My old Greek professor who was not a Christian said that it was written that way to show which is the subject and which is the predicate. It is written in a way that fits perfectly with the concept of the trinity. As Martin Luther said, the lack of an article avoids Sabellianism and the word order avoids Arianism. ‘The Word was God’ is the best translation of the Greek for grammatical reasons.
I wrote this comment mostly for Mervin_Bitikofer’s benefit.
Which is why I’m glad that it’s God who’s in charge of our destinies and not all of you self-appointed guardians of doctrine. I agree with you, BTW, but I won’t pontificate to others who have a different understanding of the trinity than we do. Regarding knowledge of our English scriptures, I know them quite well enough to know (or at least have heard) most if not all of the arguments we use to insist on all the “correct” answers regarding our long lists of important details surrounding who Jesus is. I’ll leave you to continue your exchange with Jon as the rest of us may continue to learn things in the exchange (as much from Jon as from you I might add). Nobody (certainly not my friend) is disagreeing with God, who is infallible. He is disagreeing with you and me; and I don’t claim infallibility for myself. If you do for yourself, then I leave you to search scriptures in vain for any justification for that.
Correctional edits already added in!
The problem is that you’re reading it as saying “In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God”. Leaving alone for now the logical contradictions involved here (specifically that Jesus could be both himself and with himself), this is very obviously not saying Jesus. It could have been made abundantly clear by actually saying “Jesus”. It doesn’t.
My reading isn’t problematic at all. John later tells us “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. So, who is this Word/Logos? Obviously, we don’t have to speculate at all, it’s Jesus. If it wasn’t more than obvious by verse 14 who is being spoken of in the Johannine Prologue, the next few verses give it away:
John 1:15-18 NRSV: (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
John tells us that through this being, we have received grace, and then explicitly tells us that this grace came through “Jesus Christ.” In your later comment, you make a rather pedantic claim: that Jesus is not the Logos, Jesus is only the “Logos become flesh”. That sounds so pedantic and, in my opinion, rather evasive of the obvious meaning of the text. We don’t need to think that it is only the incarnated Logos that is Jesus, since Jesus tells us He is Himself His pre-existent anyways (“Before Abraham was, I am”). This text is absolutely talking about Jesus, splitting hairs over when the Logos is first called Jesus is just irrelevant. Again, I’m aware of no living scholar that claims Jesus is not God in John’s Gospel, and even if you produced this scholar, he could be set aside to the extreme fringes of academia. There is no contradiction either in the text, later Christians and earlier Christians (like Paul) were just fine with the fact that Jesus was both God and distinct from God, and that there was one God. You later appeal to biased translation:
I know nearly no Hebrew, but this is Greek. You’ll find confessional translators saying they avoid translating “and the word was a god” or “and the word was divine”, for theological reasons.
What are the names of these translators? Are these the translators of the NRSV, NASB, or NIV you’re talking about, or are you referring to the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that specifically translates the text as “and the Word was a god” for religious purposes? F.F. Bruce easily refuted this Jehovah Witness translation. The phrase can’t at all be translated “and the word was divine”. My Koine Greek vocabulary is weak, but I know that theos is translated as “God”, not “divine”. The translation “was a god” is non-existent in the original Greek. I’d confidently say that there is no serious Greek scholar in the world who takes with credibility such a translation. And this verse does not create any binitarianism either, since it both says Jesus “was with God” and “was God”, as in, not a separate deity. And if you seriously consider this binitarian, which it certainly isn’t as we’ve just seen, it would be binitarian whether or not the Word is Jesus. You refer to Hurtado’s words:
Hurtado, for example, argues for what Fletcher-Louis refers to as “a binitarian mutation in monotheism”.
Hurtado himself has commented on the scholars who have misunderstood the use of his words “binitarian mutation”. Hurtado writes on his blog:
Until recently, I used the term “binitarian” to characterize that devotional practice/pattern, and I repeatedly explained that by that term I meant simply a pattern in which we find two distinguishable but uniquely linked figures: God and Jesus. More recently, I’ve begun to use the term “dyadic” (from “dyad”), to avoid accusations/suspicions that I was trying to sneak in doctrinal/conceptual developments later than the NT.
Fletcher-Louis hasn’t made this interpretation error of Hurtado, as he stresses later in the first chapter:
Christians did not create an additional, separate Jesus cult and add it to the existing worship of the one God. That would have entailed, in effect, a ditheism (rather than a “binitarianism”). (pp. 26-27)
You provide two quotations from Fletcher-Louis as well, neither of which challenge any of my contentions. The first quote you offer notes that the founders of this emerging consensus (Hengel, Wright, Hurtado, Bauckham) are all Christians, however I’ve already noted as much in my previous comment, and I’ve also pointed out that these arguments have convinced most of the academia in general, not just Christians (I gave Ehrman as a major example, who shifted his views accordingly to the evidence when the emerging consensus began to … emerge). Your second quote shows that Fletcher-Louis has some disagreements with some specific contentions made by these ‘founders’ (what I will heretofore call them). However, Fletcher-Louis fully accepts the main contention itself based on the evidence that the earliest Christology was the high Christology, and he agrees with the great majority of the arguments made by the founders. He only has nuanced disagreements.
Interestingly, Fletcher-Louis himself discusses scholars who have take issue with important contentions of the models used by the founders, yet still are on the side of the main contention. He writes:
Even those who take issue with important aspects of their work now accept their main contention: a high Christology was a very early phenomenon and not one brought about by a Hellenization of Christian theology. (pg. 5)
Footnote 7, which is offered for this statement, reveals a number of these scholars, including Ehrman himself (and Daniel Boyarin). Fletcher-Louis’s disagreements seem to be about more nuanced issues, he is definitely a taker of the main contention here. By the time the earliest books of the New Testament were being written, the idea that Jesus was God was already orthodoxy in the early church, and the New Testament simply reflects this orthodoxy.
If your friend does not believe that Jesus is God, he is certainly disagreeing with God. If you care about your friend you will warn him of his dangerous position. I realize that you may have done all you can and that you may just realize that you cannot say anything more to change his mind, but you certainly want to warn him as much as you can about his error that will lead him into a Christless eternity.
Thank you for your care and concern. We do only enter the Kingdom of Heaven by His grace, even if we’ve managed to have all our "I"s dotted and "T"s crossed; which also only happens by his grace. I thank Christ for that grace that he gave and still gives.
Have a blessed Christmas season remembering his entrance into our world.
Thank you. Merry Christmas.
Philippians 2 includes the “Philippian Hymn” which could be the very oldest piece of Christian text in existence. It equates Jesus with YWHW by attributing to him what is said of YHWH (and explicitly only YHWH) in Isaiah 45. That’s pretty compelling that the perception of Jesus as deity did not evolve over time.
Further, all the Gospels portray Jesus as the embodiment of YHWH himself visiting his people, as proclaimed by John the Baptist, again quoting Isaiah, this time chapter 40.
Where does Scripture say that if you don’t believe Jesus is God you are going to hell? Did the thief on the cross believe Jesus was God? Because that would be a monumental theological leap for which there is no evidence in scripture…
So you’re arguing that this hymn says Jesus is Yahweh?
Again, this sounds like you’re saying Jesus is Yahweh.
