The NWT of John 1:1; Some Questions For Leolaia and Narkissos

by FireNBandits 40 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Narkissos

  I think Leolaia has very well summarised the point I have attempted to make a number of times: the Fourth Gospel professes a sort of dynamic, transitive notion of divinity extending, first to the Son, and ultimately to the believers/elect (if not the "world" itself, as might be gathered from chapter 17). At each stage it implies a paradoxical combination of dependence and submission on the one hand, oneness and equality on the other hand. In that sense it suits proto-Gnostic thinking well, although the notion of creation (and flesh, or matter) is not yet an issue as it will become in later (2nd-century) Gnosticism. However, the point is: whatever can be assessed of the relationship between the Son and the Father will ultimately be true of the believers-elect.

  By emphasising the absolute difference between God and man as Creator and creature, the orthodox reading introduces a discrepancy in interpretation. When the text says Father * Son * Elect (* standing for the paradoxical, dynamic relationship of both equality and dependence, as I tried to describe above) orthodoxy reads F = S > E. Meaning that "*" is interpreted (statically) once as "=", then as ">". Arianism (and later unitarism, including the JW brand) picks on this discrepancy to offer a more formally consistent, yet wrong, interpretation of "*" as meaning "F > S > E". In both cases the original meaning of "*" is lost because both orthodox and Arians think of it in static terms, leading to the false dichotomy either = or >.

  On John 1:1b I've tried to discuss that earlier (although in a more philosophical than exegetical way perhaps) on http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/99593/1.ashx

  One interesting possibility (which I have seen echoed in the last French edition of the Jerusalem Bible) is the possibility that 1:1c ("the Word was g-God") is an early but secondary addition to the Prologue hymn, calling for the awkward repetition of 1:1b in 1:2. This I think is worth pondering.
• 

  Leolaia

  Narkissos....Harner akaik does not discuss 2 Thessalonians 2:4 and mainly sticks to the data in John and Mark. I have another more recent paper that gives an analysis along the same lines, but I cannot easily find it among the mass of papers I have collected. Still hunting for it.

  This is just my own subjective impression, but v. 2 (which reprises v. 1a and b) would have no function other than repetition if we elide v. 1c, and without v. 1c this repetition would give the appearance of a seam here; in other words, v. 1c and 2 seem to stand or fall together. By removing both, we achieve a series of bicolons (linked with kai) that run at least to v. 5: In the beginning was the Word / KAI the Word was with God // Through him all things were made / KAI without him nothing was made that was made // In him was life / KAI that life was the light of men // The light shines in the darkness / KAI the darkness has not overpowered it." This section ends right at the mention of John the Baptist (and the subsequent section has more complicated grammatical structure), and may have indeed preexisted the composition of the prologue as a poetic unit (such as a Christian hymn, as has been suggested). If this is the case, then the addition of v. 1c and 2 would have accompanied the composition of the rest of the prologue. There is also the evidence of v. 18b, which unfortunately has a murky manuscript tradition, but which has an anarthrous theos referring to the Word in some of the earliest and best MSS and which also refers to the close proximity of the Word with the Father (eis ton kolpou tou patros, "in the bosom of the Father"). It would thus, in the last verse of the prologue, form an inclusio with v. 1b and c. This inclusio would also reprise the anarthrous status of the theos (although here it is not a predicate noun), and between v. 1 and 18b we would have four other anarthrous instances of theos (v. 6, 12, 13, 18a -- all outside of the unit of v. 1-5) that refer to the Father (only v. 2 is articular, and this is because it reprises v. 2).

  I forgot to also mention that the inclusive sense of divinity is most clear in John 10:33-38, in which Jesus responds to the accusation that he was "making himself God (poieis seauton theon)" by referring to his reciprocality with the Father ("the Father is in me, and I in the Father") and by justifying his claim via the scripture that refers to mortals who receive the word of God as theoi (v. 34-35). Notice the wording: theous pros hous ho logos tou theou egeneto "gods towards whom the Word of God occurred"; this is allusive of the wording in the prologue, cf. ho logos én pros ton theon (v. 1b), theos én ho logos (v. 1c), panta di autou egeneto (v. 3), ho logos sarx egeneto (v. 14), alétheia dia Iésou Khristou egeneto (v. 17), etc. Jesus seems to be likening himself (as the Word) to the Law that was once delivered to Israel (= v. 17), and those who receive him are theous whom the Word is with (pros hous = pros ton theon). The coming of the Word to them (pros hous) is also paralleled by the returning of the Word to his Father: "Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God (pros ton theon hupagei)" (John 13:3). Compare also the wording in Philo of Alexandria: "For at such a time Moses says that their words ascend up to God (anabainein ... tous logous autón pros ton theon) and that he listens to them" (Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat, 25.93), and Josephus: "But this piety was towards God (én hé pros ton theon eusebeia) and the observance of his laws" (Antiquities 9.10.4).
• 

