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"...and the Word was
a god."
A Christian Apologetic
Answers
the Jehovah's Witnesses
by David Smart
QUESTION:
"Doesn't the lack of the Greek article before theos
of John 1:1 mean that it must be translated as "a god"?
John 1:1 --
[en arche
en ho logos] [kai ho logos en pros ho theos] [kai theos en ho
logos]
John 1:1 --
[In the
beginning was the Word] [and the Word was with God] [and the Word was God]
The
first thing that must be realized and understood is that the Greek and English
languages construct their sentences very differently, and I am not talking
about the fact that Greek sentences lack punctuation. In a typical English sentence, the subject is followed by the predicate. However, in a Greek sentence this structure is
not necessarily followed. Sometimes the subject, or its main verb, is found
further down the sentence. Quite opposed
to English sentence construction, the fact that one Greek word precedes a
following word does not necessarily have any significance.
The
third clause of John 1:1 (theos en ho logos) is known as a preverbal anarthrous
predicate nominative construction:
As
I had said previously, in Greek construction sometimes the subject, or its main
verb, is found further down the sentence. In the English language we put the subject
first and the predicate nominative later. Not always so in the Greek language. Greek and English grammatical construction is
not the same. The first noun in this
clause is not the subject, as
it would be in typical English usage. All
right, well then how is it that we know logos is the subject? Because
the subject is identified by the existence of an article in front of it
(Greek: ho). Whichever noun has the article, it is the
subject. In this case (theos en ho logos) logos is the subject because the article comes before it. This is why we translate it as "the Word
was God" rather than "God was the Word."
"The
subject is made plain by the article (ho
logos) and the predicate without it (theos)
just as in John
Stay
with me now, because there is another extremely important point to be made
concerning this text: if both of the nouns
in a predicate nominative construction have the article, or if both lack the
article, the two nouns become interchangeable.
A
big fuss is made especially by the Jehovah's Witnesses that the word theos
in the last clause of John 1:1 is "anarthrous"
(i.e. without the article). For this
reason, they assure us, it should be translated as "a god." This completely misses the point as to why theos
does not have the article. If there had
have been an article in front of theos, then John would have
been telling us that "God was the Word" as well as "the Word was
God." You see? This is why there is no article in
front of theos. John
was quite intentionally avoiding "modalism"
(or sometimes "Sabellianism").
There is no article in front of theos because John did not think or teach that Jesus Christ
and the Father were both the same person. For very sound and rational reasons this teaching
was considered heretical centuries ago, and not even Jehovah's Witnesses teach modalism.
"The
structure of the third clause in verse 1, theos en ho logos, demands the translation
'The Word was God.' Since logos
has the article preceding it, it is marked out as the
subject. The fact that theos is the first word after the conjunction kai shows that the main emphasis of the
clause lies on it. Had theos as well as logos been preceded by the article the meaning would have
been that the Word was completely identical with God, which is impossible if
the Word was also 'with God.' . . . The
"And
the Word was God (kai theos
en ho logos). By exact and
careful language John denied Sabellianism by not
saying ho theos en ho logos. That would mean that all of God was expressed
in ho logos and the terms would
be interchangeable, each having the article" (Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament).
But
how does John wish us to take the word theos in the last clause? Does he want us to understand it as indefinite, so that no particular
"god" is in mind? Or, in
correct Greek translation, does the preverbal position of theos
(adding emphasis), and coupled with the lack of the article, indicate that John
is describing the nature of the Word, saying that the Word is God?
It
can be easily demonstrated that the anarthrous theos
is quite in fact qualitive, not indefinite. If the anarthrous theos
is to be taken as indefinite, and hence translated into English with an
indefinite article ("a god"), then we must do the same to the other
282 times that theos
appears without the article. In fact,
there are four more instances in chapter 1 of John alone where theos
appears anarthrously, and yet the Jehovah's Witnesses
inconsistently translate only verse
1 as indefinite, while in the remaining four instances in the first chapter
where theos
appears anarthrously they don't translate them as
"a god."
In
2 Corinthians
Even though
in every one of these we see theos appearing without the
article, Jehovah's Witnesses do not translate them in the indefinite as "a
god." They only do it to the third
clause of verse 1. Rather inconsistent, this author notes, not to mention a clear demonstration that
the authors of the NWT had no grasp of the Greek language.
"The
Word is distinguishable from God and yet theos en ho logos, the Word was God, of Divine
nature; not "a god," which to a Jewish ear would have been
abominable; nor yet identical with all that can be called God (modalism), for then the article
would have been inserted..." (Nicoll, The Expositor's Greek Testament).
"The
uses of the Greek article, the functions of Greek prepositions, and the fine
distinctions between Greek tenses are confidently expounded in public at times
by men who find considerable difficulty in using these parts of speech in their
native tongue" (Bruce, The Books and the
Parchments).