Again, you are reading the text completely backwards. You’re starting with your conclusion and then reading the verses back to verse 1, in order to make the Greek word “logos” mean “Jesus”, instead of what it actually means. The way you’re reading it, we end up with “In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with Jesus, and Jesus was Jesus”.
If you look in the Old Testament and the Second Temple Period literature, you’ll find that “the word” does not refer to a pre-existent being called “Jesus”. It refers to God’s actual speech or thoughts.
No I am not referring to the JWs, and I don’t believe the correct translation is “and the Word was a God”. I am talking about standard translations such as the New English Translation, which says this in a footnote.
A definite meaning for the term is reflected in the traditional rendering “the word was God.” From a technical standpoint, though, it is preferable to see a qualitative aspect to anarthrous θεός in John 1:1c (ExSyn 266–69). Translations like the NEB, REB, and Moffatt are helpful in capturing the sense in John 1:1c, that the Word was fully deity in essence (just as much God as God the Father).
Moffat and the NEB give “the Word was divine”. That’s the qualitative translation of theos here. This is not a novelty. In fact it’s found in early conservative commentaries such as Albert Barnes.
“The evangelist in the first four verses stated that “the Word” was divine; he now proceeds to state the proof that he was a man, and was the Messiah.”, Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: Luke & John (ed. Robert Frew; London: Blackie & Son, 1884–1885), 177.
It’s also found in modern commentaries and dictionaries.
“So the theological inclusio that frames John’s Gospel (1:1 and 20:28) is especially important, even though the phrase in 1:1c lacks a definite article in the predicate, kai theos ēn ho logos (καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος) and is therefore sometimes translated “the Word was divine” rather than “the Word was God.””, Neil G. Richardson, “God, NT View Of,” ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006–2009), 599.
“In other words, John is saying, “The Word was divine.””, Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Rev. and expanded, 2nd ed.; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 75.
R. E. Brown considers the NEB rendering more accurate than saying simply that the Word was “divine” [The Gospel according to John, I, 1966, 5].", J. Schneider et al., “God, Gods, Emmanuel,” ed. Lothar Coenen, Erich Beyreuther, and Hans Bietenhard, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 81.
Some commentators make it totally clear that their motivation for avoiding the translation “the word was divine”, is theological; they need this verse to conform to their doctrine.
“We could translate this verse “the Word was divine,” but that would be misleading in English. We use the word divine to indicate something which has godlike qualities but is less than God.”, Emmaus Journal 12, no. 1 (2003): 35.
So much for the idea that the phrase cannot be translated “and the word was divine”.
As I have pointed out, reading it this way is a contradiction. If the word is with X, then the word cannot be X in the same way that X is meant in the phrase “the word was with X”. So you either live with a logical contradiction (Trinitarians), or you take a binitarian view (JWs and others). Remember that Yahweh, in Second Temple Period Judaism, was one person. If you can find evidence that the Jews actually believed Yahweh was three persons, you would have more of an argument. When a first century Jew referred to God, they meant Yahweh, and they meant one person. Not three.
Yes. What do you think he is saying here? Do you think he’s arguing against binitarianism? Because you go on to quote Fletcher-Louis reading Hurtado’s view as binitarian. Fletcher-Louis even describes the early post-ascension church’s belief as a binitarian modification of Judaism.
I think you need to read more closely what these scholars are saying, and where the agreement actually is, because right now you’re taking a number of different scholars’ views and sort of smearing them together into a consensus which isn’t the actual consensus described in Fletcher-Louis. For example, please list all the places in which Hurtado says that Jesus believed he was God, or that his disciples believed he was God, or that the first century Christians believed he was God.
I will save you some time by quoting from Fletcher-Louis.
“Hurtado shares the view of the overwhelming majority of modern scholars that Jesus did not think of, or present, himself in divine terms.” (27)
Do you share that view?
Hurtado shares the view of the overwhelming majority of modern scholars that Jesus did not think of, or present, himself in divine terms. Here again.
“For many modern Gospel interpreters the Synoptics have a low Christology. Indeed, for Hurtado the Synoptic Gospels are clear that Jesus did not claim a divine identity during his earthly life (even though the Gospels are, in their own way, a testimony to the wider pattern of Christ devotion).” (29)
Do you agree with that?
Again, you are reading the text completely backwards. You’re starting with your conclusion and then reading the verses back to verse 1, in order to make the Greek word “logos” mean “Jesus”, instead of what it actually means. The way you’re reading it, we end up with “In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with Jesus, and Jesus was Jesus”.
No, this is just a faulty understanding of my position. The way I’m reading it, which is simply not backwards but what John outright tells us in 1:14-18, is “In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God.” I don’t read Jesus into theos, I read Jesus into logos, because John later identifies him as such. Jesus is clearly distinct from who John calls ‘God’ here, referring to the Father – Jesus many times, in the Gospel of John, makes a distinction between Himself and the Father, and so they cannot be conflated with each other.
If you look in the Old Testament and the Second Temple Period literature, you’ll find that “the word” does not refer to a pre-existent being called “Jesus”. It refers to God’s actual speech or thoughts.
Never did I claim that Second Temple literature mentions a divinity alongside God named ‘Jesus’. I said John mentions a divinity alongside God named Jesus. As I said earlier, claiming that the Word was only first “named Jesus” after the incarnation is pedantic and irrelevant, since the Logos is still the same person before and after the incarnation regardless of the personal name that He was called by.
As for the translation, you quickly admit that, in your words;
I don’t believe the correct translation is “and the Word was a God”
Well, of course you don’t, since such a translation can’t be found in the Greek. As I made it clear earlier, the Greek word theos means ‘God’, not ‘divine’. In the Greek of John 1:1, theos functions as a nominative masculine singular, and so if we wanted to translate the text as John or whoever originally wrote it, as it was originally intended to be written and in line with the original Greek, the only possible translation is “God”, not “divine”. As you admit, the ideology behind translating it as “divine” is that it is a supposedly (and in my view inaccurate) ‘qualtitative’ translation, in effect meaning that your reading your interpretation into the text. If John wanted to say the Logos was simply divine, he could have easily done so. The original Greek clearly says ‘God’.
You refer to a number of authorities, one of whom is over a century old (Albert Barnes, but even in Barnes day there were virtually no translations that put the text as “divine” rather than “God”). You refer to a footnote in the New English Translation that … I can’t seem to find. Here’s the NET for John 1:
I don’t see a footnote anywhere. For John 1:1, it simply says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God.” No footnote. I took your quote, however, and I tracked it down to this source, a book titled YHWH The Triune God by Al Garza. However, once we keep reading this source, a problem quickly appears for you.
