have been the force of this key term, the Word (ὁ λόγος), for the evangelist’s readers? Its general use to indicate an instance of a person’s self-expression in verbal activity should remain determinative even when we are forced, as here, to see the term employed analogously or metaphorically in relation to the divine. In other words, the basic force of ‘the Word’ is God’s self-expression. Yet there may well have been further connotations deriving from a variety of usages with which the evangelist