums are compared with the Hebrew texts it will be readily evident that Memra functions as “mediatorial” word in each instance to avoid a direct reference to Yahweh. For example, in Isa.66:13 Yahweh speaks of Himself as the comforter; the Targum avoids the reference to Yahweh and replaces His Name by “Memra”. Again, in Hosea 11:10 it is Yahweh Himself who “will roar like a lion,” but also here His Name is replaced in the Targum by “the Memra”.

The final portion of the article on the Memra in the Jewish Encyclopedia considers the relationship of Memra with its Greek equivalent Logos:

We will take note in particular of two points in the above excerpt:

1) The Memra, Wisdom, and the Shekinah were seen as parallel concepts.

2) The philosophical systems of Greek thought, under Egyptian influ­ence, conceived of the Logos in terms of a “world-constructive and world-perm­eating intelligence” but not in personal terms as God. There­fore, the deifi­cation of the Logos as a personal God was the work of Gentile Christians, perhaps begin­ning already in the middle of the 2nd century AD.

The article continues:

From this it becomes clear that Philo’s Logos was itself built upon the idea of the Memra as its “corner-stone,” even though he bor­rowed Greek elements so that his philosophy is described here as “semi-Jewish” (Philo himself was a Jew). It is, therefore, rather pointless to speak of John hav­ing borrowed the Logos idea from Philo seeing that Philo himself based his ideas on the Memra, and John needed only draw directly on the idea of the Memra well-known to the Jews from the Targums without any recourse to Philo.

The article on the Memra continues:

From this excerpt the following points are worth noting:

1) The ancient church adopted and adapted its liturgy from that of the Synagogue; this fact reflects a time when the church had been predomi­nantly Jewish, that is, during the time of the apostolic church of the 1^st century.

2) From the early church’s adaptation of the Jewish liturgy, the Logos under­stood as being “the Word by which God made the world, or made His Law or Himself known to man,” was applied to Christ as the one in whom the Word became incarnate. But the Jewish Encyclo­pedia indicates that by the time of the Apostolic Constitutions, about AD 380, the Logos “was changed into ‘Christ’”, which is to say that Christ and the Logos had become equated.

With “the parting of the ways” between Jews and Gentiles some time before the middle of the 2nd Century, and the Gentile deifica­tion of the Word as a person equal to Yahweh God resulting in the emer­gence of trinitar­ianism, the Jewish response was to cease referring to the Memra:

We should also take note of the following statement in the Jewish Encyclopedia (article “God”) which points to Psalm 33:6 as the root of the use of Memra in the Targums:

Note also the following important statement in that same article:

The following observations are also relevant for understanding the way Memra is used in the Targums; these are quoted from the Jewish Encyclopedia, article ‘Anthropomorphism’:

It is clear from these statements that wherever in the Hebrew text there are references to God relating to human beings in some way (e.g. speak­ing to him, etc), the Targums would replace the word “God” with “Memra.”

The following passage finds fulfillment in crucial elements in the gospels:

The main elements in this last passage are found in the gospels:

(1) The Memra of Yahweh embodied in Jesus was “revealed to release His (Yahweh’s) people,” that is, to save them; the purpose of his coming is thereby declared.

(2) “Now see that I (am) he [ani hu] who is and was”: There is an echo of some of the occurrences of “I am” in John.

(3) “There is no other god beside me!” A declaration of mono­theism such as that found in Mark 12:29, and John 5:44 and 17:3.

(4) “With my Word I make dead and I make live!” The Memra in Jesus not only healed the sick but raised the dead on a number of occasions; these words may also imply Jesus’ own death and resur­rection.

(5) The words “I humbled the people of the house of Israel” would seem to be a reference to their rejection of Jesus as Messiah and what happened to Israel not long afterwards, especially the destruction of the Temple; but this does not result in Yahweh’s rejection of them because,

(6) “I will heal them in the end [suq] of days”; this lovingkind­ness of Yahweh is absolutely vital because,

(7) “there is none to rescue from the hands of Gog and his army,” which is precisely what Jesus referred to regarding “the end of days,” the end time and the horrors that the tribulation of those days will bring (Matt.24; Mark 13; Luke 21:5ff).

