Ephraim – A son of Joseph, who was a son of Jacob. Ephraim represents one of the two tribes of Israel descended from Joseph; the other is Manasseh. Joseph is the only of Jacob’s sons from whom two of the twelve tribes of Israel are descended.
Light – Of course you know what light is, but it's important to understand why this Gospel uses this imagery to describe God in particular. This text was written last of the four Gospels (near the end of the first century), and it was a period when a religious strain called Gnosticism was gaining popularity. Gnosticism proposes that God is a ‘divine spark’ within the enlightened, but that it is inborn, only in God’s chosen. So the contrast of John's Gospel claiming that God is the ‘light that enlightens everyone’ is a direct challenge to the particularism of Gnostics.
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