Friday DIVE – The Greek Background of The WORD | FD20251226

 

 

 

To believe the Gospel is to believe that the problem (between God and Man) has been solved, in Christ.

However, to believe the Gospel involves believing that Jesus of Nazareth was God — that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed Emmanuel (God with Us).

That was the point Apostle John was making in his biography of Jesus (which we refer to as the Gospel of John).

That belief that Jesus of Nazareth WAS God (and IS God) is the core, essential belief of the Christian faith.   It is a truth we must believe if we are Christians.

So, in this session, I want us to continue our look at that truth … by taking another look at John 1:1-2.

• (NKJV)  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
• (NLT)  In the beginning the Word already existed.  The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
• (NET)   In the beginning^[a]  was the Word, and the Word was with God,  ^[b]and the Word was fully God.^[c] 

 

John 1:1  tn  Or “and what God was the Word was.”  Colwell’s Rule is often invoked to support the translation of θεός (theos) as definite (“God”) rather than indefinite (“a god”) here.  However, Colwell’s Rule merely permits,  but does not demand,  that a predicate nominative ahead of an equative verb be translated as definite rather than indefinite.  Furthermore, Colwell’s Rule did not deal with a third possibility, that the anarthrous predicate noun may have more of a qualitative nuance when placed ahead of the verb.  A definite meaning for the term is reflected in the traditional rendering “the word was God.” From a technical standpoint, though, it is preferable to see a qualitative aspect to anarthrous θεός in John 1:1c (ExSyn 266-69).  Translations like the NEB, REB, and Moffatt are helpful in capturing the sense in John 1:1c, that the Word was fully deity in essence (just as much God as God the Father).  However, in contemporary English “the Word was divine” (Moffatt) does not quite catch the meaning since “divine” as a descriptive term is not used in contemporary English exclusively of God.  The translation “what God was the Word was” is perhaps the most nuanced rendering, conveying that everything God was in essence, the Word was too.  This points to unity of essence between the Father and the Son without equating the persons.  However, in surveying a number of native speakers of English, some of whom had formal theological training and some of whom did not, the editors concluded that the fine distinctions indicated by “what God was the Word was” would not be understood by many contemporary readers. Thus the translation “the Word was fully God” was chosen because it is more likely to convey the meaning to the average English reader that the Logos (which “became flesh and took up residence among us” in John 1:14 and is thereafter identified in the Fourth Gospel as Jesus) is one in essence with God the Father.  The previous phrase, “the Word was with God,” shows that the Logos is distinct in person from God the Father.     sn And the Word was fully God.    John’s theology consistently drives toward the conclusion that Jesus, the incarnate Word, is just as much God as God the Father.  This can be seen, for example, in texts like John 10:30 (“The Father and I are one”), John 17:11 (“so that they may be one just as we are one”), and John 8:58 (“before Abraham came into existence, I am”).   The construction in John 1:1c does not equate the Word with the person of God (this is ruled out by John 1:1b, “the Word was with God”); rather it affirms that the Word and God are one in essence.  

 

According to William Barclay …

 

It was not long before the Christian church was confronted with a very basic problem.    By A.D. 60, there must have been a hundred thousand Greeks  in the church  for every Jew who was a Christian.  Jewish ideas were completely strange to the Greeks.  To take but one outstanding example, the Greeks had never heard of the Messiah.  The very centre of Jewish expectation, the coming of the Messiah, was an idea that was quite alien to the Greeks.  The very category in which the Jewish Christians conceived and presented Jesus meant nothing to them.  Here then was the problem — how was Christianity to be presented to the Greek world?

The problem was how to present Christianity in such a way that a Greek would understand.

Round about the year A.D. 100, there was a man in Ephesus who was fascinated by that problem.  His name was John.  He lived in a Greek city.  He dealt with Greeks to whom Jewish ideas were strange and unintelligible and even uncouth. How could he find a way to present Christianity to these Greeks in a way that they would welcome and understand?  Suddenly the solution flashed upon him.  In both Greek and Jewish thought there existed the conception of  the word.  Here was something which could be worked out to meet the double world of Greek Jew.  Here was something which belonged to the heritage of both races and that both could understand.

Let us then begin by looking at the two backgrounds of the conception of  the word.

 

The Jewish Background

In the Jewish background four strands contributed something to the idea of the word.

