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DR. DON WILKINS: B.A. UC Irvine, M.Div. Talbot Seminary, Th.M. Talbot Seminary, M.A. UCLA, Ph.D. UCLA. He has worked with The Lockman Foundation (TLF) as a senior translator since 1992 on the NASB.
John 1:1 is all about capitalization and the tiny word “a,” which in grammar is called the indefinite article. I will do a word-for-word translation, but in this case, I’ll keep the Greek for “God,” which is theos:
In [the] beginning was the word, and the word was with the theos, and the word was theos.
To clarify a couple of points, as we saw earlier in chapter 4 (DO WE STILL NEED A LITERAL BIBLE), “the” is added before “beginning” to smooth out the English, and there is actually emphasis based on word order that I am not following here. Also, for strict objectivity, I haven’t capitalized “word,” though of course, it refers to the Son.
The question for us here is how to handle the two occurrences of theos. It is no problem for orthodox translators, who use capital “God” in both places. The presence of “the” with the first theos is interesting, however, and could be awkward if we did not know that this construction was used routinely in the Greek as a reference to the monotheistic God of the Jews. We find it, for example, in Gen. 1:1 and 3 of the LXX (the Greek OT), where no article is present with “God” in the Hebrew.
Since the doctrine of the Trinity is part of orthodoxy, orthodox translators view the first theos construction as a reference to the Father, i.e. taking the article as a marker of identity, and thus John is stating that the Son and the Father were together at this point. The second theos, lacking the article, is seen not as a matter of identity but of quality or nature, and is easily translated “was God.” It helps that the word order, as we saw earlier, emphasizes the point, as we might expect.
To the translators of the New World Translation, however, the wording favoring the orthodox position is unacceptable. Their readers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, believe that the Son is not equal in deity to the Father. In the NWT John 1:1 reads:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.
The NWT agrees with most other translations in capitalizing “Word,” but while deity may be implied by others, it is just a personal name here. Most important, of course, is the closing construction: “was a god.” This is a “good bias” for the intended audience, but a very bad one from the viewpoint of orthodoxy. Can it be defended from the viewpoint of the Greek?
We have already seen from my WFW translation (and you can trust me) that the word “a” is not in the Greek. One question is whether “a” should be added. The Witnesses have long maintained that it is standard translation practice to add “a” (the indefinite article) when the definite article (“the”) is absent in Greek, on the ground that Greek does not have an indefinite article. They have also defended “a god” from the fact that the article is present in the Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1. So they consider “was God” an unjustified translation based on bias.
In my view, the debate over adding “a” misses the point. Notice that in the NWT, the addition of “a” is accompanied by the change of “God” to lowercase, indicating a lesser “god.” Ancient Greek did not have the distinction of upper- and lowercase letters, and the assumption that the meaning of “God” is automatically lessened by the addition of “a” is a misapprehension from English usage. What needs to be considered is whether John could have used theos twice in close proximity while giving it two qualitatively different meanings. I consider this very unlikely without any clear indication to that effect, and I can find none here.
It is even more unlikely, I think, in view of John’s emphasis on the second theos. He felt it was remarkable, or important to point out, that the Word was also theos. It seems either that he wanted to emphasize equality (but not identity) with “the theos,” or to emphasize that they were not equal, i.e. that the Word was something else. For the latter we need some indication of a difference in quality, yet if this was John’s intent, he confuses his readers by using the same word without any modifiers.[1] Even if we were to grant that the second theos could mean “a god,” we would then expect a disjunctive connecting the clause (e.g. “but the Word was a god”), not “and the Word was a god.”[2] The Greek can only mean “and.”
If I were trying to find a compromise, I would start with the construction, “a God.” This would eliminate the debate over “a,” while maintaining lexical consistency for the two occurrences of “theos.” It would also comply with the definition of a good compromise as one from which neither side walks away happy. Obviously Witnesses would not like the capital ‘G’ in both words. To Trinitarians, it might suggest that there are three separate Gods, not one in three Persons. And everyone probably would consider it a bit awkward.[3]
I have no hopes of settling the arguments over John 1:1; I can only say that I do not believe the NWT version can be adequately defended, for the reasons stated. My full support goes to the orthodox rendering found in the NASB and other corresponding translations.
John 1:1c Updated American Standard Version (UASV) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.[1]
John 1:1English Standard Version (ESV) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1Lexham English Bible (LEB) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1Christian Standard Bible (CSB) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1New American Standard Bible (NASB) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
[1] An NWT advocate would, of course, say that we have only to insert “a.” But in the first place, as I noted, one cannot change the meaning of a Greek word this way. In the second place, John actually could have added a word (tis) in Greek that served as the equivalent of the indefinite article, or he could have used a different word or construction for “god” that could have been understood as a lesser god.
[2] It would have been anticlimactic at best to underscore the Son positively as a lesser god since only a god could have existed with “the theos” before creation.
[3] The term “a God” actually occurs once in the NASB, in 1 Cor. 14:33. Unfortunately, it is irrelevant for our discussion because it is italic (added to the text) and a different concept.
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