From this exposition of the Targum on Deuteronomy 32.39, by correlat­ing it with the gospels, it is evident that there is much of spiritual value in the Targums.

Very closely related to the Memra is the term “Shekinah” which, functional­ly, is its equivalent because both words are used to designate God; but whereas Memra is used in the Targum, Shekinah also appears in the Talmud and Midrash. Since the word “Shekinah” (lit. “the dwelling”) comes from a Hebrew word meaning “to dwell,” this has significance for understand­ing John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (NIV). The follow­ing quotations are from the article “Shekinah” in the Jewish Encyclopedia:

“Shekinah” is spelt “Shekhina” in Encyclopedia Britannica 2003. For conven­ience of reference, that article is here attached:

In Wikipedia it is spelt “Shekhinah”; an extensive discussion can be found there. The article explains the origin and meaning of the corresponding Greek word: “The Greek word σκήνη [skēnē]—dwelling—is thought to be derived from שכינה [noun shekinah] and שכן [verb shakan].”

As for the Tabernacle and later the Temple as Yahweh’s dwelling place, Wikipedia says: “The Shekhinah is referred to as manifest in the Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem throughout Rabbinic liter­ature.” Hence John 2:19, where Jesus’ own body is spoken of as Yahweh’s temple; he is the one in whom Yahweh dwells bodily, Col.2:9. Cf. Jer.17:12.

The verb skēnoō (σκηνόω, ‘live, settle, take up residence,’ BDAG) is the word used for the Word dwelling among us in John 1:14. The noun skēnē (σκηνή, ‘tent, dwelling,’ ‘Yahweh’s taber­nacle,’ BDAG) occurs 20 times in the NT of which 10 times are in Hebrews. Most of these instances refer to “the tent of meeting” or “tabernacle” where God’s presence “dwelt” (cf. Jn.1:14).

Whether or not these Greek words were actually derived from the Hebrew (there is indeed a striking similarity between the Greek and Hebrew words that may be more than coincidental), more relevant for our purpose is the fact that the two words are identical in meaning. That “dwelt” (skēnoō, the verb of skēnē, σκήνη) in John 1.14 refers to the Shekinah appears to be confirmed by the words which immed­iately follow it: “we have beheld his glory”; the glory of the Shekinah mani­fested the glory of God’s presence.

This same truth about the Shekinah is reflected again in Hebrews 1.3, “He is the radiance of the glory of God,” and again in the phrases “the Lord of glory” or “our glorious Lord”: 1Corin­thians 2:8, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,” and James 2.1, “My brothers, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.”

In this connection, there is also the glory described in the gospel accounts of Christ’s transfiguration: “And he was transfig­ured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” (Matthew 17:2); “he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them” (Mark 9:2,3).

All the above examples are taken from the Targums on Genesis, but Shekinah also occurs frequently elsewhere in the Pentateuch; for example, Shekinah occurs 22 times in Deuteronomy in Targum Onkelos. In all cases the term indicates Yahweh’s unique imman­ent presence; a comparison with the Hebrew text makes this clear.

The following paragraphs from Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT, article כָּבוֹד, “glory”) are instructive:

From this it can be seen that both the idea and the reality of Yahweh’s dwelling among men is deeply woven into the fabric of the Old Test­ament. It then came to its final fulfillment when “the Word/Memra became flesh and made His dwelling among us” (Jn.1:14, NIV).

As we have seen, both “Shekinah” and “Memra” are important words in the Aramaic Targums. It is interesting that even though “Shekinah” is Heb­rew (from the root שָׁכַן (shākan) dwell, taber­nacle; see also Jastrow, Diction. of the Talmud), not Aramaic, the Targums incorporate this word into their Aramaic translation. This draws attention to the fact that in the Hebrew Bible the truth expressed by the word “Shekinah” is a vitally important aspect of Yahweh’s relationship with His people: Yahweh does not just visit His people from time to time, but He chooses to live with them (e.g. Exodus 25:8, “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”)

Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament has this interest­ing observation about the tabernacle:

The Hebrew word for “tabernacle” (mishkān) is related to “Shek­inah” by the fact that both words are from the root shākan. Yet the idea of “Shekinah” goes further than speaking of the glory of God abiding in a particular place; it refers to Yahweh’s special presence.

