by jerome 132 Replies latest watchtower bible
so to make a short story long, the correct rendering of John 1:1 is 'the Word was God', reason being;
to render it as 'a god' directly conflicts with the many scriptures where Jehovah says "there are no other goods before me, after me, beside me, " etc.
The original Greek chronologers knew what they saying. They meant what they meant?
Yeah, I wish Simon would fix the scrolling pages. Usually it's a 'link' that causes that, but I don't see one here.
I would like to know after revewing all the evidence given for the deity of Christ in this thread if anyone could mount a reasonable argument to suggest a translation other than "the word was God".
I dont see how at this point how anyone could disagree.
Jesus = God
other wise
Jesus = False god
Because if you are not the one true God you are a false god.
How much more simpler can it get.
jerome
The Bible is a two edged sword wield it for evil and it you may get hurt.
The are are many gods but there is only one true God.
The Bible lists many gods, but there is only one true God.
It is just that easy.
All the other gods that the Bible lists are Always rediculed as being false, there is nowhere in the Bible where you will find a god other than the one true God, that is not labeled false.
jerome
The Bible is a two edged sword wield it for evil and it you may get hurt.
The article 'A'is definetly improperly inserted. It causes scriptural conflict.
Also, that means that this is the New World Interpretation, Not a New World Translation.
But then when you start getting into a Three/two/hole in one, I stand by my earlier assertion:
God doesn't care!! Jesus doesn't CARE!!! The Holy Spirti--oops--holy spirit doesn't CARE!!!
The bibile says to worship in spirit and in truth. If in truth you see God as a three-in-one, then worship him that way. Or two-in-one, or a hole-in-one then worship him/them/it that way.
But of course that would end a perfectly good flame war.
Jerome, I think you have this discussion forum down perfectly. You may now start charging for lessons.
Jerome said "I would like to know after revewing all the evidence given for the deity of Christ in this thread if anyone could mount a reasonable argument to suggest a translation other than "the word was God".
What does one do? Continue to repeat oneself? It is not a surprise that so many translations render John 1:1 as "...the Word was God" as in most cases the translators have a trinitarian bias and so when there are various ways of translating the verse they will do so according to their beliefs. In all cases they have the shadow of the well-respected and divinely (in a time when kings were appointed by God) authorised King James version hanging over them and would understandably not want to jeopardise the reputation of their translation in the eyes of their prospective readers.
More to the point, why do the translators of An American Translation render it as "...the Word was divine", and of the New English Bible render it as "...what God was the Word was", if they believed the traditional translation accurately reflected the meaning of the verse. These translators were representatives of churches that embraced the Nicene Creed and so, presumably, trinitarians themselves. Yet they felt it necessary to break with tradition on a scripture so fundamental to Christian belief. Does that not tell you something?
But this talk of false gods and true gods is simply a red herring. You are applying the way people think and talk today and expect them to have done so 2000 years ago. I quote Prof. James BeDuhn, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Northern Arizona University on the subject:
Mark 12:26-7 is an excellent passage to compare to John 1:1. In verse 26, we first have HO THEOS, and then two more uses of THEOS in series with the first.In this verse, then, the first HO carries over to all three. But in verse 27, which is a separate clause, THEOS appears without a definite article. Since THEOS is in its nominative form, the absence of an article suggests indefiniteness. And when we look closely at the sentence, we see how indefiniteness works here. The implied question is "What sort of god is God? The answer is given: "He is not "a god of the dead, but (a god) of the living." This use of the indefinite is what I mean when I refer to "categorical" meaning. Mark is writing in a culture where people were used to talking about gods. There was for them a god category. So you find passages in the New Testament where Paul and Barnabas are thought to be "gods," or where it is predicted of the Antichrist that he will try to make himself "a god," or where the Old Testament is quoted to the effect that God promises to his people that "you shall be as gods," etc. So you can use the indefinite noun "god" to put individuals into the god category. And when you talk theoretically even about The God, you can discuss what sort of "god" he is, that is, what God's character may be, in this case, being a god of the living, not the dead. The same cateogrical use of the indefinite is found in John 1:1.Earnest
To make clear what I mean, I will step aside from linguistics to a more interpretive description of what seems to be going on behind the language of John. John's choice of an idefinite construct in John 1:1 is a clue to what he means to do in this passage. John is very carefully, one might even say tentatively, putting the Word into the god category. I use the word "tentatively" only in the sense that John is introducing a new idea to his readers. He certainly believes it with his whole heart, but he recognizes that it will be hard for his monotheistic audience to accept. For John, the other three gospels have fallen short of making clear the special identity of Jesus. John feels the need to emphasize that Jesus is more than a man, more than a messiah, that he is to be identified with God's creative, formative, perfecting will, his "Word." And since that "Word" is so intimately connected to God himself, it is, in some sense, within the same category as God, in the god category. John is sure of this, but he is not a philosopher or theologian, he is a gospel writer. So later, more pedantic minds had to work out the implications of this teaching, and that is how we get the development over time of ideas like the Trinity, trying to solve intellectually the problem of having two or three entities in the god category while trying to maintain allegiance to monotheism.
