Is 'a god' an impossible translation for John 1:1?

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John 1:1 in Hebrew

[queruvim]

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[randallwittman]

The Coptic text of John 1:1b identifies the first mention of noute as pnoute, “the god, ” i.e., God. This corresponds to the Koine Greek text, wherein theos, “god, ” has the definite article ho at John 1:1b, i.e., “the Word was with [the] God.”

[DavidDrew-nz]

Yet another proponent of Truth . Very refreshing.

[randallwittman]

While reading the King James Bible you may have noticed that the word “god” is spelled three different ways: GOD (all uppercase letters), God (the G is capitalized and the other letters are lowercase), and god (all lowercase letters).

What is the difference?

The three spellings of “god” indicate different meanings, which are:

god (all lowercase letters): denotes a deity or an object of worship, and sometimes means “judge” or “magistrate.” It is never used to refer to God the Supreme Being.

God (capitalized G and the other letters are lowercase): In the Old Testament the Hebrew word Elohiym is translated “God.” In the New Testament “God” also refers to the Supreme Being, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

GOD (all uppercase letters): This refers to the name of God rendered Yahweh or Jehovah.

[randallwittman]

Hence, the Coptic translation supplies interesting evidence as to how John 1:1 would have been understood back then. What do we find? The Sahidic Coptic translation uses an indefinite article with the word “god” in the final part of John 1:1. Thus, when rendered into modern English, the translation reads: “And the Word was a god.” Evidently, those ancient translators realized that John’s words recorded at John 1:1 did not mean that Jesus was to be identified as Almighty God. The Word was a god, not Almighty God.

➔ The Koine Greek language had a definite article (“the”), but it did not have an indefinite article (“a” or “an”). So when a predicate noun is not preceded by the definite article, it may be indefinite, depending on the context.

➔ The Journal of Biblical Literature says that expressions “with an anarthrous [no article] predicate preceding the verb, are primarily qualitative in meaning.” As the Journal notes, this indicates that the lo′gos can be likened to a god. It also says of John 1:1: “The qualitative force of the predicate is so prominent that the noun [the·os′] cannot be regarded as definite.”

➔ Joseph Henry Thayer, a theologian and scholar who worked on the American Standard Version, stated simply: “The Logos was divine, not the divine Being himself.”

➔ And Jesuit John L. McKenzie wrote in his Dictionary of the Bible: “Jn 1:1 should rigorously be translated . . . ‘the word was a divine being.’”

➢ 1808: “and the word was a god.” The New Testament in an Improved Version, Upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome’s New Translation: With a Corrected Text.

➢ 1864: “and a god was the word.” The Emphatic Diaglott, interlinear reading, by Benjamin Wilson.

➢ 1928: “and the Word was a divine being.” La Bible du Centenaire, L’Evangile selon Jean, by Maurice Goguel.

➢ 1935: “and the Word was divine.” The Bible—An American Translation, by J. M. P. Smith and E. J. Goodspeed.

➢ 1946: “and of a divine kind was the Word.” Das Neue Testament, by Ludwig Thimme.

➢ 1950: “and the Word was a god.” New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures.

➢ 1958: “and the Word was a God.” The New Testament, by James L. Tomanek.

➢ 1975: “and a god (or, of a divine kind) was the Word.” Das Evangelium nach Johannes, by Siegfried Schulz.

➢ 1978: “and godlike kind was the Logos.” Das Evangelium nach

[EleazarGo-xu]

It's good that you explained properly and did not follow the traditional English Bible translation that contradicts various texts of the Bible about God and the Christ or Word.

[randallwittman]

Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn’t prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97).

Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583).

Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) describes the origin of the logos (= the pre-human Jesus) from God using three metaphors (light from the sun, fire from fire, speaker and his speech), each of which is found in either Philo or Numenius (Gaston 2007, 53). Accepting the Philonic thesis that Plato and other Greek philosophers received their wisdom from Moses, he holds that Plato in his dialogue Timaeus discussed the Son (logos), as, Justin says, “the power next to the first God”. And in Plato’s second letter, Justin finds a mention of a third, the Holy Spirit (Justin, First Apology, 60). As with the Middle Platonists, Justin’s triad is hierarchical or ordered. And Justin’s scheme is not, properly, trinitarian. The one God is not the three, but rather one of them and the primary one, the ultimate source of the second and third.

[williamparker]

The auctioneer must know the difference between The Eureka Diamond and "a eureka diamond."

[randallwittman]

Did John mean “God” or “a god”?

The criticism about this phrase usually gives the impression that the translation “a god” in John 1:1c is something exclusive of JWs, almost a fancy of ours, while in fact, there are other translations that understand this part of the verse in a similar way; for example:


"and the Word was a god."--THE NEW TESTAMENT IN AN IMPROVED VERSION (1808) (As shown in the picture above.)

"The Word was a God."--THE NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK AND ENGLISH by Abner Kneeland (1822)

"as a god the Command was."--A LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT by Herman Heinfetter (1863)

"And (a) God was the word"--THE COPTIC VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT by George William Homer (1911)

"the Word was a God"-- THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS ANOINTED by James L. Tomanec (1958)

"and a god was the Logos"--DAS EVANGELIUM NACH JOHANNES By Jurgen Becker (1979)

So, a curious thing about this oft presented criticism is that it completely ignores the fact that competent Greek translators had translated John 1:1 the way the Witness translators did long before Jehovah’s Witnesses of modern times even came into existence.

But let’s focus on the Greek text and its translation:

In Koine Greek there isn’t an indefinite article, it doesn’t exist. So, whereas “God” (in nominative) is written “HO THEOS” (with definite article), “a god” is written “THEOS” (with no article). John 1:1c says: “THEOS EN HO LOGOS”. So, the way to translate this, using the same word order, should be: “A god was the Word”. Since the subject is the second element, in natural English it should be “The Word was a god.”

[irlanmartinstavares]

Peço-lhe para que comente a diferença entre as palavras UM, encontradas em Efésios 4: 5, 6, os trinitários que não pesquisam a respeito do verdadeiro Deus, não sabem que a palavra Ev é usada para coisas abstratas, como por exemplo, Ev baptisma, Mia pistes e Eis Xirió.

[vusumzingceke]

Actually, John is using an imperfect verb of being in the first clause(ην) and its aspect is continuous. The story would have been different if he had used an aorist, εγενετο( from γινομαι) but he uses this one for creation and ην for Christ. He already was in the beginning, and a noun is not indefinite just because it lacks the article and this is in reference to Θεος in the third clause. Grammar, syntax and context are some of the keys to understanding this verse.

[Servus-humilis]

Was John 1:1 not written in Greek? So your translation is from Greek to Hebrew?

[chimmy___]

So, Yeshua is NOT The Supreme Being 🤔

[jeremyhorne]

You can’t determine out from the Hebrew translation. But one thing is certain. From the Greek it can’t be “and the Word was God” not can it be “and the Word was a God” because Theos preceded Logos, and Logos doesn’t even mean “Word” it means “Logic”, so it should be translated “and God was that Logic.” The question of the article before the second word is irrelevant since Theos comes first. So the question is was God “a logic” or “the logic” but Theos is clearly God. As for Jesus being a created being, in Revelation He says that He is the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, and that He was dead and is alive forevermore. This means that Jesus is God, or more precisely, God is Jesus.