“Memra” (“Word”) on the other hand is an Aramaic word, and a link to Hebrew cannot be established. It is often used in a way that is different from “the word of the Lord” in the Hebrew Bible. It is in fact used in a way so similar to Shekinah that it is replaced by Shekinah in the Talmud. The following shows how it is used in Targum Ps-Jonathan (or “the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel; in the translation by J. W. Etheridge, the remaining fragments of the Jerusalem Targum are incorporated). These verses are selected because they are instruct­ive for our understanding of the Logos (Word) in the Johannine Prologue:

Notice how instead of “the Lord created man” the Jerusalem Targum has “the Word (Memra) of the Lord created man”. This corresponds to the role, in creation, of the Logos in John 1.3. “The presence of the Lord” in the preceding quotation seems to be a reference to the Shekinah.

Here the Word or Memra of God is none other than God Himself as we can see by comparing it with the Biblical text: “And the Lord (Yahweh) God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” It is exactly as in John 1:1, “the Word was God”.

What is interesting about this passage is that “they heard the voice of the word (memra) of the Lord God walking in the garden,” yet in the following sentence it is “the Lord God” himself who “called to Adam” and spoke to him. Again the identification of “the Word of the Lord” with “the Lord God” is clear with­in the Targum itself, and this is all the more so when we compare it with the Biblical text: “And they heard the sound of the Lord (Yahweh) God walking in the garden”. And instead of the words, “The Lord God called to Adam” in Ps-Jonathan, the Jerusalem Targum reads: “The Word of the Lord God called to Adam”. The Hebrew has, “Yahweh God called to Adam (or ‘the man’)”.

These first six occurrences of “the Word of the Lord” in the Targums provide us with a clear perception that this term is used as an indirect form of referring to Yahweh, yet implying the idea that His interact­ion with man are mediated through His Word.

It should now be perfectly clear that the Jews in NT times were very familiar with idea of “the Word of God”. B.D. Alexander (in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia article ‘Logos’) wrote the following perceptive observations:

Why, then, would we suppose that the Logos in John was derived from Greek philosophy? I now realize how foolish it was to have assumed that the monotheistic Jew, John, who (on the basis of what we learn about him in the gospels) grew up in Aramaic-speaking Galilee, would have derived the Logos idea from Greek philosophy (including Philo’s ver­sion), which almost certainly nei­ther he nor the people for whom he wrote would have had any knowledge of. How many people today (even well educated peo­ple) know anything about philosophy, Greek or other­wise, even if they were educated in the arts rather than the sciences?

Is it Scripturally correct to speak of “Jesus’ preexistence” in the way that trinit­arians do? Can this phrase be justified in view of John 1:14? For this phrase assumes, of course, that Jesus existed as Jesus or Christ, and not just as Logos, before the incarnation of the Logos. But according to John 1:14, Jesus came into being at the incar­nation; he did not exist as Jesus or Christ before that; it was the eternal Logos who “became flesh” in Christ. It was the Logos that was preexistent.

In view of the foregoing evidence it should now be clear that the Logos in John 1 is the Memra so familiar to the Jews; John was certainly not refer­ring to some philosophical concept foreign to his readers. It is true that the Memra was “a means of speaking about God without using his name” (Barrett). By observing the way Memra is used in the Targums we can see that it referred speci­fically to His self-revelation as expressed by His creative Word, and to His imman­ent Presence in relation to mankind as expressed by word and deed. If so, then something truly astonishing is stated in John 1, namely, that Yahweh Himself came into the world, embod­ied in the person of Jesus the Messiah. A mind-boggling event is revealed in John 1. Could it be that it is for this reason that it appears to us (if not to the Jews of John’s time) that the event is stated in somewhat veiled language?

Yet the language in Col.1:19 does not appear to be veiled at all, for it states explicitly: “For in him (Christ) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”. In case we did not get the message, it is repeated shortly afterwards in Col.2:9: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” The very same words and ideas are used here as in John 1:14, “dwell” or “live,” and John 1:16, “full­ness”. By now it should be clear that when John and Paul speak of “God” in these verses, consistent with Biblical monothe­ism, they do not refer to some other deity besides Yahweh God. That God “dwelt among us” (Jn.1:14) through His Word/Memra is explained in Colossians in terms of “all the full­ness” or “the whole fullness” of God dwelling in “bodily form” in Christ. Is that not precisely what Jesus himself was also saying when he said that neither his words nor his actions were his own, but those of his indwelling Father, Yahweh (John 14:10)?

