Subject: John 1:1---"a god"? !?!? |
Bible Note: I urge you to get out of the Watchtower while you still can! Tell me, why is it that you folks always do your work while crawling around in the dark? Why don't you just come out and tell everyone you're a JW? Why all the secrecy? Anyway, back to your post. I'm below the amateur level of Greek translation ability so I will defer to a real Greek Scholar. (Your list of 'scholars' is hysterical!! JOHANNES GREBER?!?!? LOL) Here's what Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries (www.aomin.org for the complete essay) has to say about the JW/Arian translation of John 1:1--- The third clause of this verse has occasioned great debate and controversy, mainly due to the fact that the Greek word for God, theos, does not have the definite article ("the") before it. Some pseudo-Christian or Arian groups have said that this means that the Word was a "god" or a god-like being like an angel (Jehovah's Witnesses). But is this the case? Actually, the answer to the whole question seems fairly obvious, even to a first-year Greek student. The third clause of 1.1 is a copulative sentence - that is, it follows the form "The (noun) is (predicate nominative)". In Greek, one distinguishes the subject of a copulative sentence by which noun has an article in front of it. For example, in 1 John 4:8 we have the last clause reading "God is love." Now, in Greek this is ho theos agape estin. There are two nominative nouns in this sentence - God (theos) and love (agape). However, the first noun, God, has the article ho before it. This indicates that "God" is the subject of the sentence, and love is the predicate nominative. It would be wrong, then, to translate 1 John 4:8 as "Love is God." The only way to make the two nouns interchangeable is to either put the article with both nouns, or to not put the article there at all. As long as one has the article and the other does not, one is definitely the subject and the other the predicate. Hence, 1 John 4:8 does not teach that all love is God, nor that God and love are interchangeable things. Rather, the term "love" tells us something about God - it functions almost as an adjective, describing the noun (God) that it modifies. We have the same situation in 1.1c. The Greek reads, kai theos en ho logos. Notice that the term Logos has the article ho while the term theos does not. This tells us that the subject of the clause is the Logos. Hence, we could not translate the phrase "and God was the Word" for that would make the wrong term the subject of the clause. Hence, the term "God" is the predicate nominative, and it functions just as "love" did in 1 John 4:8 - it tells us something about the Logos - and that is, that the nature of the Logos is the nature of God, just as the nature of God in 1 John 4:8 was that of love. Now, John does emphasize the term "God" by placing it first in the clause - this is not just a "divine nature" as in something like the angels have - rather, it is truly the nature of Deity that is in view here (hence my translation as "Deity"). Dr. Kenneth Wuest, long time professor of Greek at Moody Bible Institute rendered the phrase, "And the Word was as to His essence absolute Deity." Before summing up the verse, then, let the reader note that when groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses quote from Dr. Philip Harner's article on the nature of anarthrous (without the article) predicate nominatives, they don't understand what they are talking about. Harner accurately pointed out that the anarthrous predicate nominative functions as a descriptive term rather than a specific or definite term. Problem is, the Jehovah's Witnesses make "God" in John 1.1 just as definite as the translations they attack! Rendering it "a god" misses the whole point - the word "God" is functioning to describe the Logos - translating it as "a god" means a definite god is in mind, rather than following the actual sense of Harner's article and making the term describe the being of the Logos. The point Harner is making is that it is not the definite "God" that is in view, far less the JW translation of "a god" (both are definite) but rather the nature of the Logos that is important. Hence, 1.1 tells us some immensely important things. First, we see that the Logos is eternal, uncreated. Secondly, we see that there are two Divine Persons in view in John's mind - the Father and the Logos. Thirdly, there is eternal communication and relationship between the Father and the Logos. Finally, we see that the Logos shares the nature of God. These items will be important for a proper understanding of many of the statements made by our Lord in this book. It seems to me that John felt it was vitally important that we understand the majesty of the Person of Jesus Christ right from the start. We cab see these concepts played out through the rest of the Gospel of John. What do you think TF? JibbyJee |