Christian Pure

What Does Logos Mean? The Greek Word Behind “the Word” in John 1

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • Logos (λόγος) is the Greek for “word”: a thing said and the thought it carries. It comes from the verb legō, “to say”.
  • The New Testament uses it 330 times, and the Berean Standard Bible gives it as “word” or “words” in about 200 of them, with “message”, “speech”, “saying” and “account” for most of the rest.
  • John 1:1 and 1:14 make it a name for Jesus, and Revelation 19:13 calls him “The Word of God”.
  • John’s Word stands close to the Old Testament’s “word of the LORD”. Greek thinkers from Heraclitus to the Stoics had used logos for centuries, and scholars still weigh how much John owes to each.
  • In rhetoric, logos is Aristotle’s appeal to reason, beside ethos and pathos.
  • Logos and rhema overlap, and 1 Peter 1:23 and 1:25 use both for the same message.

Logos (λόγος, said LOH-goss) is the ordinary Greek word for “word”: a thing said, together with the thought it carries. It comes from the verb legō, “to say”, and the New Testament uses it 330 times for a message, a saying, a report or a reckoning of accounts. In the opening of John’s Gospel it becomes a name for Jesus Christ: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1),…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • Berean Standard Bible, all quotations from Scripture, and its word tables for the English counts, public domain, bereanbible.com.
  • SBL Greek New Testament, word counts through MorphGNT, CC BY-SA, github.com/morphgnt/sblgnt.
  • G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark), entries λόγος, pp. 270–271, archive.org, and ῥῆμα, through STEPBible-Data (Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0).
  • The Septuagint, Psalm 32 (33):6 and 106 (107):20, Swete’s text, biblehub.com.
  • B. F. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John (London: John Murray, 1882; reprint 1892), Introduction pp. xv–xviii and pp. 2–4, archive.org.
  • John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed. (London: A. & C. Black, 1920), p. 133 and note 1, Heraclitus fragment 2 (DK B1), archive.org.
  • Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.134, translated by R. D. Hicks, LacusCurtius.
  • Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 146, in The Works of Philo Judaeus, translated by C. D. Yonge, vol. 2 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), p. 31, archive.org.
  • Justin Martyr, First Apology 46, translated in Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1, newadvent.org; Greek text in Bibliothek der Kirchenväter.
  • Augustine, Confessions 7.9.13–14, translated by J. G. Pilkington, newadvent.org.
  • The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch, translated by J. W. Etheridge, vol. 1 (London: Longman, 1862), p. 389, Exodus 19:17, archive.org.
  • Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.2, 1356a, translated by W. Rhys Roberts, classics.mit.edu; Greek text at Perseus.
  • Britannica Editors, “Logos”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, britannica.com.
  • “Logos”, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, merriam-webster.com.
  • “What is the Logos?”, GotQuestions.org, gotquestions.org.
  • “Two Important Greek Words in the Bible: Logos and Rhema”, Bibles for America Blog, blog.biblesforamerica.org.

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