But is it correct to suppose that the message of John 1 is veiled? Or is it veiled only to those who are perishing, as the apostle Paul says (2Cor.4:3)? The fact is that John evidently tried to make the point as clear as possible by twice quoting the opening words of Genesis, “In the beginning” (Ἐν ἀρχη, en archē, John 1:1,2):

What is being equated is evidently “in the beginning God” and “in the begin­ning the Logos”; this is even clearer in the Greek: ὁ θεὸς (the God) and ὁ λόγος (the Logos), both with the definite article.

Now this surely raises the question: Why did John replace “God” with “Logos,” when by “Logos” he meant God, which he explicitly states: “the Logos was God” (θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος). And who is this “God” that is being referred to? In a world where there were “Gods many, and Lords many” (1Cor.8:5f), the answer to this question was not as self-evident as it may be to most of us. The Hebrew word elohim (אְֶלֹהִים) “God” could refer not only to “the one true God” of whom Jesus spoke (John 17:3) but also to the gods of Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, etc.; it could even refer to angels (e.g. Ps.8:5, cf. Heb.2:7) and to men (“I said, you are gods,” Ps.82:6; Jn.10:34). The Greeks and Romans also had their many gods.

It was, therefore, essential to state with absolute clarity who exactly was the one who came into the world in Christ. If it were simply stated that it was the one who created heaven and earth, which is implied by the parallel­ism with Genesis 1 and stated expli­citly in John 1:3, it might still leave open the possibil­ity that a hypostatic agent who was said to have been involved in the creation, such as Wisdom (an idea which Barrett and others looked upon favorably), could be meant as that which became incarnate in Christ. Wisdom was not usually used as a metonym for Yahweh, so it would not have served John’s purpose if his message was that Yahweh had come in Christ to dwell with His people. Even so, if the Logos is interpreted in terms of OT Wisdom (and that of intertesta­mental literature), then it must be remem­bered that Wisdom in the Scriptures is an attribute of Yahweh and, as such, could serve as a metonym of Yahweh. This means that inter­preting Logos in terms of Wisdom or Memra would come to exactly the same result.

But if John 1:1 intended to say that it was Yahweh Himself who came into the world, how exactly could that be stated other than the way in which it is stated in that verse? John could not use the Tetra­grammaton (YHWH) because that would be offensive to the Jews and unintelligible to the Greeks or to Gentiles generally. Could anything else be done other than to use “the Word,” namely, the unspoken Tetragrammaton? His readers knew very well that “the Word” was the metonym for the Name “Yahweh”. Moreover, in the Targums “the Word” usually appears as “the Word of the Lord (Yahweh),” so “the Word” is an abbreviation of the longer phrase. Even so, the Word or Memra, like Wisdom in Proverbs, could be spoken of in a person­alized way, as in the examples we saw earlier, such as: “the Word of the Lord said…” and “the Word of the Lord created…” But it must always be borne in mind that the “person­ality” of the Word or Memra derives from the personality of the Lord (Yahweh) whose Word it is.

How are we to understand the statement that “the Logos became flesh” (Jn.1:14)? It certainly does not mean that the Logos ceased to be the Logos and changed into “flesh” (the “flesh” was a way of referring to human exist­ence or, specifically, to a human being, e.g. Isa.40:5, “all flesh, i.e. all human beings, shall see it [the glory of Yahweh] together”). How then is it to be understood? What it means is surely that the Word became embodied in a human being. This does not mean Word = human being, i.e. Jesus, but that the Word is embodied in Jesus. The Word of God became “incarnate” “in Christ,” in “the man Christ Jesus” (1Tim.2:5).

“The Word became flesh”; “flesh” translates the Greek word sarx (σάρξ), for which the definitions in BDAG Greek-English Lexicon specially relevant to this verse are: “the physical body as functioning entity, body, physical body” and “one who is or be­comes a physical being, living being with flesh,” specifically, “of humans: person, human being”. So the meaning of John 1:14 is clear: the Word entered into the world in a human being, a person with a physical body of flesh, namely, the Messiah Jesus.

