Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 1:3

Πάντα διʼ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο. The connection is obvious: the Word was with God in the beginning, but not as an idle, inefficacious existence, who only then for the first time put forth energy when He came into the world. On the contrary, He was the source of all activity and life. “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not even one thing made which was made.”

The double sentence, positive and negative, is characteristic of John and lends emphasis to the statement. πάντα, “grande verbum quo mundus, i.e., universitas rerum factarum denotatur” (Bengel). The more accurate expression for “all things” taken as a whole and not severally is τὰ πάντα (Colossians 1:16) or τὸ πᾶν; and, as the negative clause of this verse indicates, created things are here looked at in their variety and multiplicity. Cf. Marcus Aurelius, iv. 23, ὧ φύσις, ἐκ σοῦ πᾶντα, ἐν σοὶ πάντα, εἰς σέ σοί πάντα, εἰς σέ πάντα. διʼ αὐτοῦ. The Word was the Agent in creation. But it is to be observed that the same preposition is used of God in the same connection in Romans 11:36, ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ διʼ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα; and in Colossians 1:16 the same writer uses the same prepositions not of the Father but of the Son when he says: τὰ μάντα διʼ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 Paul distinguishes between the Father as the primal source of all things and the Son as the actual Creator. (In Greek philosophy the problem was to ascertain by whom, of what, and in view of what the world was made; ὑφʼ οὗ, ἐξ οὗ, πρὸς ὅ. And Lücke quotes a significant sentence from Philo (De Cherub., 35): εὑρήσεις αἴτιον μὲν αὐτοῦ (τοῦ κόσμου) τὸν θεὸν, ὑφʼ οὗ γέγονεν · ὓλην δὲ τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα, ἐξ ὧν συνεκράθη · ὄργανον δὲ λόγον θεοῦ διʼ οὗ κατεσκευάσθη ·)

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 1:3

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