The fourth thing the rabbis taught about the memra was that the memra was the agent or the means by which God became visible throughout the pages of the Old Testament. In Christian theology, this phenomenon is called a “theophany.” A theophany is the visible manifestation of God that occurred throughout the history of the Old Testament.
In verse 14, John wrote: And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us ...The Word, that in verse 1 was in the beginning with God–always was with God, and always was God–at a certain point in human history, took on visible form. But this time He did not come in the form of a light, fire, or cloud; rather, He came in the form of flesh. He became human; He became man, and Yeshua, as a man, was the visible manifestation of God’s presence.
John went on to say: He dwelt among us. The term that John used which is translated by the English term “dwell” is not the regular Greek term for “dwelling.” Rather, it is a Greek term that was actually borrowed from the Hebrew, skeinei....this is the term John used here. Literally, it does not mean, “to dwell,” but “to tabernacle.” It has its origins in the account of Exodus 40, where the Shechinah Glory, in the form of a visible cloud, took up its residence within the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle. In Hebrew, mishkan is the same Hebrew root as Shechinah.
So for the next several centuries, the Shechinah Glory “tabernacled” with the people of Israel until it left in the days of Ezekiel 8-11. Now, the Shechinah Glory has reappeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Once again, for a period of time, He “tabernacled” among us. Like the rabbis, John also connected the Shechinah with the glory of God; for he goes on to say in verse 14: ... (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.
Yeshua was that new Shechinah Glory: He was the visible manifestation of God’s presence.
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