BDAG also states, “In Paul’s thought esp., all parts of the body constitute a totality known as σάρξ [sarx] or flesh, which is domin­ated by sin”. Jesus also declared that “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (Jn.8:34; cf. Rom.6:16; 7:14). Since Jesus did not sin, his flesh was not dominated by sin. But sin could also operate in his flesh and be a cause of temptation. Sexual desires are a part of life in the flesh; BDAG states: “The σάρξ [sarx, flesh] is the source of the sexual urge, without any suggestion of sinful­ness connected with it”.

Insofar as Jesus had a true body of flesh like ours, he would have exper­ienced the same temptations that all human beings exper­ience. And it is expli­citly declared he “has been tempted in every res­pect as we are, yet without sin” (Heb.4:15). His having been without sin was something he accomplished in the face of temptations. If he had not had to face tempt­ations then he was not truly human; and if he was God he could not even have been tempted (James 1:13), let alone sin. Trinitarianism has tacitly sacrificed the humanity of Christ in order to establish his deity. And by sacrificing the humanity of Christ in reality, though paying lip service to it, it has therewith effectively sacrificed the salvation which God accomplished for man­kind “through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom.5:17).

The “became” in “became flesh” (Jn.1:14) is ginomai (γίνομαι), which here serves to “indicate entry into a new condition” (BDAG, Greek-English Lexicon). The Word entered into a new state of being in Christ, that of human life.

Nowhere prior to the NT did Yahweh (or His Spirit) indwell any person. We must grasp this fact clearly if we are to understand the remarkable significance of what took place in Christ. The Spirit “rested on” people (Num.11:25, the 70 elders; Isa.11:2, a messianic prophecy), or “came upon” persons (e.g. Gideon, Judg.6:34; Samson, Judg.15:14); and in Micah 3:8 the prophet says, “I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might,” stating that this power was given him to fulfill his specific mission “to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin.”

That Yahweh actually indwells a person as His dwelling place, His temple, is not found in the OT. The closest it comes to this is the promise in Leviticus 26:11,12 in which Yahweh says that if Israel obeys Him, “I will put my dwell­ing place {Or my tabernacle} among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” (NIV). That the “dwelling place” mentioned in this promise is not the tabernacle in the wilder­ness which existed at that time is clear from Ezekiel 37:27 where the promised “tabernacle” is in the future: “My dwelling place [same word in Hebrew as in Lev.26:11] shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (NRSV)

These promises are fulfilled in Christ who, as Yahweh’s temple (John 2:19ff), is His dwelling place; and after Pentecost the church as Christ’s body has also become God’s temple. That is why Paul quotes those verses mentioned in the previous paragraph as having been fulfilled also in the church. They are referred to in 2Cor.6:16, “we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’.” But this translation (ESV; and others) has missed something important about this verse: the word translated as “among” is en, which has the basic meaning “in” (though it can sometimes also mean “among”). Thus RSV, NRSV, NKJV, etc, have, correctly, “I will live in them”. After all, since Paul states that we are God’s temple, God does not dwell “among” His temple, but in it.

But even “I will live in them” is unable to reflect strongly enough what Paul has written in 2Corinthians 6:16: enoikēsō en autois (ἐνοικήσω ἐν αὐτοῖς). This quotation is evidently Paul’s own in­spired rendering of the message in Lev.26:11 and Ezekiel 37:27. The spiritual point that he wants to emphasize here is that some­thing new has happened: God “indwells in” His people. This is emphasized by using en (ἐν, in) twice, as can be seen in the three Greek words quoted above, including the “en” in enoikēsō. The word oikeō (οἰκέω) by itself already means to “live, or dwell,” but the stronger form enoikeō (ἐνοικέω) is used instead. Enoikeō is the word used in Rom.8:11 and 2Tim.1:14, where not only this same word “indwell” is used but also the same emphatic structure “indwell in”. The message in both these verses is that God by His Spirit now actually lives within His people. No good translation would render these verses as “the Holy Spirit who dwells among us”.