(i) To the Jew a word was far more than a mere sound; it was something which had an independent existence and which actually did things.  As Professor John Paterson has put it: “The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive … It was a unit of energy charged with power.  It flies like a bullet to its billet.”  For that very reason the Hebrew was sparing of words.  Hebrew speech has fewer than 10,000; Greek speech has 200,000.

• •   To the eastern people a word is not merely a sound; it is a power which does things.  The word was like a thing which could be sent out to do things and which could be brought back again.

(ii) Of that general idea of  the power of words, the Old Testament is full.

• • We see the word of God in action in the Creation story.
  • At every stage of it we read:  “And God said…” (Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:11).  The word of God is the creating power.  Again and again we get this idea of the creative, acting, dynamic word of God.
  • “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made” (Psalms 33:6).
  • “He sent forth his word and healed them” (Psalms 107:20). “He sent forth his commands to the earth; his word runs swiftly” (Psalms 147:15).
  • “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).
  • “Is not my word like fire, and, says the Lord, like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jeremiah 23:29).

Everywhere in the Old Testament there is this idea of the powerful, creative word.  Even men’s words have a kind of dynamic activity; how much more must it be so with God?

(iii) The Scriptures of the Old Testament had to be translated into this language that the people could understand, and these translations were called the Targums.  In the synagogue the scriptures were read in the original Hebrew, but then they were translated into Aramaic and Targums were used as translations.

The Targums were produced in a time when men were fascinated by the transcendence of God and could think of nothing but the distance and the difference of God.  Because of that the men who made the Targums were very much afraid of attributing human thoughts and feelings and actions to God.  To put it in technical language, they made every effort to avoid anthropomorphism in speaking of him.

Now the Old Testament regularly speaks of God in a human way; and wherever they met a thing like that the Targums substituted the word of God  for  the name of God.  Let us see how this custom worked.

• • In Exodus 19:17,  we read that “Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God.”  The Targums thought that was too human a way to speak of God, so they said that Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet the word of God.
  • Deuteronomy 9:3 says that God is a consuming fire, but the Targums translated it that the word of God is a consuming fire.

In the Jonathan Targum the phrase the word of God occurs no fewer than about 320 times.  It is quite true that it is simply a periphrasis for the name of God; but the fact remains that the word of God became one of the commonest forms of Jewish expression.  It was a phrase which any devout Jew would recognize because he heard it so often in the synagogue when scripture was read.  Every Jew was used to speaking of the Memra, the word of God.

 

(iv) At this stage we must look more fully at something we already began to look at in the introduction.  The Greek term for word is Logos; but Logos does not only mean word; it also means reason.  For John, and for all the great thinkers who made use of this idea, these two meanings were always closely intertwined.  Whenever they used Logos the twin ideas of the Word of God and the Reason of God were in their minds.

The Jews had a type of literature called The Wisdom Literature which was the concentrated wisdom of sages.  It is not usually speculative and philosophical, but practical wisdom for the living and management of life.  In the Old Testament, the great example of Wisdom Literature is the Book of Proverbs.  In this book, there are certain passages which give a mysterious life-giving and eternal power to Wisdom (Sophia).  In these passages, Wisdom has been, as it were, personified, and is thought of as the eternal agent and co-worker of God.  There are three main passages.

The first is Proverbs 3:13-26.  Out of that passage we may specially note Proverbs 3:18-20 .

• • • • We remember that Logos means Word and also means Reason.  We have already seen how the Jews thought of the powerful and creative word of God.  Here we see the other side beginning to emerge.  Wisdom is God’s agent in enlightenment and in creation; and Wisdom and Reason are very much the same thing.  We have seen how important Logos was in the sense of Word;  now we see it beginning to be important in the sense of Wisdom or Reason.

The second important passage is Proverbs 4:5-13.

• • • • The Word is the light of men and Wisdom is the light of men. The two ideas are amalgamating with each other rapidly now.

The most important passage of all is in Proverbs 8:1-9; Proverbs 2:1-22.  In it we may specially note Proverbs 8:22-30.

• • • • When we read that passage there is echo after echo of what John says of the word in the John 1:1-51.  Wisdom had that eternal existence, that light-giving function, that creative power which John attributed to the word, the Logos, with which he identified Jesus Christ.