Translations like the NEB, REB, and Moffatt are helpful in capturing the sense in John 1:1c, that the Word was fully deity in essence (just as much God as God the Father) … Thus the translation “The Word was fully God” was chosen because it is more likely to convey the meaning to the average English reader that the Logos (which “became flesh and took up residence among us” in John 1:14 and is thereafter identified in the fourth Gospel as Jesus) is one in essence with God the Father. (pg. 40)
So, the author of this source (Garza or whoever) fully agrees that the most accurate translation is not only “and the Word was God”, but “and the Word was fully God” because it conveys the original Greek the best. The vast majority of translations, especially ones used by scholars like the NRSV, translate it was “and the Word was God.” Likewise, Richard B. Hays writes;
That summons “Come and see,” functions also as an invitation to the reader of the Fourth Gospel, an invitation to discern, among other things, whether the Jesus they will meet in this story is in fact prefigured by Moses and the prophets. John has set astonishingly high expectations in the first chaper of his narrative: the opening paragraphs of the story already identify Jesus, a mysterious figure from a small Galilean village, as the Logos through whom creation came into being (1:1-18), as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29-36), and as Israel’s Messiah (1:41). (pg. 75, Reading Backwards)
It doesn’t matter if you look at the 1599 Geneva translation or the KJV or the NKJV or the NRSV or the NIV or the HSCB or the CSB or the ICB or the ISV or the NET, the all translate it the same because it’s clearly the correct translation, both literally and quantitatively taking the Gospel of John as a whole and all Jesus sayings there. Your quotation from Neil G. Richardson also isn’t getting you that far, since Neil simply mentions that “divine” is sometimes used here and there, but Neil himself never advocates that translation besides mentioning it as a mere possibility in a single passing mention. You can only appeal to a tiny number of authorities to support you. To prove some commentators avoid “the word was divine” for theological reasons, you give this quotation:
“We could translate this verse “the Word was divine,” but that would be misleading in English. We use the word divine to indicate something which has godlike qualities but is less than God.”, Emmaus Journal 12, no. 1 (2003): 35.
John Fish, the author of this paper, clearly isn’t saying what you think he’s saying. In the highlighted part of the quote, Fish clearly explains that the reason why this translation isn’t adopted is because it misleads people from the actual meaning of the text, so this quotation supports my position. I’m not saying it “can’t” be translated the way you want to translate it, I’m simply saying that in the opinion of the overwhelming majority of scholars, “God” is a better translation (for a host of reasons besides the fact that the Greek says "God).
As I have pointed out, reading it this way is a contradiction. If the word is with X, then the word cannot be X in the same way that X is meant in the phrase “the word was with X”. So you either live with a logical contradiction (Trinitarians), or you take a binitarian view (JWs and others).
I’ve already explained before that the ‘contradiction’ doesn’t disappear by saying that Jesus is or isn’t the Logos, and so this is an irrelevant objection to my position, not to mention that this is highly debated amongst philosophers and the problem is simply not that simple. You also ask me for evidence of trinitarianism before Christianity in Judaic belief, but although I cannot point to trinitarianism (which is also irrelevant) I can point to the work of Alan Segal, Daniel Boyarin and Benjamin Sommer, all of whom are Jews (besides Segal) and accept the contention that God is considered multi-personal in some earlier Jewish circles before Christianity. Richard Hays also writes here,
Daniel Boyarin is another scholar who has provactively destabilized conventional beliefs about what first-century Jews could and could not have believed about multiplicity within the divine identity.
Finally, you try to turn both Fletcher-Louis and Hurtado, who clearly support my position against me. It’s irrelevant whether or not Jesus claimed to be God during His ministry, we’re talking about whether or not the Bible makes Him out as God. For all practical purposes, I’ll point out that Hurtado thinks (I am not aware if Fletcher-Louis has followed this or not) that Jesus revealed Himself as God during the resurrection after His earthly ministry, so Hurtado follow thinks that Jesus Himself claimed to be God, just not before His death. I am not actually sure whether I agree with this or with that Jesus did claim to be God before the resurrection, either way my position here remains unchallenged.
I think you need to read more closely what these scholars are saying, and where the agreement actually is, because right now you’re taking a number of different scholars’ views and sort of smearing them together into a consensus which isn’t the actual consensus described in Fletcher-Louis.
Actually, this is the consensus described by Fletcher-Louis. I’ll quote him again;
Even those who take issue with important aspects of their work now accept their main contention: a high Christology was a very early phenomenon and not one brought about by a Hellenization of Christian theology. (pg. 5)
The same emerging consensus is the consensus that states that the high christology is extremely early, dating to within years if not months (or weeks) of the death of Jesus. The details are debated by the emerging scholars who take this view, of course they are debated, the emerging consensus isn’t even a decade old yet. And nothing is going to reverse this consensus. I remember Geza Vermes telling Hurtado on his blog that he will “put an end” to this “fruitless” emerging consensus in 2012. He died a year later. Maurice Casey, another one of the main opponents of the emerging consensus, also died in 2014.
So you are literally replacing “the word” with “Jesus”, on the basis of what you think verses 14-18 are saying. That is literally reading it backwards; starting in verse 18, and then reading these verses back into verse 1, as if that’s what John was saying. But again, if you think that John was saying “Jesus was God”, then you are saying that John is telling us God is one person; Jesus.
John identifies him as the logos made flesh.
You’re avoiding my point, which is what a Second Temple Period Jew would have meant by “logos”, especially in the context of existing Jewish thought about the Word of God. Why do you think the Greek word “logos” means “person”?
But that was not my argument. The logos did not become “named Jesus” at all.
As I have already shown you, that is not the only possible translation.
I didn’t “admit” any such thing. On the contrary, I pointed out that the commentaries I quoted state that this is perfectly acceptable on grammatical grounds, because it first perfectly with the qualitative (or adjectival), use of a noun in Greek. Nothing whatever to do with “ideology”. The fact that it’s nominative masculine singular has nothing to do with this.
No. I didn’t actually cite any source as an authority, and I certainly did not cite Barnes as an authority. I cited him explicitly to demonstrate to you that the translation “the word was divine” was not a fringe modern invention, as you were claiming; it has been recognized for a very long time as a perfectly grammatical translation. I cited several sources for this.
That is because you are reading the version of the NET which doesn’t have the footnotes. Why didn’t you use the one which actually has the footnotes?
No, the “meaning” he wants to convey is, as he says explicitly, “unity of essence between the Father and the Son without equating the persons”. He says that “the word was divine” does not convey this meaning to a native English speaker, so he chose to retain something of the qualitative sense of the noun (using the word “fully”), while conveying the theological meaning he thinks it has (Trinitarianism). This is a theological decision, not a grammatical decision.
You’re sidestepping. Your claim was that the phrase cannot be translated “the word was divine”. I quoted six mainstream sources (some of which alluded to others), showing that claim was completely false, and that the decision as to how to translate it is made primarily on theological grounds. So much for “a tiny number of authorities”. It is widely acknowledged that “the word was divine” is not only possible but perfectly within the grammar, and is even indicated by the grammar.
You’re completely ignoring his own rationale. He says explicitly that the reason for avoiding “divine” is because it would “iindicate something which has godlike qualities but is less than God”. He prefers the alternative translation precisely because he wants the Word to be identified as God, and doesn’t want the Word to be thought of by people as anything less than God. That has absolutely nothing to do with grammar (which of course he never mentions as the rationale for his decision).
[quote=“ManiacalVesalius, post:272, topic:36748”]
I’m not saying it “can’t” be translated the way you want to translate it,[/quote]
Well that’s a nice change, because originally you said explicitly that it cannot be translated this way.
Feel free to quote them (and remember that the Greek does not say “God”, it says “theos”).