  FireNBandits

  Thank you Narkissos! Thank you again Leolaia! I've sent Jim Coram the entirety of this exchange up to this point and I'm hoping he'll weigh in and have his say. Yes, Leolaia, he is constructing a theology based on what he perceives to be the paradigm that best incorporates the biblical data. He embraced Arianism in his early twenties perhaps earlier. So, his theological musings are always in an Arian context. I went the other route in my early thirties and realized the NT doesn't stand alone in a cultural vacuum, it didn't drop out of the sky, but was produced by Theists in a definite cultural milieu. I learned that the current NT we have is the result of many factors and forces, including Catholic (both Roman and Byzantine) councils that were convened to settle the issue of the NT canon. So, I sought the Church that had made those decisions/pronouncements as that is where any authority the NT has ultimately springs from, historically speaking. I opted for the Eastern Orthodox Church, and studied as much as I humanly could the many influences that led to the synthesis we call Catholicism/Orthodoxy. I read the ante and post Nicene Fathers up until the Great Schism, and I gave my full attention to the various Biblical texts that bear on Arianism/Modalism/Trinitarianism and read what was available to enable me to understand where these NT authors were “coming from” so to speak.
  
  I came away firmly convinced that any "solution" I could come up with has already been fleshed out by others long before me. Trinitarianism does make sense of the data but in a very synthetic way. I use “synthetic” here in its negative sense of artificial. Hence, what I’m doing now is re-examining the NT as closely as I can, even attempting to learn Koine, out of fascination with Christianity and the NT. I have no delusions of actually solving anything. I don’t really see anything needing to be solved anyway. I simply want to more thoroughly understand what already is.
  
  Thank you again, both of you, for indulging me.Sincerely,
  Martin
• 

  Leolaia

  I was just reading the apostolic fathers and stumbled upon the following passage in Ignatius (who in many respects reflects Johannine ideas without clearly alluding to John, and who freely applies theos to Jesus), which at once strikingly resembles both 1 John 4:8 and John 1:1c:

  "None of these things escapes your notice, if you have perfect faith and love toward Jesus Christ. For these are the beginning and end of life (zóés): faith is the beginning (arkhé men pistos), and love is the end (telos de agapé), and [the two existing in unity] are God ([ta de duo en enotéti genomena] theos estin)" (Ignatius, Ephesians 14:1).

  Here we have another statement that love (coupled with faith) is God, a theme found also in 1 John 4:8, and the syntax is similar as we also have a preverbal anarthrous predicate noun (compare [ho theos] apagé estin "God is love"). The difference here is that the subject is the implicit "faith and love" (whereas in 1 John 4:8 the articular subject is ho theos "God"); in other words, we have the converse "Love (and faith) is God". This pattern is closer to John 1:1c, which also has an anarthrous predicate theos. So whereas God has the nature of love in 1 John 4:8, here Ignatius says that love has the nature of God just as John 1:1 says that the Word has the nature of God. What makes the parallel even more intriguing is that Ignatius is construing two entities (love and faith) as "united" (enotéti), and it is through their union that they are God, i.e. share theos as their nature. This parallels what we find in John 1:1, that both ho logos and ho theos (i.e. ton theon of v. 1b, which corresponds to the "Father" of v. 18) have the nature of theos. The unity between the Father and Son is a theme found in John 10:30 and elsewhere and while this may be purely coincidental, apagé and pistos (with the verbal form) are central concepts in the Johannine literature (cf. John 1:7, 2:11, 22-23, 3:16, 18-19, 4:39, 41, 48-53, 5:42, 5:44, 6:29-30, 69, 7:31, 39, 48, 8:24, 30-31, 9:18, 36, 10:38, 42, 11:15, 40-42, 12:42-43, 13:1, 34-35, 14:21, 23, 29, 15:9-13, 17:8, 21-23, 20:25, 1 John 1:9, 2:5, 15, 3:1-2, 16-17, 23, 4:7-12, 16, 5:4, 10, etc.; see 1 John 4:16 which repeats the "God is love" statement and says that pepisteukamen tén apagén "we have faith in the love" that God has "in us"), and arkhé and zóé are other key words that appear in the prologue.
• 

