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<\/em>, for instance), but in the past I\u2019ve avoided preaching on it, perhaps out of a concern that I might not be able to resist going into more detail than anyone in the congregation was likely to find interesting.<\/p>\nOne subject related to the prologue that I\u2019ve looked at before<\/a>, but probably won\u2019t bring up in the sermon, is the question of when<\/em> the author of this Gospel believed the incarnation had taken place. Scholars as different as Reginald Fuller, Charles Talbert and Frances Watson have all suggested that, whereas the classic canonical reading understands the decisive moment to be Jesus\u2019 conception<\/em>, in the context of the Gospel of John, it is more natural to understand the decisive moment to have been at Jesus\u2019 baptism<\/em>.<\/p>\n This was a common interpretation among early Christians (although rejected by developing orthodoxy, it was maintained in the Jewish-Christian<\/a> Pseudo-Clementine literature, which regularly uses Johannine language in reference to Jesus). But more importantly than that, in the context of Jewish and developing Christian thought in the time when this Gospel was written, concepts like Word, Wisdom and Spirit were not clearly distinguished, and so many readers would have found \u201cthe Word became flesh\u201d (John 1:14<\/a>) a natural equivalent to what we are told slightly later, namely that the Spirit descended and remained on him (John 1:32<\/a>).<\/p>\n
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