Of course it disappears by saying Jesus isn’t the Logos (or more precisely, that the Logos isn’t Jesus). The rest of what you wrote is handwaving, and I suspect you’re not comfortable with the contradiction here but you’re just going to compartmentalize it.
Actually I asked you for evidence that the Jews believed Yahweh was three persons. That does not require trinitarianism. I am familiar with the contention that God is considered multi-personal in some pre-Christian circles. I haven’t seen any evidence that the Jews considered Yahweh to be three persons, or that a Jewish writer or reader or listener of the gospels would automatically interpret the gospel text as referring to a tri-personal Yahweh. The point I made, which you didn’t address, is that in Second Temple Period Judaism, when someone referred to God they meant Yahweh, and they meant one person. Trinitarians had to invent a completely different vocabulary for talking about God, since “God” to a Trinitarian is three persons not one. But in the New Testament, Yahweh is one person, and both Jesus and the New Testament writers consistently differentiate Jesus from God, rather than identifying Jesus as one of God’s persons.
I talked about both. I note you have dodged my question about Hurtado. Why?
That is exactly my point; what Fletcher-Louis describes as the consensus, is not what you are describing. If you look at a lot of the commentary, it’s the same. Hurtado for example does not claim that the worship he documents actually proves that Jesus is God. Nor does he even attempt to suggest that at this stage Jesus was understood as one of God’s persons. From Hurtado, you can argue for binitarianism or bi-theism, but not Trinitarianism.
Reading backwards is not a problem if that’s how the author intended it to be. Even you understand the implications of vv. 14-18, and so try to maintain that Jesus is only “the Logos incarnated”, which makes little sense. What does that even mean? Does the Logos who is God suddenly cease to exist, and in the place of the Logos pops Jesus who has no attachment to John 1:1? Whever did the Logos go? A quotation I gave from Hays’ book earlier also clearly writes that John was describing Jesus from vv. 1-18, and he seems to presuppose this! The only scholar I’ve seen so far who takes such a (mis)understanding of John 1 is Bart Ehrman himself in his book How Jesus Became God, a book mostly discarded by other scholars anyways. Is this where you got that claim from? John clearly talks of the Logos, and then identifies the Logos as Jesus. That means we know John was talking about the Logos the entire time. John never says “Jesus is the Word became flesh and not before”, that never appers in John. Yet that is how you understand it, strangely enough.
You’re avoiding my point, which is what a Second Temple Period Jew would have meant by “logos”, especially in the context of existing Jewish thought about the Word of God. Why do you think the Greek word “logos” means “person”?
Logos means Word, not person. There is nothing I’m avoiding, I simply flat out said there is no divinity named Jesus in Second Temple literature.
As I have already shown you, that is not the only possible translation.
Naming possibilities is irrelevant. I can name many possibilities for all sorts of phenomenon. What matters is probability, and the Greek text literally says “God”. It does not say “divine”. Since John wrote “God”, he intended that to be written, and he could have easily written something else besides the literal Greek word for God if he actually didn’t mean God.
I didn’t “admit” any such thing. On the contrary, I pointed out that the commentaries I quoted state that this is perfectly acceptable on grammatical grounds, because it first perfectly with the qualitative (or adjectival), use of a noun in Greek.
As I noted earlier, one of your commentaries is over a century old. I provided a quotation from Al Garza that further agrees with me, and Neil G. Richardson only mentions it in passing as a possibility that he himself doesn’t adopt, and you tried to produce a quotation that shows “divine” is avoided for theological reasons – but in fact John Fish wrote that the translation is avoided because it is misleading. At this point, the only reason I can even think of for adopting a translation that literally contradicts the Greek text is for ideological purposes, to avoid a conclusion one does not like. What evidence do you have for translating it as “divine”? My evidence for “God” is that this is simply what John wrote.
No. I didn’t actually cite any source as an authority
What I meant as an ‘authority’ is simply a scholar. I wasn’t accusing you of any fallacy, people cite authorities all the time to show they’re not arguing for something fringe. But in light of the fact that the overwhelming majority of translators (if not all of them, I still have not found a translation that says “divine” even though I continue scrolling…) makes your position a tiny tiny minority if not fringe.
Anyways, you refer me to the footnotes of the NET. You will not like this however, since the footnote of the NET says the following:
However, in contemporary English “the Word was divine” (Moffatt) does not quite catch the meaning since “divine” as a descriptive term is not used in contemporary English exclusively of God. The translation “what God was the Word was” is perhaps the most nuanced rendering, conveying that everything God was in essence, the Word was too. This points to unity of essence between the Father and the Son without equating the persons… Thus the translation “the Word was fully God” was chosen because it is more likely to convey the meaning to the average English reader that the Logos (which “became flesh and took up residence among us” in John 1:14 and is thereafter identified in the Fourth Gospel as Jesus) is one in essence with God the Father.
So, again, the footnote of the NET describes “and the Word was divine” is an inferior translation, since it fails to capture the meaning of the text: John 1:1 writes that the Logos is in the full essence of the deity, equal to God the Father. Again, your authorities, one after the other, support me.
You’re sidestepping. Your claim was that the phrase cannot be translated “the word was divine”.
Actually, I said exactly this in my previous response, copied and pasted word for word:
I’m not saying it “can’t” be translated the way you want to translate it, I’m simply saying that in the opinion of the overwhelming majority of scholars, “God” is a better translation (for a host of reasons besides the fact that the Greek says "God).
In my first or second reply I wrote it wasn’t a possibility, but my previous response says precisely the opposite.
You’re completely ignoring his own rationale. He says explicitly that the reason for avoiding “divine” is because it would “iindicate something which has godlike qualities but is less than God”. He prefers the alternative translation precisely because he wants the Word to be identified as God, and doesn’t want the Word to be thought of by people as anything less than God.
Again, he precisely wrote that the translation you support is “misleading” because it does not convey that the Word is equal to God, since that is the original meaning of the text. Those are Fish’s own words, not mine. I am astounded that you want to change Fish’s words to make him look like some nefarious translator trying to support Christianity rather than a scholar who discounts certain translations since they fail to capture the meaning of the original text.
Feel free to quote them (and remember that the Greek does not say “God”, it says “theos”).
I’ve already quoted a large number of them – besides the fact that every major translation gives this translation, we’ve seen a number of authorities discount “divine” as an inferior translation, including Al Garza, John Fish, the footnote of the NET, etc. Richard Hays likewise makes it clear John is talking fo Jesus from the start. The fact that virtually no translation even provides a footnote of John 1:1 listing “divine” as a possibility is very telling, because we would assume that translators would otherwise make an important footnote clear for a translation that might otherwise change the meaning of the text.
As for your statement that the Greek doesn’t say “God”, it says “theos”, you need pick up a Greek dictionary ASAP. The Greek word “theos” IS the Greek word for God. Where do you think the word theology comes from? Theos-ology, or God-ology, or “the study of God”.
Of course it disappears by saying Jesus isn’t the Logos (or more precisely, that the Logos isn’t Jesus). The rest of what you wrote is handwaving, and I suspect you’re not comfortable with the contradiction here but you’re just going to compartmentalize it.
