>The Greek word logos which gets translated as word but is also the root word for -ology meaning the study of (biology, archeology, etc) has a much richer meani

>The Greek word logos which gets translated as word but is also the root word for -ology meaning the study of (biology, archeology, etc) has a much richer meaning than just word. I am not in a position to do it justice but this is where we get the biblical In the beginning, there was the word and it can really be understood to mean something like "God had a thought and the world was thus born. He conceived it." Be very careful here. Antiquity doesn't have any notion of the mind/body dualism that we do Soul/Body dualism, you say? Well, in Platonism and Neo-Platonism, sure, but when Plato talks about our souls, prior to embodiment, once knowing the eternal arch-forms of things, knowing isn't thinking. Thinking is something bodies do. The space of the eternal arch-forms and the pure soul is a place of zero motion. Plato's entire framework follows from the notion that stillness is primordial. To have true knowledge, as the allegory of the cave implies, is to no longer have to think. Knowing as we do that Platonism will heavily influence early Christianity and Islam, we can sorta begin to see why the imparting of the Christian mysteria upon baptism has the property of ceasing all searching and finding, "I was lost, now I am found", it is the end of looking for answers, asking questions, it is the end of having to think about what to do.[0] On that point, we can now start considering what Aristotle has to say about the soul with the guiding principle in mind that for Aristotle, motion is primordial. Hence in his metaphysical ontology, there must have been a First Mover to kick off the gear works of the universe. And when he gets to discussing what a soul is in De Anima (On the Soul), he says something like "its everything a living thing must do, to keep on being the the thing that it particularly is". This not only includes basic sustenance but all the other quirks that make a living thing that thing and not some other. This regularity does not cease until you are dead. Aristotle being a zoologist, you can sorta see why he would look at things this way. So when we talk about what logos means, we have to be careful. When Aristotle opens his Metaphysics inquiring into the logos of being, he is not talking about the thought of Being, he more means the reason, 'the reason of being', the principle that gives it order (which, for Aristole, is motion). When Jesus is said to be the 'word [logos] become flesh', it is that God is the reason/principle of existence, and God has become flesh, material, not that his thought became flesh and material. This is why there is a hundreds-year debate over what this means, that God, the principle of existence, became flesh because this appeared an utmost contradiction. The whole point of the Trinity is to settle this debate by keeping the terms both separate and united: the Father (logos), the Son (flesh/material), the Holy Spirit (the transport between them). If all that was meant was "God had a thought and it became flesh", there's no contradiction to chew on, the 'thought', in the sense we understand that term, is not God itself. Logos become flesh, really means 'the reason, for all being, itself started being right then, at a particular time, right there, at a particular place', as a particular material form: Jesus. That's the contradiction in terms all of Christian antiquity struggled with and splintered numerous churches and heresies upon. [0] Aside: the popular interpretation of Socratic dialogue, that by rigorous question and answer, we will arrive at the truth, is a misinterpretation that reduces Plato to, at best, the average capable scientist (the ancient world already had those for the standard of their time), and at worst, the average Redditor who 'questions everything and keeps an open mind'. The point of the dialogues is to demonstrate that all of our thinking does not get us to knowledge. In the Apologia, Socrates doesn't say he heard the Oracle's words, set out to find out who actually knows the truth, but fails because we all haven't sat down and thought hard enough; he says that no one knows that they don't know, and he says this after canvasing every astute tradesman, craftsman, artist, politician, people who think about what they're doing and are considered wise because of this. But the Oracle told Socrates that he is wisest: it is because he knows he does not know - true knowing is not thinking, soberly evaluating the results, and repeating the process: that's everyone he interviews!]