Josiah D. Hall
This chapter considers John 1:1–18 to establish the basic contours of John’s Christology. It is argued that John depicts Jesus as an extension of the one God’s divinity embodied in a human person. John generates this depiction by comparing Jesus to other figures who throughout Jewish literature functioned as “divine extensions” through whom the God of Israel manifested his presence. Simultaneously, John skillfully employs common features of epiphanic narratives to foreshadow that the plot of his narrative will concern whether humanity recognizes Jesus as the enfleshed divine presence, that is the one in whom the otherwise unseen God becomes visible.