No, it remains quite uncomfortably. The text says the “Logos is with Theos and that the Logos is Theos”. So, how can the Logos be both with Theos and Theos at the same time? A contradiction! Substituting ‘Logos’ with ‘Jesus’ changes nothing: now the text says that “Jesus is with Theos and that Jesus is Theos”. Notice how the relationship with theos doesn’t change at all whether or not you say “Logos” or “Jesus”. And the contradiction can be easily discounted by saying that God is one being who is multi-personal, something you’ve admitted is a characteristic of Judaic belief before Christianity which we will now dwelve into.
Actually I asked you for evidence that the Jews believed Yahweh was three persons. That does not require trinitarianism. I am familiar with the contention that God is considered multi-personal in some pre-Christian circles. I haven’t seen any evidence that the Jews considered Yahweh to be three persons, or that a Jewish writer or reader or listener of the gospels would automatically interpret the gospel text as referring to a tri-personal Yahweh.
You note you are familiar with God being multi-personal in some pre-Christian Jewish circles, but what you don’t know in these pre-Christian Jewish circles is “three” persons in specific. However, that is hardly a problem, since as Sommer shows, the number of persons in the multi-personal God is not fixed at all. He says that in some circles, there was a 10 in 1, not just 3 in 1. Forget about 10, he mentions in some circles there was a 100 in 1! So the number of the persons in the multi-personal God is obviously not fixed when Christianity got onto the scene, the Christians simply took the two powers in heaven and, on top of that, interpreted the Spirit of God/Holy Spirit as a third person. There is hardly anything radical about this as many scholars contend. Trinitarians didn’t have to invent anything to get to their view, since the concept that God could function as, say, 2 or 3 or 4 or 100 persons was already around. Using a word for ‘3’ in specific is hardly radical.
That is exactly my point; what Fletcher-Louis describes as the consensus, is not what you are describing. If you look at a lot of the commentary, it’s the same. Hurtado for example does not claim that the worship he documents actually proves that Jesus is God. Nor does he even attempt to suggest that at this stage Jesus was understood as one of God’s persons. From Hurtado, you can argue for binitarianism or bi-theism, but not Trinitarianism.
That’s not what Hurtado says at all, and indeed, Fletcher-Louis is describing the consensus exactly as I describe it. The high christology was a very early phenomenon. That’s the only consensus I mentioned, and that is exactly what both Fletcher-Louis and Hurtado say. Hurtado also never said you could take what he describes as ditheism, and Fletcher-Louis also makes a distinction between what Hurtado describes as binitarianism with ditheism. Neither Hurtado nor Fletcher-Louis ever allow for the possibility of two seperate Gods within the framework of their arguments. They only contend that very early on the Christians adopted the high Christology, and that this high Christology is reflected in the New Testament. So, while Hurtado says that Jesus doesn’t make God-claims during His ministry in the Synoptics, Hurtado does say that the Synoptics make Jesus as claiming to be God and acting as God during His resurrection. Do you reject this? And also, quite frankly, you seem to not understood Hurtado and Fletcher-Louis’s arguments very well.
From Hurtado, you can argue for binitarianism or bi-theism, but not Trinitarianism.
That’s a flat out misrepresentation, you cannot argue for ditheism from Hurtado. Hurtado stresses monotheism. He writes:
In short, the more complex picture of ancient Jewish monotheism in the first century may assist us in understanding that early Jewish Christians could think of themselves as holding to belief in “one God” while also viewing the risen Jesus in the most exalted of categories. I shall argue later that the early Christian veneration of Jesus involved somewhat new and distinctive developments beyond the reverence characteristically given to divine agents in ancient Judaism. But these Jewish-Christian developments are probably to be understood as historically related to, and indebted to, the complex nature of monotheism in the Jewish context (One God, One Lord: pg. 8)
So let’s go back and see what you said originally about that phrase “and the word was God”.
That’s very clear. You said explicitly that the Greek phrase cannot at all be translated “and the word was divine”. You then went further.
That’s also very clear; you were confident that there is no serious Greek scholar in the world who would consider such a translation credible.
I then showed you the following facts.
The NET footnote not only identifies this as grammatically possible (contradicting your first point), but says it is preferable to see a qualitative aspect to theos here (also contradicting your first point), and then cites two translations which give this rendering (contradicting your second point). How could you say “I still have not found a translation that says “divine”” when the NET footnote cites two of them for you? Additionally, you didn’t comment on the NEB’s rendering, “what God was, the Word was”. Why not?
I cited several mainstream commentators who said that the phrase is sometimes translated “the word was divine” (contradicting your second point), specifically on the basis of the grammar (contradicting your first point).[1] And every commentator I cited, said that this was a grammatical reading of the text. This is not “a tiny number of authorities”. This is mainstream acknowledgment that the grammar actually says this. None of them raised any grammatical objection to this rendering, only theological arguments.
Here’s another example.
“On the basis of grammar alone v. 1 can be read as stating at the very least that the Word was divine. The further step of identifying the Word with God depends on contextual considerations. Evidence in this direction firstly comes from the expression μονογενὴς θεός, which is the most probable of the variant readings in vs. 18. Secondly, the identity of Jesus as God appears to be the presupposition of the Gospel as a whole.”[2]
This says explicitly that on the basis of the grammar alone, we reach the rendering “the Word was divine”. It then goes on to say that identification of the Word with God, is dependent on contextual considerations (not grammatical considerations). And this is typical of all the commentaries which prefer the rendering “the Word was God”. None of them say “This is the simple grammatical reading of the text”, they make it clear that their choice of rendering is based on other considerations. Several of them even go so far as to say that they have selected their rendering specifically to avoid making the Word less than God, or giving the impression that the Logos is not God. If you think any of them made a grammatical argument against the rendering “the word was divine”, please just quote it.
I quoted Barnes specifically to demonstrate that the rendering “the word was divine” is not a modern invention, and has a pedigree of being recognized by mainstream “orthodox” theologians. Barnes is a completely legitimate source for that purpose, precisely because he was writing over 100 years ago. This defeats your argument that the reading “the word was divine” is a theologically motivated novelty of modern times, and exists only on the fringe; it’s a mainstream understanding of the text, and has been so for well over 100 years.
You said “The text says the “Logos is with Theos and that the Logos is Theos””. Now I know you haven’t actually read the Greek. The Greek actually says “and theos was the logos”. The word order is completely the other way around. That’s the complete reverse of your claim that it reads “the Logos is the Theos”. This word order, with the lack of a definite article, is precisely why so many commentators acknowledge that theos is being used here as the equivalent of an adjective (the way you claimed was impossible), not as a noun (“God”).
You said “how can the Logos be both with Theos and Theos at the same time? A contradiction! Substituting ‘Logos’ with ‘Jesus’ changes nothing”. Of course substituting “logos” with “Jesus” changes nothing. But substituting “theos” with “divine” (as the grammar clearly indicates), changes everything. Now there’s no contradiction at all, regardless of whether we read “logos” as “the word” or “Jesus”.
I didn’t say anything about arguing di-theism from Hurtado. I’ll get back to that part later since I’m almost out of time and the lexical data on John 1:1 needs to be addressed first.
I am so glad you said this.
