The word Logos, which in the King James Version and many other versions of the New Testament is rendered "the Word," should never, according to an eminent philologist, have been translated out of the Greek, for he maintains that no other language possesses an exact equivalent for it. Recognizing this fact, Dr. James Moffat of Oxford University, one of the most recent translators of the New Testament, leaves the word Logos in its original form, thus throwing upon the reader the responsibility of ascertaining its meaning. In his translation, the first three verses of the gospel of John are thus rendered: "The Logos existed in the very beginning, the Logos was with God, the Logos was divine. He was with God in the very beginning: through him all existence came into being, no existence came into being apart from him."
In the search after the true meaning of this key word of the fourth gospel, one finds that the thinkers of ancient Greece had by slow degrees evolved a threefold conception of being which they finally symbolized by the single word Logos. This word thus became a technical term of Greek philosophy, and its three definitions, all of which are complementary to each other and each of which is necessary to an understanding of the whole, are, when reduced to a simple and comprehensive statement, cause, effect, and understanding.
While the Greek use of the word was without doubt more intellectual than spiritual, still the beloved disciple in recording the life of Jesus Christ evidently saw in it the most appropriate term with which to convey his idea of spiritual causation. In the first verse of John's gospel it will be noticed that both in the authorized and in the revised version not only does it say that "the Word was with God," but "the Word was God." In the fourteenth verse, however, we read, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."