The development of this idea of wisdom did not stop here.  Between the Old and the New Testament, men went on producing this kind of writing called Wisdom Literature.  It had so much concentrated wisdom in it and drew so much from the experience of wise men that it was a priceless guide for life.  In particular, two very great books were written, which are included in the Apocrypha and which it will do any man’s soul good to read.

(a) The first is called The Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, or, as it is better known, Ecclesiasticus.  It too makes much of this great conception of the creative and eternal wisdom of God.  Here again we find wisdom as the eternal, creative power which was at God’s side in the days of creation and the beginning of time.

(b) Ecclesiasticus was written in Palestine about the year 100 B.C.; and at almost the same time an equally great book was written in Alexandria in Egypt, called The Wisdom of Solomon.  In it there is the greatest of all pictures of wisdom.

• • • Wisdom is the treasure which men use to become the friends of God (Wis.7:14).
    • Wisdom is the artificer of all things (Wis.7:22).
    • She is the breath of the power of God and a pure effluence flowing from the Almighty (Wis.7:25).
    • She can do all things and makes all things new (Wis.7:27).

But the writer does more than talk about wisdom; he equates wisdom and the word. To him the two ideas are the same.  He can talk of the wisdom of God and the word of God in the same sentence and with the same meaning. When he prays to God, his address is:

O God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things with thy word, and ordained man through thy wisdom (Wis.9:2).

He can speak of the word almost as John was to speak:

“For while all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction, and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it touched the heaven but it stood upon the earth (Wis.18:14-16).

To the writer of the Book of Wisdom, wisdom was God’s eternal, creative, illuminating power; wisdom and the word were one and the same. It was wisdom and the word who were God’s instruments and agents in creation and who ever bring the will of God to the mind and heart of man.

So when John was searching for a way in which he could commend Christianity he found in his own faith and in the record of his own people the idea of the word,

• 1. the ordinary word which is in itself not merely a sound, but a dynamic thing,
  2. the word of God by which God created the world,
  3. the word of the Targums which expressed the very idea of the action of God,
  4. the wisdom of the Wisdom Literature which was the eternal creative and illuminating power of God.

So John said: “If you wish to see that word of God, if you wish to see the creative power of God, if you wish to see that word which brought the world into existence and which gives light and life to every man, look at Jesus Christ.  In him the word of God came among you.“

 

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The Greek Background     

We began by seeing that John’s problem was not that of presenting Christianity to the Jewish world, but of presenting it to the Greek world.  How then did this idea of the Word fit into Greek thought?  It was already there waiting to be used.  In Greek thought, the idea of the Word began away back about 560 B.C., and, strangely enough, in Ephesus where the Fourth Gospel was written.

In 560 B.C., there was an Ephesian philosopher called Heraclitus whose basic idea was that everything is in a state of flux.  Everything was changing from day to day and from moment to moment.  His famous illustration was that it was impossible to step twice into the same river.  You step into a river; you step out; you step in again; but you do not step into the same river, for the water has flowed on and it is a different river.  To Heraclitus everything was like that, everything was in a constantly changing state of flux.  But if that be so, why was life not complete chaos?  How can there be any sense in a world where there was constant flux and change?

The answer of Heraclitus was: all this change and flux was not haphazard; it was controlled and ordered, following a continuous pattern all the time; and that which controlled the pattern was the Logos ( G3056) , the Word, the reason of God.  To Heraclitus, the Logos ( G3056) was the principle of order under which the universe continued to exist.  Heraclitus went further.  He held that not only was there a pattern in the physical world; there was also a pattern in the world of events.  He held that nothing moved with aimless feet; in all life and in all the events of life there was a purpose, a plan and a design.  And what was it that controlled events?  Once again, the answer was Logos ( G3056).

Heraclitus took the matter even nearer home.  What was it that in us individually told us the difference between right and wrong?  What made us able to think and to reason?  What enabled us to choose aright and to recognize the truth when we saw it?  Once again Heraclitus gave the same answer.  What gave a man reason and knowledge of the truth and the ability to judge between right and wrong was the Logos  of God dwelling within him.  Heraclitus held that in the world of nature and events “all things happen according to the Logos, ” and that in the individual man “the Logos  is the judge of truth.”  The Logos  was nothing less than the mind of God controlling the world and every man in it.

