The finally definitive move for the Rabbis was to transfer all Logos and Sophia talk to the Torah alone, thus effectively accomplishing two powerful discursive moves at once: consolidating their power as the sole religious virtuosi and leaders of "the Jews", aand protecting one version of monotheistic thinking from the problematic of division within the godhead. For the Rabbis, Torah supersedes Logos, just as for John, Logos supersedes Torah. Or, to put it into more fully Johanine terms, if for John the Logos Incarnate in Jesus replaces the Logos revealed in the Book, for the Rabbis the Logos Incarnate in the Book displaces the Logos that subsists anywhere else but in the Book. This move on the part of the Rabbis at the end of the rabbinic period effectively displaces the structure of western thought, embodied in the Fourth Gospel, whereby Logos is located most directly and presently in the voice of the speaker, Jesus, with the written text understood at best as a secondary reflection of the speaker's intention.
Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the partition of Judaeo-Christianity, pg. 129.
