EXALTED PROSE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT (JOHN 1:1-5)

We often divide writing into poetry and prose. But there is a third category which falls somewhere in between these two categories, and it has been called “Exalted Prose.” There are many examples of this type of writing in the New Testament, especially in the writings of John and Paul. I will just concentrate on one passage in the prologue to John's Gospel, John 1:1-5. Most translations will render John 1 as prose; however, the Jerusalem Bible indents it as poetry instead. This demonstrates the intermediate nature of this whole chapter.

As I have stressed in several of my posts, the defining characteristic of most Hebrew poetry is the repetition of words and thoughts in going from one line to the next. This characteristic can also be seen in the exalted prose found in the first chapter of John as well as in some of Jesus' extended discourses to the apostles found only in John's Gospel. And it explains why some readers are a bit put off by John's writing because of the seemingly unnecessary repetition found in it. This repetition actually reflects strongly the influence of Hebrew poetry found in the Old Testament. I have attempted to highlight this repetition in the spacing of the following lines, rendered as in the NRSV:

John 1:1-2     “In the beginning was the Word,

                                                    and the Word was with God,

                                                    and the Word was         God.

                        He was in the beginning with God.”

Lines 1a and 1b are a form of “stair-step parallelism” in which the end of the first line is repeated at the start of the next line.

Lines 1b and 1c present an interesting variation on “incomplete parallelism,” another form of OT poetry.

Then, verse 2 actually echoes the thought in combined John 1:1a-b.

And finally, the whole of these two verses can be recast in the form of “introverted, or chiastic, parallelism” in which an idea advances and then backs up on itself to the starting point:

    A. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

        B. and the Word was God.

    A'. He was in the beginning with God.”

Now the reader can see that the clear central thought has been saved for the amazing proclamation in Section B. This explains why John has not built up to the grand climax in the last line, as we would do. Instead, he has in fact bracketed his main point with the two lesser statements on either side.

John 1:3a “All things came into being                          through him and,

                without him                              not one thing came into being”

The second line of this verse does two interesting things. For one thing, its first phrase echoes the last part of line 1 while the second final phrase of line 2 matches the first phrase in line 1. This makes it equivalent to an introverted poetic parallelism. But at the same time, the second line expresses the idea in the first line using negatives. This is called antithetic parallelism.

John 1:3b-5

    “What has come into being in him was life

                                                      and the life was the light of the world.

                                                                                The light shines in the darkness

                                                                                                        and the darkness did not overcome it.”

And so John concludes with the clearest example in the Bible of “stair-step parallelism."