Chapter One
John 1:1-2
1. εν αρχηA ην ο λογοςB, 1. The Living WordC was in the beginning,
και ο λογος ην προς τον θεονD,
the Living Word was with God,
και
θεοςE ην ο λογος. and
the Living Word was God.
2. ουτοςF ην εν αρχηD προς τον θεον. 2.
This very same one was in the beginning with God.
Grammar Insights
(A) “In the beginning” (εν αρχη) is at the beginning of the first
clause for two reasons. First, to emphasize that the Living Word existed at the
very beginning of time itself. Second, to call to mind the first verse of
Genesis, the creation story, which also starts with the words, “in the
beginning.” One of the reasons for that connection will become clear in the
third verse.
(B) You are probably used to seeing the first verse of John start
with “In the beginning…”, but
grammatically speaking, that is not completely accurate. Translators have
started that verse with “In the beginning…”
down through the years to preserve the clear and intentional reference to
Genesis 1:1 that is found in the Greek word order. The problem is that “the beginning” is not the subject of
this sentence, and since we typically place the subject first, it can be mildly
misleading for it to appear first in English. Preserving the Greek word order
in English can lead to a subtle impression that the first verse of John is
telling us something about time, when each clause is actually telling us
something about The Living Word. This is a subtle, but important point. “In the beginning” is being emphasized
(which strengthens it, giving it a “in the very beginning of time itself” kind
of force), but the point of this emphasis is that “the beginning” is telling us something about The Living Word, not
that The Living Word is telling us something about time.
(C) Although ο λογος is usually translated “the word” (the word “living” does not appear in the Greek), I have
used “the Living Word” to emphasize a
fundamental Truth that John’s construction in this verse states with
intentional, bold clarity: the Word is a living entity, with a will of its own!
This is addressed in greater detail in the John’s Radical Redefinition section
below. Some might consider translating this as “the Word” more technically accurate,[1]
but the purpose of this book is to reveal the subtleties found in the Greek
words and constructions that are often invisible to English readers, thus many
of these subtle or implied bits of information are included, with explanations,
directly in my translation. This approach is not perfect, but it is the best way
I could think of to better allow the English reader to see what I see when I
read the Bible in Greek. The tactic of including English words in the
translation that are not found in the Greek, but are strongly implied by the
construction, is a well-established practice dating back hundreds of years. In
keeping with long established scholarly practices, when adding a word to the
translation that is not found in the Greek, but is strongly implied by the
construction, in my translation at the beginning of each section, I will place
that word in italics.
(D) In first century Greek, it had
become the standard cultural practice to drop the article (“the”) from a
prepositional phrase. So in the first and fourth clause, εν αρχη has no article, but being a cultural
shorthand, it is still intended to mean “in
the beginning,” not “in a beginning.”
Since
it was standard practice to drop the article in these phrases, it meant something if the article was
included. Thus, we should immediately wonder why the phrase προς τον θεον (“with the God”) in the second
clause of verse one includes the article (τον)? Any time you see something that
you did not expect in Greek, you should immediately ask, “Why did the author write it that way? What is he saying with that
construction?”
In
this case, John is telling us that the “God” of this clause was subtly
different from the “God” of the next clause, where John writes, “and the Living Word was God.” By
including the article where we don’t expect to find it, then dropping it from
the last clause, John adds yet another layer of subtle emphasis to his
carefully crafted statement about just who and what this “Logos” really is. With brevity and precision impossible in English,
John tells us the Logos is fully and
completely God, but is somehow subtly different from “the God.”
(E) θεος is moved to the front of the
clause for emphasis. This has the effect of saying, “the Living Word was GOD!”
The reason for the absence of the article is discussed below in the section, An
Ancient and Modern Controversy.
(F) Verse 2 starts with the word houtos (ουτος), which has a core meaning
of “this, this one,” but is used here
as an emphatic pronoun. Just saying “he”
wasn’t strong enough for the point that was being made in these two verses.
This verse restates the critical part that, for the first century Greek reader,
would be the most controversial claim of the first verse (see John’s
Radical Redefinition below for that discussion), and it uses houtos to place extra emphasis on two
things, that “the Living Word” from
the previous sentence is still the topic of conversation, and therefore, the
mind blowing claim of the first verse which is repeated in the second verse was
intentional, not accidental.