These translators were representatives of churches that embraced the Nicene Creed and so, presumably, trinitarians themselves.
Are you aware of the full history of the "Nicene Creed" and how Constantine modified what the original church fathers intended?
A short quote from the article:
The Council of Nicaea(taken from http://www.deism.com/counterrebuttal2.htm.The Council of Nicaea is the model for all church councils which followed. Almost 300 bishops and important clerics attended, "including all those who had taken part in the Arian controversy to date" Hosius of Cordova presided, and Constantine attended. Arius was present as an observer, and his defenders were Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea. On the opposing side were Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius, supported by Eustathius of Antioch and Hosius -- all bitterly opposed to Arius personally. Strangely enough, the Christian church may have remained intact if it was not for the interference of Constantine. Early in the council, "Eusebius of Caesarea introduced a carefully worded creed, based on Scripture, that neither affirmed nor denied Arius' views. No one could object to anything in it, and Constantine praised it." This original creed would have ended the Arian Controversy and brought stability to the Christian church. But Constantine showed his instability, and under the influence of Hosius, the emperor proposed to add to the creed the term "homoousios" (Gk. of the same substance) implying in a sense that the Son and Father were like two pieces of wood cut from the same tree. This one word ruined the compromise creed created by the council, and excluded Arius' views entirely; it also opened itself up to Sabellianism, a previously condemned heresy. Criticisms were raised that the word did not exist anywhere in the Scriptures; but since the emperor was the one who proposed it, "scarcely anyone felt able to speak against it" [14]. Constantine proceeded to threaten exile for anyone who refused to sign the new creed, and all but three did. Arius and two others refused to sell out to Constantine's new creed and were condemned by the council and exiled accordingly. The Council then proceeded to deal with the case of the Melitius, set rules for calculating the date of Easter, recognized the patriarchal office of the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and decided several minor issues.
Now, why bring this up? To my earlier point: Man has tried for THOUSANDS of years to "mold God" into an image that he (man) can explain or deal with.
1 example:
1. When Man needed an excuse to rape/pilage/destroy others, they claimed rightousness in the site of God, and God was written as a vengful/Powerful "protector of his chosen people" God.(Most of the OT as applied to the Isrealites many wars).
My point:
One's knowledge of God cannot be solely based on writings of any kind. It must come from "within". If God created us in his image, then we must have the ability to "know god" without any outside influence. (I guess it is another thing to prove it)
The writings that we are debating are 3 things:
1. Dated. 1900+ years old. One wonders why there is nothing more recent.
2. Written from a completely different culture,life experience and languuage. ->Leaves everything open to debate when it comes to translation and interpertation
3. Man has had his hand in it deciding what was/wasn't inspired. I am sure it would come as a surprise to many that the books of Revelations and Acts (among others) were not considered inspired writings by many of the early "fathers", but were included by vote.
.....
Moxy:
Thanks for pointing out those things about the tense of "was" (Greek en)
and how it should be translated into English. Let me add some comments.
The word "was" is indeed in the imperfect tense in Greek. However, English
has no imperfect tense, so the Greek must be translated using some other
tense. This is similar to translating the imperfect from Latin, Spanish,
French and so forth. The Greek imperfect has the flavor of continuing action
as opposed to action at a point in time. It is normally translated into English
by constructions such as the past progressive ("I was thinking"), the "used to"
form ("I used to think") or just the simple past ("I thought"). There may be a
bit of ambiguity, though, using the simple past because in English it can imply
either continued or completed action, so if the translator wants to be precise,
he might have to avoid the simple past and use the past progressive or some
other construction.
