...During their famous mission to "Great Moravia, "the two brothers...were faced with strong opposition...that scripture could be read only in three languages --Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Indeed, their entire missionary endeavour was based upon the translation...thus created "Church Slavonic"
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In a "prologue' in verse (Proglas), which preceded their translation of the Gospel Lectionary, they expressed the meaning of their mission by developing a theology of the word.(1) Both brothers read scripture in the light of the Greek patristic tradition in which they were trained. It inspired that which is often referred to as the "Cyrillo-Mefhodian" ideology, based on the belief that the Christian faith must become incarned (or indigenised) in order to produce authentic fruits of dynamic human cooperation with God in building up a Christian society and a Christian culture.
The Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father Full of grace and truth.
Very often we tend to consider John's prologue as somehow peripheral to the basic content of the gospel, as if it was a somehow arlificial and dated attempt at explaining philosophically the identity of Christ. Logos, we are told, is a concept coming from Stoic philosophy. It is foreign to Hebrew thought and, therefore, does not belong to the original Christian gospel. Most modern exegets agree, however, that, although St John deliberately uses a term that was familiar in the Hellenistic world, where early Christian communities were beginning to spread, he is basically inspired in his Logos-theology by the image of divine wisdom in Proverbs 8: The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works.
He established me before time was in the beginning,
before he made the earth:
Even before he made the depths; before the
fountains of water came forth;
Before the mountains were settled, and before all
hills, he begets me;
The Lord made countries and uninhabited tracts,
and the highest inhabited parts of the world.
When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him,
And when he prepared his throne upon the winds:
And when he strengthened the clouds above;
and when he secured the fountains of the earth;
And when he strengthened the foundations of the earth:
I was with him, suiting myself to him,
I was that wherein he took delight,
And daily I rejoiced in his presence continually.
For he rejoiced when he had completed the world, and rejoiced among the children of men.
(Prov. 8:22-31, LXX) The synoptic gospels begin their narratives with historical events: the birth of Jesus, his baptism and the beginning of his preaching ministry. In contrast, John starts with a deliberate parallel between the story of creation and that of the new creation in Christ: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" (Gen. 1:1). "In the beginning was the Logos" (John 1:1).
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