John 1:10

ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ … οὐκ ἔγνω. John 1:10-11 briefly summarise what happened when the Logos, the Light, came into the world. John has said: “The Light was coming into the world”; take now a further step, ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν, and let us see what happened. Primarily rejection. The simplicity of the statement, the thrice repeated κόσμος, and the connecting of the clauses by a mere καί, deepens the pathos. The Logos is the subject, as is shown by both the second and the third clause.

Westcott thinks that the action of the Light which has been comprehensively viewed in John 1:9 is in John 1:10-11 divided into two parts. “The first part (John 1:10) gathers up the facts and issues of the manifestation of the Light as immanent. The second part (John 1:11) contains an account of the special personal manifestation of the Light to a chosen race.” That is possible; only the obvious advance from the ἐρχόμενον of John 1:9 to the ἦν of John 1:10 is thus obscured. Certainly Westcott goes too far when he says: “It is impossible to refer these words simply to the historical presence of the Word in Jesus as witnessed to by the Baptist”.