Dr. Dan has sometimes
noted that when John speaks of "The word becoming flesh", he uses the
Greek word Sarx
(Sarx), and that we could approximate this by "blood" or "guts." As a Human Biologist,
I immediately think in terms of the word sarcoplasm, and both the
Shorter Oxford and the American Medical Dictionary point more towards "muscle" than to "blood" or "guts," what indeed our German
friends would call "Fleisch."
My Greek dictionary suggests that Sarx is indeed flesh (as
stripped of the skin), i.e. (strictly) the meat of an animal (as
food). As Dan has pointed out, by extension it can be viewed as
the body, as opposed to the soul or spirit, and by
implication human nature (with all its frailties, physical and
moral). I personally like the
idea that sarx is the fleshy part of the body. This implies that
when God became flesh, he/she developed muscle, to become the active word (or "verbe," as La Bible de
Jérusalem puts it).
Another
anatomical term has emerged in recent weeks- swma (soma). To the Biologist, the
soma is the totality of the
body other than the germ cells. This underlines Paul's argument
that the body of Christ has many members, and all of us must contribute
to its functioning. It also has the interesting imagery that
whereas the risen Christ is found in our soma, the underlying source of
creation is elsewhere.
|