Translating the imperfect of the Greek "to be" (eimi; imperfect (en) into
English presents a more difficult problem. "To be" is essentially identical
to "to exist" except for usage (we say "I am hungry", not "I exist hungry").
But in Greek the same word eimi is used for both English senses. Another
complication in English is that various forms of "to be" are used as auxiliary
or helper words (in "I was walking" 'was' is an auxiliary verb). So if we try
to translate the imperfect en by the past progressive, we get "he was being"
or "he was existing", which are just bad English. The forms "he used to be"
and "he used to exist" obviously don't work either, because they imply that
"he" no longer exists. In John 1:1a, translating as "in the beginning the Word
was" is somewhat ambiguous because it leaves open the question of just how long
"the Word" had been in existence. Had "the Word" been the very first thing
created, so that at the initial instant of "the beginning" the Word "was"?
To remove the ambibuity, we can translate as "the Word already existed" or
"the Word had been". Clearly, "the Word was being" or "the Word was existing"
technically convey the proper sense of the Greek, but are ungrammatical.
So in this oddball case, I would say that it's reasonable to render the Greek
imperfect en ("was" or "was existing") as "had been", even though as
you point out, it's in the English past perfect tense, because it properly
reflects the sense that "the Word" had already existed for a long time when
"the beginning" commenced. You'll note that to explain my point, I'm pretty
well forced to use the past perfect to convey precisely what I mean.
Unclepenn1:
:: Nowhere in the NT is the Holy Spirit spoken of as God, nor is Jesus spoken of as God.
: Do you really mean this, or do you mean that there aren't examples that you will accept?
I mean this in the sense that there are no direct, completely unambiguous statements
along the lines of "the Holy Spirit is God" or "Jesus is God" or expressions such as
"God the Son" or "God the Holy Spirit". On the other hand, there are many, many examples
of completely unambiguous statements and expressions about the Father, such as "God the
Father". Thus, all of the statements and expressions that connect God and the Holy Spirit
or God and the Son retain some ambiguity, and so one must accept that from such expressions
it must be inferred that "the Holy Spirit is God" or "the Son is God". Because all
inference is open to interpretation, and in this matter there are a number of reasonable
interpretations -- in particular, the nontrinitarian viewpoint -- one cannot say with
absolute certainty that any particular interpretation is correct.
My study of the Trinity and nontrinitarian views convinces me that there are extremely
few scriptural passages that cannot be fit very well with either viewpoint. And of
course, there are a tiny few scriptures that fit extremely poorly with either view.
: For instance in Acts chp 5, you are familiar with the story of Ananias and Saphira I am sure?
Of course, and it is one of those NT situations that fits nicely with either view.
You already know the trinitarian view, but the nontrinitarian view is that the
Holy Spirit is, as the JWs say, "God's impersonal active force" and so is more or less
a synonym for God. In this spirit one might say, "You have lied to my soul" and the
meaning would be obvious: "You have lied to me." I see nothing unscriptural about the
"holy spirit" being just another way of describing how God does things.
: Does it say that the Holy Spirit is God? Well, not in those exact words. Does it say that
he lied to the Holy Spirit, and then in the same breath reveal that it was God that he lied
to? YEP!
This in no way negates the possibility of other interpretations. The fact that something
is possible does not make it a fact.
: Apostate Man- What you believe is called Modalism. Unfotunately that causes some problems
theologically. Jesus prays to the Father, the Father loves the Son, The Spirit reveals
Christ, The Father sent the Spirit, et al.
That's right. There are many websites discussing this topic. One I found is called "False
Doctrine of Modalism: as taught by the United Pentecostal Church":
http://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-modalism.htm
Apostate Man:
Simply quoting from various Bible translations proves nothing. Some translations are
better than others, and some are just plain wrong, or lead to notions that most Christians
consider heretical. For example, you quoted the Amplified Bible which has for
John 1:1c, "the Word was God Himself." This is the heresy of modalism that Unclepenn1
spoke of.
In one post you quoted from the "Worldwide English (New Testament) (WE)" which has for
John 1:1: "The Word and God were together. The Word was God." As it stands, and without
a good deal of explanation, this is simply nonsensical. It is nonsensical because if
"the Word" and "God" are together, that is an explicit statement that there are two
persons involved in being together, and so "the Word" cannot be "God". The solution
is not difficult: in "the Word was God", "God" does not mean the person who is God, but
refers to the nature of God, or the essence of God. That is why the Greek word for "god"
is without the article "the"; it is qualitative and indicates that theos is being
used for a category, namely, the category "god" or "God". Of course, it remains to be
discussed whether John had in mind the broad category "god", which his broad audience of
Greek-speaking Jews, Christians and especially non-Christians would understand, or the
extremely narrow category of "God" that most modern Christians claim he meant.