It’s certainly high time we opened the lexicons. Strap in, it’s going to be a rough ride. Of course “god” is its primary meaning, and the most commonly used. However, you are clearly unaware of the very large semantic range of the Greek word theos; it means a lot more than just “god”. Let’s look at a just a few of its meanings which indicate it certainly does not mean simply “god”, as you claim.
It is used of natural phenomena such as the weather.
“d. ὁ. θ., of natural phenomena, ὁ θ. ὕει (sc. Ζεύς) Hdt.2.13; ὁ θ. ἐνέσκηψε βέλος Id.4.79; ἔσεισεν ὁ θ. (sc. Ποσειδῶν) X.HG4.7.4; of the sun, Hdt.2.24, A.Pers.502, E.Alc.722; δύνοντος τοῦ θ. App.BC4.79; the weather, τί δοκεῖ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ; Thphr.Char.25.2.” [3]
It is used as the title of rulers. Keep that in mind, it’s important since this is Old Testament and Second Temple Period usage as well.
“3. as title of rulers, θεῶν ἀδελφῶν (sc. Ptolemy II and Arsinoe), Herod.1.30, etc.; Πτολεμαῖος ὑπάρχων θεὸς ἐκ θεοῦ καὶ θεᾶς OGI90.10 (Rosetta, ii B.C.); Ἀντίοχος ὅτῳ θεὸς ἐπώνυμον γίγνεται App.Syr.65; θεὸς ἐκ θεοῦ, of Augustus, OGI655.2 (Egypt, 24 B.C.); θ. ἡμῶν καὶ δεσπότης IPE4.71 (Cherson., ii A.D.)” [4]
“In the Hellenistic period an outstanding ruler may be called a θεός as the creator of a new political order: ὥσπερ γὰρ θεὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποις εἰκὸς εἶναι τὸν τοιοῦτον Aristot. Pol., III, 13, p. 1284a, 11; Plut. Lysander, 18 (I, 443b); Demetrius Poliorketes and his father Antigonos are celebrated as θεοὶ σωτῆπες in Athens (307 B.C.), cf. the hymn in Athen., VI, 63 (p. 253d): ὡς οἱ μέγιστοι τῶν θεῶν καὶ φίλτατοι ¦ τῇ πόλει πάρεισιν.” [5]
It is used of humans who are in positions of authority, such as judges. Note that this usage is in the Old Testament, and Jesus himself even uses it in this way. Jesus knew what this word means; he knew it could be used of humans and doesn’t simply mean “god”.
“4. one set in authority, judge, τὸ κριτήριον τοῦ θ., ἐνώπιον τοῦ θ., LXXEx.21.6, 22.8; θεοὺς οὐ κακολογήσεις ib.22.28(27).” [6]
“ⓐ of humans θεοί (as אֱלֹהִים) J 10:34f (Ps 81:6; humans are called θ. in the OT also Ex 7:1; 22:27; cp. Philo, Det. Pot. Insid. 161f, Somn. 1, 229, Mut. Nom. 128, Omn. Prob. Lib. 43, Mos. 1, 158, Decal. 120, Leg. All. 1, 40, Migr. Abr. 84).” [7]
Let’s move on. How about the rendering “divine”, which you claimed was not even remotely possible? Yes, theos can be used as an adjective meaning “divine” (the example here is in the genitive, but don’t get too excited about that, there’s more to come).
“δ. Almost as a substitute for the adj. divine IMg 6:1f; 15 (cp. Ath. 21, 4 οὐδὲν ἔχων θεοῦ [of Zeus]).” [8]
Again, here’s another lexicon pointing out that not only does it have a range of meanings (including humans “worthy of reverence and respect as magistrates”), but it can also be used “as an adjective divine”. This lexicon even suggests this as the usage in John 1:1.
“θεός, οῦ, ὁ and ἡ (1) as the supreme divine being, the true, living, and personal God (MT 1.23; possibly JN 1.1b); (2) as an idol god (AC 14.11); feminine goddess (AC 19.37); (3) of the devil as the ruling spirit of this age god (2C 4.4a); (4) as an adjective divine (probably JN 1.1b); (5) figuratively; (a) of persons worthy of reverence and respect as magistrates and judges gods (JN 10.34); (b) of the belly when the appetite is in control god (PH 3.19).”[9]
This is a standard mainstream professional lexicon; nothing fringe here. But let’s move on, there’s still more to come. Let’s go back to that standard professional Greek lexicon, Liddell, Scott, Jones. Please don’t tell me you’re going to describe this as fringe.
Here we have LSJ stating specifically that theos has an adjectival usage, specifically meaning “divine” (which we already knew from several commentators and a couple of lexicons). LSJ describes this usage as being applied in a range of ways, including the comparative. But there’s also something else.
“III. as Adj. in Comp. θεώτερος, divine, θύραι θ., opp. καταιβαταὶ ἀνθρώποισιν, Od.13.111; χορὸς θ. Call.Ap.93, cf. Dian.249, D.P.257. (Derived by Hdt.2.52 fr. τίθημι (κόσμῳ θέντες τὰ πρήγματα), by Pl.Cra.397d fr. θεῖν. Etym. dub.) [In Ep. (twice in Hom.) and Trag. (E.Ba.47, 1347, al., not in Com. exc. Men.Pk.397), as monosyll, by synizesis, θεοί Il.1.18, Thgn.142; θεῶν h.Cer.55, 259; θεοῖς Thgn.171; θεοῖσιν Od.14.251; θεούς h.Cer.325: even in nom. θεός before a vowel, E.Or.399 (cf. Pors. ad loc.), HF347; in Pi.P.1.56 apptly. a short monosyll.], Myc. te-o.” [10]
See where it says “even in nom. θεός before a vowel”? That is telling us that when theos is used in the nominative, without an article, before a vowel, it’s being used in the adjectival sense to mean divine.
With this in mind, let’s return to our passage.
John 1:
1 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. [11]
Do you see that? It says καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. That’s right, it’s nominative theos without the definite article, and placed before a vowel (ἦ[ν]). That indicates that theos here is adjectival, meaning “divine”. The reasons typically given for an alternative rendering are not grammatical, but theological.
[1] “So the theological inclusio that frames John’s Gospel (1:1 and 20:28) is especially important, even though the phrase in 1:1c lacks a definite article in the predicate, kai theos ēn ho logos (καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος) and is therefore sometimes translated “the Word was divine” rather than “the Word was God.””, Neil G. Richardson, “God, NT View Of,” ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006–2009), 599; “In other words, John is saying, “The Word was divine.””, Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Rev. and expanded, 2nd ed.; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 75; R. E. Brown considers the NEB rendering more accurate than saying simply that the Word was “divine” [The Gospel according to John, I, 1966, 5].", J. Schneider et al., “God, Gods, Emmanuel,” ed. Lothar Coenen, Erich Beyreuther, and Hans Bietenhard, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 81.
[2] Stephen Voorwinde, “John’s Prologue: Beyond Some Impasses of Twentieth-Century Scholarship,” Westminster Theological Journal 64, no. 1 (2002): 43.
[3] Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 791.
[4] Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 791.
[5] Hermann Kleinknecht et al., “Θεός, Θεότης, Ἄθεος, Θεοδίδακτος, Θεῖος, Θειότης,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 68.
[6] Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 791.
[7] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 451.
[8] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 451.