Once the Greeks had discovered this idea they never let it go.   It fascinated them, especially the Stoics.  The Stoics were always left in wondering amazement at the order of the world.  Order always implies a mind.  The Stoics asked: “What keeps the stars in their courses?  What makes the tides ebb and flow?  What makes day and night come in unalterable order?  What brings the seasons round at their appointed times?”  And they answered; “All things are controlled by the Logos of God.”   The Logos is the power which puts sense into the world, the power which makes the world an order instead of a chaos, the power which set the world going and keeps it going in its perfect order.  “The Logos ,” said the Stoics, “pervades all things.”

There is still another name in the Greek world at which we must look.  In Alexandria, there was a Jew called Philo who had made it the business of his life to study the wisdom of two worlds, the Jewish and the Greek.  No man ever knew the Jewish scriptures as he knew them; and no Jew ever knew the greatness of Greek thought as he knew it.  He too knew and used and loved this idea of the Logos, the word, the reason  of God.  He held that the Logos  was the oldest thing in the world and the instrument  through which God had made the world.  He said that the Logos was the thought of God stamped upon the universe; he talked about the Logos  by which God made the world and all things; he said that God, the pilot of the universe, held the Logos as a tiller and with it steered all things.  He said that man’s mind was stamped also with the Logos, that the Logos was what gave a man reason, the power to think and the power to know.  He said that the Logos was the intermediary between the world and God and that the Logos  was the priest who set the soul before God.

Greek thought knew all about the Logos; it saw in the Logos the creating and guiding and directing power of God, the power which made the universe and kept it going.   So John came to the Greeks and said: “For centuries you have been thinking and writing and dreaming about the Logos, the power which made the world, the power which keeps the order of the world, the power by which men think and reason and know, the power by which men come into contact with God.  Jesus is that Logos come down to earth.”  “The Word,” said John, “became flesh.”  We could put it another way — “The Mind of God became a person.”

 

Both Jew And Greek

Slowly the Jews and Greeks had thought their way to the conception of the Logos, the Mind of God which made the world and makes sense of it.  So John went out to Jews and Greeks to tell them that in Jesus Christ this creating, illuminating, controlling, sustaining mind of God had come to earth.  He came to tell them that men need no longer guess and grope; all that they had to do was to look at Jesus and see the Mind of God.

 

The Eternal Word (John 1:1-2)

1:1-2 When the world had its beginning, the word was already there; and the word was with God; and the word was God. This word was in the beginning with God. 

The beginning of John’s gospel is of such importance and of such depth of meaning that we must study it almost verse by verse.  It is John’s great thought that Jesus is none other than God’s creative and life-giving and light-giving  Word, that Jesus is the power of God which created the world and the reason of God which sustains the world come to earth in human and bodily form.

Here at the beginning John says three things about the word; which is to say that he says three things about Jesus.

(i) The word was already there at the very beginning of things.   John’s thought is going back to the first verse of the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).  What John is saying is this — the Word is not one of the created things; the word was there before creation.  the Word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the Word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and the world began.  John was thinking of what is known as the preexistence of Christ.

In many ways this idea of preexistence is very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to grasp.  But it does mean one very simple, very practical, and very tremendous thing.   If the word was with God before time began, if God’s word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always like Jesus.

Sometimes we tend to think of God as stern and avenging; and we tend to think that something Jesus did changed God’s anger into love and altered his attitude to men.  The New Testament knows nothing of that idea.  The whole New Testament tells us, this passage of John especially, that.  What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.

We may well ask, “What then about some of the things that we read in the Old Testament?  What about the passages which speak about commandments of God to wipe out whole cities and to destroy men, women and children?  What of the anger and the destructiveness and the jealousy  of God  that we sometimes read of in the older parts of Scripture?”  The answer is this — it is not God who has changed;  it is men’s knowledge of him that has changed.  Men wrote these things because they did not know any better; that was the stage which their knowledge of God had reached.

When a child is learning any subject, he has to learn it stage by stage.  He does not begin with full knowledge; he begins with what he can grasp and goes on to more and more.  When he begins music appreciation, he does not start with a Bach Prelude and Fugue;  he starts with something much more simple; and goes through stage after stage until his knowledge grows. It was that way with men and God.  They could only grasp and understand God’s nature and his ways in part.  It was only when Jesus came that they saw fully and completely what God has always been like.