Furthermore, this rendering contradicts the notions of modalism that you've adopted from
the Pentecostal Church because it specifically states that "the Word and God were
together", whereas modalism has it that the two do not exist at the same time but are
different manifestations, or modes, of the same underlying God.
Your quotation by Strohbach simply repeats the mistakes I've already debunked earlier in
this thread.
Dungbeetle:
Once I finish typing up a huge amount of material, you'll see that neither "the Word
was God" nor "the Word was a god" is an adequate translation. Each is grammatically
and textually allowable, and even contextually allowable -- up to a point. But each
is misleading because each misses important nuances of meaning in the original Greek.
Each is convenient for the beliefs of those who espouse it to the exclusion of
anything else, and that's why they usually fail to publicly deal with the inadequacies.
Jerome:
: I would like to know after revewing all the evidence given for the deity of Christ
in this thread if anyone could mount a reasonable argument to suggest a translation
other than "the word was God".
Yes, and many scholars have done so. The most accurate translation is something like
"the Word had the nature of God" or even "the Word had the nature of god", where
"God" and "god" are slightly different, and thoroughly arguable views of how to
interpret John's use of the anarthrous theos.
: I dont see how at this point how anyone could disagree.
Then contemplate what I said, go to a good theological library and get hold of some
good technical treatises, and then you should see for yourself. As I've said
several times in this thread, an excellent treatise is the book Jesus as God
by Murray Harris (Baker Books, 1992).
: Jesus = God
: other wise
: Jesus = False god
: Because if you are not the one true God you are a false god.
Didn't you understand anything I wrote earlier in the thread? I dealt with
all of this. Go back and read it again. See if you can understand it, and then
make comments. If you can't manage that, then it's obvious that you don't want to
understand.
: How much more simpler can it get.
Precisely. The "Jesus = False god" argument is transparently bogus. It forces one
to make nonsensical statements like, "Jesus is a false true god." Can you not see
why the argument is bogus?
Earnest:
Good points! The quotation from James BeDuhn really hits the nail on the head with
respect to the subtleties of translation of John 1:1 that go over the head (with
the willing help of biased translators) of 99% of the Christian population.
Simwitness:
I especially resonated with your last two points:
: 2. Written from a completely different culture,life experience and languuage. ->
Leaves everything open to debate when it comes to translation and interpertation
Right. In my experience it is the rare Christian, and even the rare scholar who
is objective enough to get beyond his modern religious biases and find out enough
about the ancient Greek culture to understand the New Testament in that context.
: 3. Man has had his hand in it deciding what was/wasn't inspired. I am sure it
would come as a surprise to many that the books of Revelations and Acts (among
others) were not considered inspired writings by many of the early "fathers",
but were included by vote.
That's right, and that's why anyone who carefully studies the doctrines of the
nature of Christ comes away understanding that there was an evolution of ideas
beginning right at where Jesus is supposed to have died.
AlanF
All good points, simwitness, although if our knowledge of God comes from "within, without any outside influence", there will be as many gods as there are people.
There seem to have been three groups that attended the council of Nicaea. Arius and his supporters; his opponents; and a majority of Eastern bishops who wished to maintain the traditional Logos theology without taking a strongly anti-Arian position. The inclusion of homoousios was certainly the fly in the ointment but I don't think Constantine was entirely to blame. All he wanted was unity. Whatever pleased the council pleased the Emperor too. When they tore up the Arian creed, he approved. When they accepted the Caesarian, he approved again. When the morally strong Athanasian minority urged the council to put in the disputed clauses, Constantine did his best to smooth the course of the debate. At last, in the interest of unity, he put pressure on those who still held out, exiling those who refused to sign.
But all this went beyond scripture and was simply a matter of expedience. Of course it didn't unite the Empire and once Constantine was dead all hell broke loose.
Earnest
"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandernatch!" - Rev. Charles Dodgson
AlanF, you sir, rock. Thanks for explaining it all so well for us. Your hard work and research is definitely appreciated.