[9] Timothy Friberg, Barbara Friberg, and Neva F. Miller, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (Baker’s Greek New Testament Library; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 196.
[10] Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 791.
[11] Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece (28th Edition.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Jn 1:1.
God help. I have to commend you, perhaps I’d never thought you’d get so far. In your comment, all you have really done is allow for the mere conceptual possibility that theos can mean ‘divine’ through the appeal to a few examples from the entire ancient Mediterranean world where ‘theos’ is translated as something besides ‘God’, no doubt an enormously tiny minority of uses. This is why Strong’s Greek Lexicon doesn’t even list ‘divine’ as a possibility. We’ll see, moving forwards, that although you open up this can as a mere possibility, it is vastly outweighed by the evidence, and in fact you have made a number of outright errors regarding the Greek language. I must be truly thankful that I learned enough koine Greek earlier this year to be able to catch these things. This comment will represent my current standing on the issue. This will be your argument for translating theos as divine:
With this in mind, let’s return to our passage.
John 1:
1 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. [11]
Do you see that? It says καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. That’s right, it’s nominative theos without the definite article, and placed before a vowel (ἦ[ν]). That indicates that theos here is adjectival, meaning “divine”. The reasons typically given for an alternative rendering are not grammatical, but theological.
This is an outright misundestanding of the Greek language, but before I address this, I will develop other arguments and demonstrate that you’ve misunderstood the Greek language elsewhere.
You said “The text says the “Logos is with Theos and that the Logos is Theos””. Now I know you haven’t actually read the Greek. The Greek actually says “and theos was the logos”. The word order is completely the other way around. That’s the complete reverse of your claim that it reads “the Logos is the Theos”. This word order, with the lack of a definite article, is precisely why so many commentators acknowledge that theos is being used here as the equivalent of an adjective (the way you claimed was impossible), not as a noun (“God”).
Actually, not only can I read John 1:1 in the original koine Greek, but I have read it and have watched an entire Greek lesson video on it and I’m more than familiar with this. You appear to have read your lexicon without actually having a clue on what it was saying. The claim that the original Greek says “and theos was the logos”, although technically correct, is misleading. In koine Greek, word order/syntax doesn’t matter at all since the language is constructed through inflecions that tell you which part of the sentence is the subject, object, verb, etc. That’s why you could write in Greek “I love John” and “John loves me”, but in both cases, it will mean “I love John”. Why? Because all you have to do is inflect I/me in both sentences in the nominative case, which makes it the subject, and inflect John in both sentences to the accusative case, making it the direct object. Thus, no matter how you write that sentence (there are 36 different ways to write it in Greek), it will mean “I love John” in English every single time. In other words, the syntax in the Greek has zero preference for either the translation “the Word was God” or “God was the Word”. (The relevance of cases will be important later, but for now I am pointing out that they are important as well as Greek grammar in general.) Syntax doesn’t actually reflect the proper word order in English, since Greek is an inflected language.
The Greek in John 1:1 might as well say “theos was the logos/word”. Notice, immediately, ‘divine’ doesn’t make any sense if this is the syntax preferred in the English, since it would say “divine was the logos/word.” That makes no sense, so one would expect you out of all people to support wording it the other way around, “the logos/word was divine”. Moving on;
You said “how can the Logos be both with Theos and Theos at the same time? A contradiction! Substituting ‘Logos’ with ‘Jesus’ changes nothing”. Of course substituting “logos” with “Jesus” changes nothing. But substituting “theos” with “divine” (as the grammar clearly indicates), changes everything. Now there’s no contradiction at all, regardless of whether we read “logos” as “the word” or “Jesus”.
This supposed contradiction was already solved when we saw in my previous responses that the work of recent scholarship (well, I don’t know if Alan Segal can be considered recent, but Boyarin and Sommer sure are) has established that in pre-Christian Judaic circles, God could have been considered to be multi-personal. We’ve seen that the number of persons aren’t fixed at all, some circles believing in a 2 in 1 God, some in a 10 in 1, and some even in a 100 in 1 God! Thus, John 1:1 makes perfect sense if we simply consider it in the established and widespread tradition of a multi-personal God, where you have a single God (the Word was God) that has two different persons (and the Word was with God). If this wasn’t a problem for the pre-Christian Judaic circles, one can only wonder why it would be a problem for the Christians themselves. So, the argument from contradiction falls flat in consideration of Second Temple Jewish belief.
I didn’t say anything about arguing di-theism from Hurtado. I’ll get back to that part later since I’m almost out of time and the lexical data on John 1:1 needs to be addressed first.
(strangely, you never came back to this in your comment) In fact, Jonathan, you said precisely that:
From Hurtado, you can argue for binitarianism or bi-theism, but not Trinitarianism.
So, you did in fact misunderstand Hurtado’s comments (more then once) to assume that ditheism was possible. I had to quote Hurtado’s own comments on peoples misunderstanding of his use of binitarianism and Fletcher-Louis’s distinction between binitarianism and ditheism for you to realize this.
Anyhow, in a tiny number of texts, ‘theos’ is translated in ways besides ‘God’. Let’s actually take a look at how theos is used in the Gospel of John. Literally every time theos is used in the entire Gospel of John to my familiarity, it translates as ‘God’. So, as we will soon see, trying to translate it as ‘divine’ in John 1:1 only will be an extreme anamoly. It doesn’t matter where you look in John, whether it’s 1:34, 36, 49, 51; 3:2, 3, 5, 16, 17, 18, 21, 33, 34, 36, etc, etc, etc – almost 70 times is theos used in John, and every single time without exception John means it to say ‘God’. I am aware of no exceptions as of yet. In fact, according to Strong’s Lexicon, this is the translation rates of theos in the KJV to say the least:
God (1,320x), god (13x), godly (3x), God-ward (with G4214) (2x), miscellaneous (5x).
Even assuming a disgusting margin of error, we can already see it’s an extreme anomaly to consider divine as a usage in the New Testament. It wasn’t even used once in the KJV, and likely was never used once or close to never used once in modern translations like the NRSV, NIV, NASB, CSB, etc. Not to mention, ‘theos’ is used seven times in the Johannine Prologue (vv. 1-18)! Why translate it as ‘divine’ in any of those other instances, especially since John uses it in such a consistent theme? Perhaps because it would never make sense in those other instances. In fact, ‘theos’ is used twice in John 1:1 alone, not once! Notice what happens when we translate it as divine both times, which would only make sense if that’s what John meant the second time since he uses theos twice in parallelism in 1:1: “In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with divine, and the logos was divine” – the logos was with divine? Huh? Makes no sense! It appears as if saying that in only one specific case we should translate it as divine and not the others is special pleading. But the problems continue adding up.
The NET footnote not only identifies this as grammatically possible (contradicting your first point), but says it is preferable to see a qualitative aspect to theos here (also contradicting your first point), and then cites two translations which give this rendering (contradicting your second point). How could you say “I still have not found a translation that says “divine”” when the NET footnote cites two of them for you? Additionally, you didn’t comment on the NEB’s rendering, “what God was, the Word was”. Why not?
