I came across this in considering the Greek of John 1.1 and other related text
in Greek relating to the Deity of Christ. I believe he is a Professor of
Linguistics. I ordered his book "Babylon Cypher" Concerning language and
possibly Social Sciences.
Interestingly, the New World Translation is often targeted as being "wrong" but it is far from the only translation that renders it as such. The argument was not even about the NWT at all so it seems someone may simply have a bee in their bonnet.
Here is an interesting comment from Robert Price, who although is considered by most a rebel to New Testament theology, does shed some light on John 1.1 and other trinitarian concepts. Also, other beliefs Jehovah's Witnesses hold.
Interestingly, the New World Translation is often
targeted as being "wrong" but it is far from the only translation that renders
it as such. The argument was not even about the NWT at all so it seems someone
may simply have a bee in their bonnet.
Here are a few translations, I am sure
you could find more.
1)14th century: "and God was the word" – Wycliffe's Bible
(translated from the 4th-century Latin Vulgate)
2)1808: "and the Word was a god"
– Thomas Belsham
3)The New Testament, in an Improved Version, Upon the Basis of
Archbishop Newcome’s New Translation: With a Corrected Text, London. 1822: "and
the Word was a god" – The New Testament in Greek and English (A. Kneeland,
1822.)
4):1829 "and the Word was a god" – The Monotessaron; or, The Gospel History
According to the Four Evangelists (J. S. Thompson, 1829)
5) 1863 "and the Word was
a god" – A Literal Translation of the New Testament (Herman Heinfetter
[Pseudonym of Frederick Parker], 1863)
6)1864 "and a god was the Word" – The
Emphatic Diaglott by Benjamin Wilson, New York and London (left hand column
interlinear reading)
7) 1867 "and the Son was of God" – The Joseph Smith
Translation of the Bible 1879: "and the Word was a god" – Das Evangelium nach
Johannes (J. Becker, 1979)
8)1885 "and the Word was a god" – Concise Commentary
on The Holy Bible (R. Young, 1885)
9) 1911 "and [a] God was the word" – The Coptic
Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, by George William Horner
10)1924 "the Logos was divine" – The Bible: James Moffatt Translation, by James
Moffatt. 1935:
11) "and the Word was divine" – The Bible: An American Translation,
by John M. P. Smith and Edgar J. Goodspeed, Chicago.
12) 1955 "so the Word was
divine" – The Authentic New Testament, by Hugh J. Schonfield, Aberdeen.
13)1956 "And the Word was as to His essence absolute deity" – The Wuest Expanded
Translation
14)1958 "and the Word was a god" – The New Testament of Our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Anointed (J. L. Tomanec, 1958);
15)1975 "and a god (or, of a divine
kind) was the Word" – Das Evangelium nach Johnnes, by Siegfried Schulz,
Göttingen, Germany
16)1975 "and the Word was a god" – Das Evangelium nach Johannes
(S. Schulz, 1975);
17)1978 "and godlike sort was the Logos" – Das Evangelium nach
Johannes, by Johannes Schneider, Berlin
18) 1985 “So the Word was divine” - The
Original New Testament, by Hugh J. Schonfield.
19) 2017 “and the Logos was god” -
The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart.
Your whole case turns on a false either/or. You treat John’s grammar as if anarthrous θεός must be read as an English‐style indefinite (“a god”), when the very construction John chose—preverbal, anarthrous predicate nominative—most naturally signals quality, not class membership. In “καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος,” ὁ λόγος is the subject; θεός is the predicate placed first for emphasis. That word order does two things at once: it ascribes the nature of θεός to the Logos, and by leaving θεός anarthrous it avoids equating the Logos with ὁ θεός of 1:1b in a modalistic way. In other words, John distinguishes who the Word is from what the Word is: distinct in person, identical in divine nature. That is precisely why standard English “the Word was God” has been retained: not because translators think θεός is definite like “the God,” but because idiomatic English uses “God” to denote the one divine nature as well as the one true God, and the preceding “the Word was with God” already blocks confusion of persons.