Of course, the translation “indwells in us” may not sound like good con­ventional English, but then it probably did not sound like good conven­tional Greek either, but that very fact could serve to draw attention to the point that was being made. Paul is evidently strongly concerned to make the point that God indwells in us, as He did in Christ.

Paul was filled with wonder by the fact that Yahweh had done something in Christ that He had never done before, namely, to indwell a person—the person of Christ—“and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whet­her on earth or in heaven, mak­ing peace by the blood of his cross” (Col.1:20). In this way, Yahweh in His mercy accom­plished His eternal plan “to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). All this was so amazing that the Apostle burst forth into praise and ador­ation, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearch­able are his judg­ments and how inscrutable his ways” (Romans 11:33).

The term “the body of Christ” refers to both Christ’s physical body (Rom.7:4) as also to the church (1Cor.12:27; Eph.4:12), in particular to the physical body of its members (1Cor.6:19,20). Does this mean that there is some vital simil­arity in the way that God in­dwelt Christ bodily (Col.2:9) and how He indwells the body of believers so that it constitutes His temple (1Cor:3:16; 6:19)? We remember that Jesus also spoke of his own body as God’s temple (Jn.2:19-21).

“The Word (Logos, Memra) became flesh and dwelt (skēnoō) among us” (John 1:14). The English word “dwelt” does not bring out the idea of the “tent” or “taber­nacle” inherent in the Greek word. The reference to the “taberna­cle” (skēnē) is definitely intentional. If not, then the ordinary or general word for “dwell” or “live” (oikeō) could have been used instead of skēnoō, which is the verb form of skēnē, a tent or tabernacle. The significant point about the reference to the “tent” or “tabernacle” is that this was the place where Yahweh “dwelt”. It is this vitally important point which is lost in the trans­lation, but which is unfortunately practically impossible to bring out in any translation. Yet the use of this word would not have been lost on a Jewish reader or one familiar with the OT.

The word “tabernacle” is familiar to us from the OT where it referred to the tent in which God’s presence dwelt. For conven­ience we can refer to International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

The last sentence finds a fuller explanation in the following passage:

Another instance of Yahweh “dwelling” among His people is seen in Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the newly built temple, “But I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever” (2 Chronicles 6:2; cf. Acts 7:44-47). The temple was mod­eled on the taber­nacle or tent.

From all this, the message of John 1:14 should be perfectly clear: The Word (Memra, metonym for Yahweh) came in a human body in the person of Christ and “tabernacled” or “tented” among us. It is significant that in 2Corin­thians the Apostle twice speaks of the human body as a “tent”: “For we know that if the tent (skēnos), which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (5:1; also v.4). This “tent” is also the temple of God (1Cor:3:16; 6:19). The powerful and astonishing message of John 1:14 is that it was into such a “tent” as this that Yahweh came to “tabernacle among us”.

In view of all that we have discussed, the truth as stated in terms of the mono­theism of the Bible can be declared powerfully, simply, and yet pro­foundly in this way: Yahweh in all His “fullness” (plērōma, Jn.1:16; Col.1:19; 2:9), which in Scripture was ex­pressed through His Word from creation to revelation, chose in His divine mercy and wisdom to come into the world by indwelling the man Christ Jesus, and in him to “be with us” (Immanuel) and in this way to accomplish our eternal salvation.

This stands in sharp and clear contrast to trinitarian dogma which declares that a hitherto unheard of person called “God the Son” (and one who had no prior connection to the Word or Wisdom) was incarnate in Jesus, who thereby became “God-man,” “true God, true man”. The relationship of “God” and man in Jesus is described as a “hypostatic union,” a union of a personal kind, and is “ex­plained” by the impressive Latin term “communicatio idiomatum,” meaning that his “human and divine attributes and experiences, etc. might properly be interchanged” (Kelly, Doctrines, p.143, etc). Actually, this kind of “explanation” pro­duces more questions than answers for the thinking person. But it is often useful for stifling further questions and for talking vaguely about “mysteries”. The truth is that the real “mystery” is, Who is “God the Son”?, seeing that he is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures. It is now evident that he was brought into existence by the misinterpretation of “the Word” in John 1:1, which we shall examine in even greater depth and detail in the next chapter.

Suffice it to say here that the difference between the Biblical teaching and trinitarianism is as clear as day and night.