In John 1:14, we read that the logos (word) became (egeneto) flesh (sarx) and tabernacled ( eskēnōsen) among his people as God did formerly in the tabernacle. Like most scholars, I judge this to be a clear reference to the incarnation of a pre-existent divine being in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. However, other scholars that I have listed in the bullet points below read this verse in a “possessionist” sense where the logos united with the human Jesus at his baptism (cf. John 1:32-34). While there is evidence in Patristic literature and the Nag Hammadi Library that John’s Gospel was read as suggesting that Jesus’s body was merely a vessel for a divine entity (e.g. Christ aeon), I do not see any indication from the text of John that the baptism was the moment when the logos entered into Jesus. Rather, John…
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