It is told that a little girl was once confronted with some of the more bloodthirsty and savage parts of the Old Testament.  Her comment was: “But that happened before God became a Christian!”  If we may so put it with all reverence, when John says that the Word was always there, he is saying that God was always a Christian.  He is telling us that God was and is and ever shall be like Jesus; but men could never know and realize that until Jesus came.

(ii) John goes on to say that the Word was with God.  What does he mean by that?  He means that there has always been the closest connection between the Word and God.  Let us put that in another and a simpler way — there has always been the most intimate connection between Jesus and God.  That means no one can tell us  what God is like, what God’s will is for us, what God’s love and heart and mind are like, as Jesus can.

Let us take a simple human analogy.  If we want to know what someone really thinks and feels about something, and if we are unable to approach the person ourselves, we do not go to someone who is merely an acquaintance of that person, to someone who has known him only a short time; we go to someone whom we know to be an intimate friend of many years’ standing.  We know that he will really be able to interpret the mind and the heart of the other person to us.

It is something like that that John is saying about Jesus.  He is saying that Jesus has always been with God.  Let us use every human language because it is the only language we can use.  John is saying that Jesus is so intimate with God that God has no secrets from Him; and that, therefore, Jesus is the one person in all the universe who can reveal to us what God is like and how God feels towards us.

(iii) Finally, John says that the word was God.   This is a difficult saying for us to understand, and it is difficult because  Greek, in which John wrote, had a different way of saying things from the way in which English speaks.  When Greek uses a noun it almost always uses the definite article with it.  The Greek for God is theos (G2316) and the definite article is ho (G3588).  When Greek speaks about God it does not simply say theos; it says ho theos.  Now when Greek does not use the definite article with a noun that noun becomes much more like an adjective.   John did not say that the Word was ho (G3588) theos ( G2316) ; that would have been to say that the Word was identical with God.  He said that the Word was theos — without the definite article — which means that the Word was, we might say, of the very same character and quality and essence and being as God.

When John said the Word was God he was not saying that Jesus was identical with God; he was saying that Jesus was so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in him we perfectly see what God is like.

So right at the beginning of his gospel John lays it down that in Jesus, and in him alone, there is perfectly revealed to men all that God always was and always will be, and all that he feels towards and desires for men.

 

 

Philippians 2:5-8     Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, being in the form of God, did not consider it ^[b]robbery ^{[something to be held onto]} to be equal with God, ⁷ but ^[c]made Himself of no reputation ^{[emptied Himself of His privileges]}, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.  ⁸ And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 

Colossians 1:15-17  ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  ¹⁶ For by (in) Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or ^[e]principalities or ^[f]powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.  ¹⁷ And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 

• in Him all things consist …  Cf. Acts 17:28

Colossians 1:19-20  ¹⁹ For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, ²⁰ and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

 

John 1:1-14   In the beginning  was the Word, and the Word was with God, and  the Word was God.  ² He was in the beginning with God.   

 

• Genesis 1:1  In the beginning God  created the heavens and the earth.

 

³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 

 

• Genesis 1:1  In the beginning God  created the heavens and the earth.

⁴ In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  ⁵ And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not ^[a]comprehend^[overcome] it. 

⁶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  ⁷ This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.  ⁸ He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.  ⁹ That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.  

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.  

¹¹ He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.  ¹² But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:  ¹³ who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴ And the Word became 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.  

 

John 8:58  Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”   

• NB:  The Israelites did not call the Eternal One as “God” but as “I Am”.
• So, when Jesus says “I Am”, they know He is identifying Himself as God.
• Notice the next verse …
• John 8:59     Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going^[a] through the midst of them, and so passed by.  
• The Jews took up stones.   Why?   To stone Jesus.  Why?
• Let’s notice another instance when Jews threatened to stone Jesus …
  • John 10:27-38   My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. ²⁸ And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.  ³⁰ I and My Father are one.”  

³¹ Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him.  ³² Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father.  For which of those works do you stone Me?”  

³³ The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”   

³⁴ Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods” ’?  ³⁵ If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), ³⁶ do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?  ³⁷ If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; ³⁸ but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”  

 

John 20:24-29, 30-31

²⁴ Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.  ²⁵ The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”  

So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

²⁶ And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them.  Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!”   ²⁷ Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”  

²⁸ And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”

²⁹ Jesus said to him, ^[f]“Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  

³⁰ And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; ³¹ but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.