ReplyDeleteYour appeal to capitalization and articles oversimplifies both languages. Greek does not have an indefinite article; absence of the article does not make a noun indefinite by default. When an anarthrous predicate comes before the copula, Greek writers routinely mark quality rather than indefiniteness. Your own examples prove the point. In John 4:24, “πνεῦμα ὁ θεός,” no competent reader takes this as “God is a spirit” among other spirits; it predicates what God is by nature. In John 4:19 and 18:37, “προφήτης” and “βασιλεύς” with inversion are likewise qualitative/ascriptive. The Septuagint shows the same freedom: sometimes the predicate bears the article with inversion (Hos 2:23), sometimes not (Dan 9:23); Greek uses the article to mark identity when a convertible proposition is intended, and it omits it when it ascribes nature or quality. John omits it in 1:1c exactly because he is not asserting a convertible identity (“the Word = the Father”), which would have been Sabellian; he is asserting that everything God is as God, the Word is.
“Πρὸς τὸν θεόν” likewise does not help your case. The preposition πρός with the accusative here is relational, even face-to-face personal communion, not mere “direction toward.” John uses it, not to deny the Word’s deity, but to place the Word in eternal, personal relation to ὁ θεός. Trinitarian theology agrees without hesitation: the Word is with the Father and is what God is.
The claim that τὸν θεόν invariably designates “the supreme deity” and anarthrous θεός designates “a lesser god” collapses under Johannine usage. In this very prologue John immediately says, “πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν” (1:3). If all things came to be through the Word, then the Word does not belong among things that came to be. John’s monotheistic horizon (read him alongside Is 43–45) leaves no space for a second ontological deity alongside YHWH through whom all creation is made, unless the Word shares the very identity and prerogatives of Israel’s God. John 1:18, in its best-attested form, calls him “the only-begotten God” who is εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός; that reading raises the Christology, it does not lower it. And the “partakers of the divine nature” in 2 Peter 1:4 do not become ontological deities; they share (by grace) in God’s life and energies, not in the incommunicable essence. Participation language never licenses henotheism in Scripture.
DeleteThe suggestion that “what God was, the Word was” is functionally the same as “the Word was a god” is precisely backwards. The NEB-style rendering is a paraphrase designed to prevent the very ambiguity your wording creates. “What God was, the Word was” conveys qualitative identity of nature; “a god” in idiomatic English places the Logos into a subset of lesser divine beings. They are not equivalent in English reception, and John shows no interest in creating a class of secondary deities. When Paul can call Satan “the god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4), the usage is clearly functional and ironic, not ontological. John 1:1 is not making Satan-type statements about the Logos; it is locating him on the Creator side of the Creator/creature divide.
It is also not true that English “the Word was God” “confuses the Logos with the Father.” The clause just before—“the Word was with God”—forecloses that confusion. English readers do not supply an implicit article in “God” as if John had said “the Word was the God” in the same sense as 1:1b; rather, they understand “God” here as a predicate naming the divine identity. This is why some careful translators have opted for “what God was, the Word was,” or even, as David Bentley Hart, “the Logos was god” with a lower-case g to signal quality. But notice: those choices are offered precisely to avoid your “a god” reading, not to endorse it.
Your historical scaffolding does not help the indefinite reading either. The list of translations that say “a god” is a parade of fringe or explicitly anti-Trinitarian projects. By contrast, mainstream renderings that avoid potential modalist misunderstanding do so with qualitative paraphrase, not with an English indefinite article. Wycliffe’s “and God was the word” is simply Latin word order carried into Middle English; it neither asserts nor supports a second deity. Schonfield’s “so the Word was divine” and Moffatt’s “the Logos was divine” reflect the same qualitative judgment the best Greek grammars reach; they do not smuggle in a lesser god. And Hart’s “the Logos was god” is accompanied by explicit rejection of “a god” as theologically and linguistically misleading.
Finally, your broader battery of texts does not overturn the point. “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) speaks to the economy of the Son’s mission in humiliation, not to an inequality of essence. “The head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3) speaks of order, not ontology. “Firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15) is a title of primacy and heirship in a passage that immediately explains it as causal preeminence—because in him, through him, and for him all things were created; if Paul had meant “first created,” he had an unambiguous word, πρωτόκτιστος, which he pointedly did not use. John’s “two-witnesses” discourse in 8:17–18 presupposes distinct persons, which Trinitarians affirm; it does not deny the Son’s deity. And when Thomas addresses the risen Jesus, “My Lord and my God,” John presents it as the climactic recognition that frames the entire Gospel, not as a careless exclamation.
DeleteSo the grammar does the heavy lifting, and the context seals it. John 1:1c does not introduce a second divine being into Judeo-Christian monotheism; it predicates of the eternal Logos all that God is in his unique, uncreated nature, while preserving the distinction of persons that 1:1b has just asserted. That is why the traditional rendering, rightly understood, is not modalist and not henotheist: “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”