In fact, almost everything here is wrong. The footnote of the NET mentions three translations in total: NEB, REB, and Moffatt. We both know the NEB doesn’t use “divine”, in fact, I have a copy of the NEB that I just double-checked and I could send a picture to prove it doesn’t use divine. What about the REB? A quick google search will yield the following translation for REB’s John 1:1 almost identical to the NEB (since they were both published by Cambridge University):
“In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God’s presence, and what God was, the Word was.”
So, what’s left? The Moffatt translation – I checked this one, and it in fact uses divine, so you at least did not misunderstand that part of the footnote. The problems, of course, are that Moffatt’s translation is almost a century old, and it was produced by one single translator (Moffatt) rather than a committee (which is how modern translations are done since it’s been long recognized at this point that a single scholar couldn’t hope to reliably translate the entire Bible). That makes it quite a weak authority, and again, I can simply rest on all the high quality translations today to make my case for me. You still have not addressed why modern translations don’t even offer a footnote for the divine possibility. The NET offers a footnote mentioning the Moffatt translation, but in fact the NET actually discounts Moffatt’s translation itself in the footnote as I’ve shown before:
Translations like the NEB, REB, and Moffatt are helpful in capturing the sense in John 1:1c, that the Word was fully deity in essence (just as much God as God the Father). However, in contemporary English “the Word was divine” (Moffatt) does not quite catch the meaning since “divine” as a descriptive term is not used in contemporary English exclusively of God. The translation “what God was the Word was” is perhaps the most nuanced rendering, conveying that everything God was in essence, the Word was too.
So, while you are quick to make note of the NET’s reference to Moffatt, you are not so quick to mention that the NET discounts this translation because it fails to capture the original Greek meaning! The same reasons why ‘divine’ was rejected in the NET, we’ve already seen, were reiterated by John Fish and Al Garza, two other scholars who discount this translation because it does not correctly capture the meaning of the text. Can you name a single modern translation produced by a committee that uses ‘divine’?
Let’s move back to your evidence for a ‘divine’ translation, where you rely on Henry George’s work. In fact, you misunderstood George, and even if we put that aside, you get the Greek wrong. Theos, in John 1:1, is a noun, not an adjective. This is not something in dispute, this is something you can find from basically any interlinear you look at, like the one I referred to earlier:
http://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/1.htm
In the second use of theos in John 1:1, simply hover your mouse of the blue letters that say ‘N-NMS’, and it will tell you that this is a noun in the nominative masculine singular. The Interlinear Study Bible produces the same result. So, even if we allow for the possibility of consistency with an adjective (I had to doublecheck a textbook to see that the inflection of theos is not only consistent with Greek nouns but also adjectives, which was annoying to see since I had hoped this would have finally refuted your position), the word is primarily completely consistent with usage as a noun, which is why all committees translate it as a noun. ‘Divine’ is not anywhere in the mainstream, it’s simply been long noted as a grammatically consistent possibility with John 1:1. But there are grammatically consistent translations with a LOT of verses in the New Testament. The mainstream, in fact, the absolute consensus of all committees to have ever produced translations respected by scholarship have used God, not divine, as a translation.
If John wanted to say ‘divine’ in John 1:1, why didn’t he use the Greek word θεϊκός (theikos) instead? John uses θεϊκός a LOT of other times in his gospel, why not here in John 1:1 if that’s precisely what he meant? This word precisely means ‘godlike’ or ‘divine’ and it would have been unambiguous to John’s readers. Why did he instead use the the standard Greek word for God, and why did John use theos six other times in his prologue where every other time it meant God, including one other time in John 1:1? Why would John confuse his readers in such a way? Indeed, it appears as if John’s stupidity has caused thousands of years of confusion, and has tricked even the worlds dullest to most erudite committees into thinking God was the better translation, so much so that they didn’t even offer a footnote for the other possibility (and when they did, it was only to reject it like the NET). Indeed, John might have pulled off the worlds greatest ploy in translation history!
Alright, let’s get back to Earth now. To end this response off, I’ll simply point to your further misunderstanding of Stephen Voorvinde’s words.
“On the basis of grammar alone v. 1 can be read as stating at the very least that the Word was divine. The further step of identifying the Word with God depends on contextual considerations. Evidence in this direction firstly comes from the expression μονογενὴς θεός, which is the most probable of the variant readings in vs. 18. Secondly, the identity of Jesus as God appears to be the presupposition of the Gospel as a whole.”[2]
Voorvinde is not saying that the grammatical reading is divine, Voorvinde is simply saying that divine is an equally possible grammatical reading to God. Thus, Voorvinde continues, we need further considerations in order to decide between which translation to adopt, and that’s exactly what Voorvinde does. Voorvinde notes that the context makes it clear that John is using theos to mean God, and so the context powerfully tips the scale to the God translation. Voorvinde is basically saying that the context doesn’t allow for a ‘divine’ translation, just as Fish, Garza, and the NET have noted. I have to note that a god is also a translation that is considered possible under the Greek. C.H. Dodd says this:
If a translation were a matter of substituting words, a possible translation of [QEOS EN hO LOGOS]; would be, “The Word was a god”. As a word-for-word translation it cannot be faulted.
There is as much evidence for translating it as divine as there is for a god. In fact, a god is actually more widespread in lesser known translations than divine has ever been. The reason why they are both not adopted is because, although the grammar doesn’t invalidate them, the context does – both John’s usage of theos in other places in his gospel and the fact that John 1:2 actually continues to say that the Logos was the medium through which creation happened, etc, etc, etc demonstrate that God is the best translation as we read on the Johannine Prologue. Daniel Wallace, who has basically “written” the textbook on koine Greek, explains why ‘divine’ is an inferior translation:
Possible translations are as follows: “What God was, the Word was” (NEB), or “the Word was divine” (a modified Moffatt). In this second translation, “divine” is acceptable only if it is a term that can be applied only to a true deity. However, in modern English, we use it to refer to angels, theologians, even a meal! Thus “divine” could be misleading in an English translation. The idea of a qualitative Θεὸς here is that the Word had all the attributes and qualities that “the God” (of 1:1b) had. In other words, he shared the essence of the Father, though they differed in person. The construction of the evangelist chose to express this idea was the most concise way he could have stated that the Word was God and yet distinct from the Father. [all italics and bold not mine] (pg. 269, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics)
Wallace writes that “divine” can only be used as a translation if it could have the effect that it does in the original Greek: to demonstrate that the Word was in the full essence of the deity, of God. However, Wallace says, since ‘divine’ only serves this function in the Greek but may not serve this function in the English because the varying use of the English word divine may also mean something lesser than the full essence of the deity, it is a misleading translation. This is literally what ever other quoted translator so far that we’ve quoted on this forum says. Divine is grammatically possible, but it is a misleading translation because it doesn’t mean the same thing in English as it does in Greek.
Yes. And because a reply requires 11 characters, I’ll add, that’s what I’m saying.
So you’re a Oneness Pentecostal?
The conclusion is appropriate.
John 1:14-15 says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John *testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” (NASB)
That’s what John says of Jesus.
No. There’s no reason to equate YHWH only with “the Father.” YHWH is God. The Father is YHWH, Jesus is YHWH, and the Spirit is YHWH. What would necessitate that this is not true?
Except the entire Old Testament, and the consistent witness of the New Testament. The Bible never uses the language “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit”. When God is cited, He is cited as one person; the Father.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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