nothing.”12 Clearly their significance must be seen in the light of what follows. Some hold that these words “apparently mean nothing other than what John 1:1 expresses in the form Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος (‘In the beginning was the word’).”13 Plummer accepted this connection with a recognized difference; in John 1:1 “the point is that the Word existed before the creation; here that the Word existed before the Incarnation.”14 But in view of the four parallel clauses, such a time reference is not