  JosephMalik

  Martin,

  All this analysis of the Grammar of John 1:1 with comparisons to other texts always seemed like a waste of time to me. Why? Because it makes no difference if we translate the verse God, god, a god or divine. The title God is not identity. We assume identity or may attach identity to it but the word itself leaves that up to the reader and a Jewish reader should know better. The title God has multiple definitions in its own right regardless of whether the definite article appears before it or not. And we always see work-a-rounds and excuses to such use in other texts when its use does not fit some pre-conceived theology. So what is going on here?

  John was not interested in establishing the identity of the Word in this text by trying to teach us that this Word was somehow another person of the God it was with. The verse clearly enough teaches that they were separate and distinct in their own right, not one and the same Person or Being. What then was John doing? John was adding an addendum to the genealogy lists already provided in the other Gospels, both of which were incomplete. He took such lists further back in time than Abraham or Adam. John’s Gospel is full of such fills and interleaves with them. He would not only here but also throughout his Gospel establish a pre-human existence for this Word, the one that would become the Christ and maintains continuity with such existence even as such lists did for his human lineage. John was intent on telling us precisely where our life came from, who our literal creator was, who authorized such creation the continuity of which made this Word the only one qualified to take over the responsibility for all the life and humanity flowing from Adam’s life. This was possible because the life originally came from the Word in the beginning of human creation. John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. We learn this from John early on as he qualifies who this Word called God was. The Word is our God by virtue of the authority imparted to him by God to produce the human race. The Kings of Israel by virtue of the authority imparted on them were called God for similar reasons. The title God could be used by men or others, human or not, good or bad, without making two Gods of identical nature and Being and confusing such use.

  Joseph
• 

  snowbird

  You go, Joseph Malik. I often wondered why the WTS hardly ever dealt with the book of John. I thought it was because the Synoptic gospels had already covered everything so to speak. After reading the entire book of John carefully and prayerfully, I now see why. They don't want us to allow the Holy Spirit to teach and guide us. I have no problem with having the Word be my God.

  After all, it was He who sacrificed His life for us. Try getting one of the GB members to do that.

  Once again, a powerful and well-thought out exposition.

  Snowbird
• 

  Narkissos

  Leolaia,

  Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I did mean that 1b-2 might have been an addition to the original hymn (and might be original to its Prologue setting).

  The structure appears even better if the sentence in v. 3-4 is divided according to the earliest (Gnostic) attestations:

  In the beginning was the Word / KAI the Word was with God
  Through him all things were made / KAI without him nothing was made
  that was made In him was life / KAI that life was the light of men
  The light shines in the darkness / KAI the darkness has not overpowered it.

  What is also interesting in 10:33ff is the use of the plural theoi = gods, suggesting that the "inclusive divinity" of the Fourth Gospel needs not be construed in an exclusively monotheistic pattern (as being "part of the one God") but may also be expressed in apparently polytheistic form (divinity as represented by several "gods") -- from a translator's standpoint, this tends to refrain my criticism of the NWT in 1:1c: "a god" might not be so far off the mark after all (although in a theological perspective hugely different from the WT's). In 10:33ff, I also think the potential adversative meaning of pros + accusative (corresponding to the Psalm's context) must not be overlooked (and it may have a part even in 1:1b-2, cf. my other thread on this very topic). It would construct an a fortiori (qol wa-chomer?) argument: even those against whom the Word of God came are called theoi, cannot the Word itself be called so? The parallelism with the Torah (regularly called "your law" or "their law" in the Fourth Gospel) may also be construed as antithetic.
• 

  nvrgnbk

  You smart dudes make my head hurt.

