Yeshua is the Living Word/Memra

The Living Torah

In the beginning of the Gospel account by Yochanan (John), he makes a
statement that has been a source of both inspiration and debate for
the last 2000 years. It says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things
came to be through him, and without him nothing made had
being. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
suppressed it. . . . The Word became a human being and lived
with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah (glory, presence), the
Sh'khinah of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. (John
1:1-5, 14, CJB)
But what exactly does Yochanan mean when he calls Messiah the
Word, the Logos () of God? The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
commentary hits very close to the mark, saying, He who is to God
what mans word is to himself, the manifestation or expression of
himself to those without him. Or as Shaul writes in Col. 2:15, He
[Yeshua] is the visible image of the invisible God.
So far so good, but there seems to be a deeper meaning to Yochanans
particular introduction here. The idea of the Word, or Memra in the
Aramaic, Word of God as an almost independent attribute was known
to the rabbis of the first century, and afterwards, and this has long
been noted by Christian commentators. For example, Barnes notes,
This term was in use before the time of John.
(a) It was used in the Aramaic translation of the Old
Testament, as, e. g., Isa. 45:12; I have made the earth, and
created man upon it. In the Aramaic it is, I, by my word,
have made, etc. Isa. 48:13; mine hand also hath laid the
foundation of the earth. In the Aramaic, By my word I have
founded the earth. And so in many other places.
(b) This term was used by the Jews as applicable to the
Messiah. In their writings he was commonly known by the
term Mimra - that is, Word; and no small part of the
interpositions of God in defense of the Jewish nation were
declared to be by the Word of God. Thus, in their Targum on
Deu. 26:17-18, it is said, Ye have appointed the word of God
a king over you this day, that he may be your God.
There are other examples from the Targums (Aramaic translations of
the Tanakh), including this example from Exo. 19:17,

And Moses brought the people out of the camp '' to

meet the Word of the Lord.
Stern writes that memra was a technical theological term used by the
rabbis in the centuries before and after Yeshua when speaking of Gods
expression of himself. This memra embodied human and divine
characteristics in the Targumim. It seems likely that Yochanan, who
being from Galilee, an area where Aramaic rather than Hebrew was
possibly the common language, would have likely known the Tanakh
first of all from the Targums, and that it was from seeing how the
Memra ( )was used in the Targumim to describe the part of the
Eternal One whom the people could meet, came to understand this
Word to be one and the same with the Messiah Immanuel, God-WithUs.
But there is still a deeper meaning to Yochanans words of choice. To
the Jews of that era, not yet having chapter and verse divisions by
which to reference passages in the Tanakh, quoting even part of a
sentence would call to mind the entire passage. For example, the Lord
is my Shepherd. So, by using the phrase, In the beginning, Yochanan
is causing his audience to automatically recall to mind the first words
of the Torah: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth. (Yeshua was not only there at the beginning, creating all
things, but His Coming brings about a new beginning as well.)
The Midrash (Beresheit [Genesis] Rabbah 1:1) notes that just as each
of the books of Torah is called by the first significant word that appears
in the book (according to their Hebrew names), so the whole of Torah,
being one book can also be called by the first significant word that
appears in the whole text: Reisheit (Beginning). So, according to the
Midrash, the first sentence can also be read, In/With the Torah, God
created the heavens and the earth. Indeed, the rabbis have long
believed that God created the universe with the very letters of the
Torah:
Said R. Judah said Rab, Bezalel knew how to join together the
letters by which the heaven and the earth were made. Here it is
written, And he has filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom
and in understanding and in knowledge (Eze. 35:31), and
elsewhere it is written, The Lord by wisdom founded the earth,
by understanding he established the heavens (Pro. 3:19), and it
is written, By his knowledge the depths were broken up (Pro.
3:20). (b. Berakhot 55a)

Some one might object and say, but thats just rabbinic superstition,
not Scripture. And of course we might agree, except that Yochanan
uses very similar terms to describe the Messiah. This means that both
Messiah and the Torah would be identified as the Word by which God
created the universe, which would make the Messiah and the Torah
one!
N.T. Wright observes in Who Was Jesus? [48-9] that Jewish
monotheism "was never, in the Jewish literature of the crucial
period, an analysis of the inner being of God, a kind of numerical
statement about, so to speak, what God was like on the inside."
Rather, it was "always a polemical statement directed outwards
against the pagan nations." Rabbis of Jesus' time had no difficulty
in personifying separate aspects of God's personality - His
Wisdom, His Law (Torah), His Presence (Shekinah), and His Word
(Memra), for example. This division had the philosophical
purpose of "get(ting) around the problem of
how to speak appropriately of the one true God who is both
beyond the created world and active within it."
With this we agree completely, though with the added explanation that
Gods Torah, His Presence, and His Word are all found in one person in
history. Such an understanding of Yeshuas nature explains how He
can be both God-With-Us and yet subordinate to and emanating from
the Father. Just as our words which we speak are the image of who
we truly are (Mat. 12:34), Yeshua is the perfect image of God,
reflecting His true nature, expressing His perfect mind and will. One
might say that the Father is the Will of God, Yeshua the Word that He
speaks, and the Spirit is the Breath that carries the Word forth.
For Messiah is the Goal of the Torah for righteousness, for all those who
trust. Romans 10:4