Have you ever noticed how the first words of Genesis and the Gospel of John are almost identical?
Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God...”
John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word…”
We can see it plainly in English that it looks like Genesis 1 was in the mind of the Apostle John when he sat down to write his gospel, because of the way in which he uses the same language. John wanted to talk about the Word of God (Jesus) and the way he wanted to do that was to show his readers that the Word was in the beginning. What better way to do this than to use the language that a lot of his readers would have already been familiar with? They know how the story of God starts—with a beginning. And this beginning is one in which the Word already existed.
What might even be more interesting is to see how John didn’t just put the Hebrew language into his own words in Greek; he used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and just about copy and pasted it to start his gospel. Let me show you.
Genesis 1:1 (Greek Translation): “᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς…”
John 1:1 (Original Greek): “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος…”
Do you see?
John has used the same ᾿Εν ἀρχῇ (In the beginning) as Genesis and simply replaced ὁ θεὸς (God) with ὁ λόγος (the Word). This is not just a happy accident for John—this is intentional to show his readers that the God who was written about and was creating things in Genesis 1 is actually the Word he’s writing about in John 1.