<p>1:11 <em>He came to his own people- </em>This may specifically refer to the Lord's rejection by &quot;His own&quot; at Nazareth. The context here speaks of both the word which was &ldquo;in the beginning&rdquo;, and of Jesus personally, whom John had witnessed to. Acts 10:36-38 RV puts this in simpler terms: &ldquo;He sent the word unto the children of Israel, preaching the gospel of peace by in Jesus Christ&hellip; that word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; even Jesus of Nazareth&rdquo;. The sequence and similarity of thought between this and John 1:1-8 is so great that one can only assume that John is deliberately alluding to Luke&rsquo;s record in Acts, and stating the same truths in spiritual terms: &lsquo;In the beginning was the word of the Gospel which was with God. And then John came witnessing to Jesus, and then the word as it was in Jesus came to the Jews&hellip;&rsquo;. Paul pleaded with his fellow Jews: &ldquo;Brethren, children of the stock of Abraham&hellip;to us is the word of this salvation sent forth&rdquo; (Acts 13:26 RV). Yet he also wrote that in the fullness of time, God &ldquo;sent forth His Son, made of a woman&rdquo; (Gal. 4:4). The Son of God was &ldquo;the word of this salvation&rdquo; / Jesus. &ldquo;The word was God&rdquo;.</p><p><em>And they of his own people rejected him</em>- The Greek specifically avoids stating that all His own people rejected Him; for the faithful minority accepted Him. &quot;His own people&quot; is a clear statement of the Lord's humanity, wedged within a context which is a hymn to His greatness. Frequently in the New Testament we meet this kind of juxtapositioning of language emphasizing Christ's humanity alongside terms which emphasize His Divine side. This is typical Hebraic logic, whereby blocks of material are placed next to each other, in order to create a dialectic between them which leads to the intended conclusion. Back in Exodus, we find Pharaoh's heart hardened by God, and yet him hardening his own heart. Greek thinking panics here- for it works by step logic, logically reasoning from one statement to another. There appears to our European minds to be a crisis of contradiction, which many find worrying. But the Hebrew mind is far less phased. Rather the two seeming contradictions are weighed up and the conclusion reached- e.g. that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but God confirmed him in this. The language used about the Lord Jesus in the New Testament is similar. John Knox got somewhere close to understanding this when he wrote that &quot;we do not experience the humanity and divinity of Christ in ways as separate as this language suggests; we are aware of them together&quot;. John's Gospel is maybe the most evident example. In the context of all the high, lofty language relating the Lord Jesus to the <em>logos</em>, that was God from the beginning, we read of Him coming &quot;to his own&quot;, <em>eis ta idia</em>, his own heritage of people and place; and being rejected by &quot;his own people&quot;, <em>hoi idioi</em>, the Jews of his time and setting (Jn. 1:10-12). It is the &quot;son of <em>man&quot;</em> who is spoken of as having descended from Heaven (Jn. 3:13; 6:62). Truly &quot;the Christ of John is actually more human than in almost any of the other New Testament writings&quot;. So often does John's Gospel baldly speak of the Lord Jesus as &quot;the man&quot;: Jn. 4:29; 5:12; 8:40; 9:11, 24; 10:33; 11:47, 50; 18:14, 17, 29; 19:5.</p>