  I'll have another bottle of Sauvignon Blanc whilst you all work this out.
• 

  FireNBandits

  Dear Narkissos and Leolaia
  
  Now that you've indulged me so thoroughly (and I have saved your comments to my PC as well as having mailed them to Jim Coram) could you indulge me further? I admit that I view the Bible, including the NT story of Jesus, as mythological. Having left Christianity and embraced several other paths for about eighteen years of my life, I'm back in the Christian camp, having re-embraced the mythology of my ancestors (of whom I am very proud). With that preamble out of the way, what is your (both Leo and Narkissos) assessment of Trinitarianism and Arianism as attemtps to synthesize the NT data? In Trinitarianism I also include the Christological definitions of Ephesus and Chalcedon (which the various fandamentalist and evangelical readers of this forum have unknowingly inherited to one degree or another)? I see them as truly brilliant, particularly Chalcedon, but also as synthetic in the negative sense. They seem artifical in that they do not seem to have been brought forth primarily in response to the theology of the writers of the NT, but in response to "heretics" and the heretical use and misue of proof-texts. In others words, they seem rather lifeless and brittle.
  
  As an interesting aside, after explaining Chalcedonian Christology to a Brahman Hindu friend, he blurted out, "That's a perfect definition of an Avatar!"
  
  Sincerely,
  Martin
• 

  Leolaia

  Narkissos.... That format of v. 3-4 works even better! Do you have an actual attestation of this form in early gnostic literature? That would be very interesting. I wonder tho if this is only an excerpt from a longer passage because I noticed that something seems to be missing between the first and second lines. Note the catchword associations between each colon:

  In the beginning was the Word / KAI the Word was with God
  All things were made through him / KAI without him was made nothing
  that was made in him was life / KAI that life was the light of men
  The light shines in the darkness / KAI the darkness has not overpowered it.

  Each colon has something linking to the next, except for the first line unless you count the pronominal reference in autou. I wonder if there is a missing line here, along the lines of (and I'm making this up off the top of my head):

  In the beginning was the Word / KAI the Word was with God
  God was not before the Word / KAI the Word was before all things
  All things were made through him / KAI without him was made nothing
  that was made in him was life / KAI that life was the light of men
  The light shines in the darkness / KAI the darkness has not overpowered it.

  On inclusive divinity, it would be worth also pointing out that those who become tekna theou "children of God" (v. 12) by the Word "receive a share of his fullness (ek tou plérómatos autou ... elabomen)" (v. 16), an expression with theological implications in Colossians, i.e. "for God was pleased to have all the fullness (pan to pléróma) dwell in him [Jesus]", 1:19; "for in Christ all the fullness of deity (pan topléróma tes theotétos) resides in bodily form", 2:9) and in the gnostic literature. The nature of divinity in the context of the prologue, at least, embraces both grace and glory (v. 14, doxan autou ... plérés kharitos); cf. 2 Peter 1:3-4, which says that Jesus' "divine power" (theias dunameós autou) gives Christians all they need through his own glory and virtue, so they "may become sharers of divine nature" (genésthe theias koinónoi phuseós). There is also a reciprocal parallelism of the Word "becoming flesh" (ho logos sarx egeneto) and the people he saves "becoming children of God" (tekna theou genesthai), as if the Word assumes the nature of humanity so humans can assume the nature of the Word.

  Then there is the statement in v. 14 that the Word "tented in us" (eskénósen en hémin), which recalls the later statements in the gospel of mutual unity between God and the Son and between the Son and his followers (John 17:11, 21). I'm not sure how far to press the significance of theoi as a plurality of "gods" as something to be read back into 1:1, as the plural expression owes itself to the OT intertext and the nuance in 1:1 seems to be one that emphasizes the Word's nature as theos (in underspecified terms) than specifically as a theos. Moreover, it is on account of the Word's incarnation that people "become children of God" and "receive a share of his fullness", whereas the situation in v. 1 pertains to the "beginning". I wonder if the uniqueness of the Word as the monogenous para patros (v. 14) and the monogenés theos (v. 18) reflects this original unique relationship of Godship that is later extended to others (such that they become, in a sense, "gods"). I guess I have a conceptualization of the nature of theos in John in terms rather similar to later gnostic thinking about the Pleroma, whether unwarranted or not. (I'm just thinking out loud here )

  What do you think of the Ignatian parallel btw?