“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
What was the Apostle John thinking of when he spoke of “the Word”? What word? What did he mean? These questions would be asked by a person reading the Gospel for the first time, whereas most of us as Christians have learned to take it for granted and not ask straight questions. John was not just an historian, but also a mystic, and in his Gospel he hid many things from direct view, and here we have one such example of “hidden manna”. (Rev.2:17)
John was referring back to the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1. It reads something like this – “In the beginning created God ETH the heavens and ETH the earth.” The strange little particle ETH occurs over 7,000 times in the OT, but is never translated. It is just a part of Hebrew Grammar, a “pointing” word, directing us to the action of the verb. But there is more here than just grammar.
ETH is composed of the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph and Tau. And who is “the first and the last”? Does not John tell us at the end of his revelation? (22:13) “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” The “Alpha and Omega” is the Greek way of saying “the Aleph and the Tau”. And where in Gen.1:1 is this word ETH found? Right next to the Hebrew word ELOHIM, God. Hence this word is with God by its position, and is God by its composition.
“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” (Isaiah 44:6) Alongside of Him there is no other god, as in the Genesis text.
All Hebrew letters are pictographs. Aleph is an ox, the symbol of strength, Tau is the sign of a cross, the symbol of weakness. There is therefore a sermon contained within these two letters. Here it is in a nutshell –
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)
