John doesn't begin his account of Jesus with a birth, a genealogy, or a specific moment in history the way the other Gospels do — he begins before beginning itself. “In the beginning was the Word” doesn't describe the Word's starting point; it describes the Word as already present at the point where every other beginning starts. And this isn't an abstract force or a philosophical idea John is describing. He spends the rest of this Gospel making it unmistakable: the Word is Jesus of Nazareth — the specific man people would go on to eat with, argue with, watch bleed and die. Before Bethlehem, before any calendar existed to count from, that man already was. The verse holds two claims that shouldn't both fit in the same breath — “the Word was with God” (distinction) and “the Word was God” (identity). John is saying the man the rest of this Gospel follows is, and always has been, God Himself.