And the Ancient Manuscripts Say…
Eight of the ten
oldest manuscripts of John contain these two starting verses. These verses are
letter for letter identical in these, as well as nearly every manuscript in
existence from every era.
Two
of the ten, P45 and T, are damaged at the beginning, and
are missing the first page of John.
John’s Radical Redefinition
In English, there are numerous words that change their meaning depending on the context. For example, “I will pick a lock,” “he played his guitar with a pick,” “she stabbed the block of ice with her pick,” “pick something from the menu,” “he could pick a person’s pocket with ease,” and so on. In each sentence, “pick” has a completely different meaning, with very little relationship to each other, yet in English, we use the same word to describe them all.
So it is with
the Greek word logos (λογος). It has no less than 12 different meanings
in the New Testament, including “record,”
“word,” “account,” “teaching,” “story,” “saying,” “communication,”
“matter,” and so on. The tricky part
is that one of those meanings, the one John intends here, has no simple English
equivalent.
Starting with
Heraclitus, Greek philosophers gradually developed a philosophy which said that
logos was the principle of order and knowledge in the universe. The way
everything in the universe held together, followed laws or patterns, the way
learning made sense of that order, and the way new knowledge explained things
that had previously been a mystery. All of this was logos. You could say
that logos is all knowledge that ever was or ever will be. In its purest
form, it is the actions, thoughts and knowledge of God Himself.
This is what
John had in mind when he wrote the opening lines of his gospel. John’s first
line identified which meaning of logos was intended: “In the beginning was the Logos.”
This is the Logos that references the universal principle of order and
knowledge in the universe; the very thoughts of God Himself.
But
then John said something that didn’t make sense to first century readers,
particularly those raised in a Greek culture: “and the Logos was with
God.”
To
the pagan Greek, the Logos is not something that is external to God, it
is the result of what God thinks and does. It can no more exist apart from Him
than my brain, my thoughts, or my actions can exist apart from me. Further, the
Greek word translated “with” (προς)
in that clause can be either “agreement
with” or “motion toward.” John’s use
of that word just makes the problem worse, because the seven simple words in
the second clause of verse one make it clear that the Logos, which a
Greek reader would understand to be the result of what God thinks and does, is
not only external to God, but is somehow able to choose to be in agreement with
God, which would imply it could also choose to disagree. Thus, the wildly
radical point John is making is that Logos
is not just inanimate knowledge and order, it is alive and has a will of its
own. This Logos is alive.
And
just so no one thought that maybe he misspoke himself, John restated the most
troubling part of that first verse in the next sentence: “This very same one (the Logos)
was in the beginning with God.” So the first two sentences start a pattern
that John continues to use through his Gospel: when he really wants to
emphasize something, he repeats it.
Somehow,
and John doesn’t bother to explain how, the Logos is both in agreement
with God, and as he makes clear in the third clause, is God at the same time. It has been like this from the very
beginning of time, which would mean it has always been this way. So John was
taking a concept that we don’t really have in English anyway, and adding a
completely brand new twist to it: Everything that ever has been or ever could
be known, all order and knowledge in the universe, is a living thing that is in
complete agreement with the God, thus it is distinct from the God, but also is
God, making it somehow the same. A true mystery if ever there was one.
Since there is
no better English translation, I have stayed with the traditional “word”
to translate Logos here. As mentioned in not (C) above, I have also
added “living” to this traditional translation, since John’s whole point
in these first two verses is to introduce a completely new concept, a new idea,
to the meaning of logos: the universal principle of order and knowledge is alive and has a will of its own.
This is not just the Logos, this is
the Living Logos.
An Ancient and Modern Controversy
In
325 AD, at the now infamous First Council of Nicaea[2],
a pastor named Arius challenged the traditional view of the deity of Jesus with
the claim that while Jesus was technically a god, he was a created being who
was lesser than the Father. The traditional Trinitarian position was argued by
Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria. Alexander won the debate hands down with
the final vote coming in at about 319-3. They reaffirmed the traditional
Trinitarian position[3]
with a creed that came to be called “The Nicene Creed.”[4]
Unfortunately, due largely to the interference of Constantine,[5]
the doctrine did not die out, and had to be repudiated again at the First
Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, which put the final touches on the Nicene
Creed.
One
of the chief passages used to validate the doctrine that Jesus is God in every
way that the Father is God has always been the first verse of John. And here is
why.
The
clause “and the Living Word was God”
is a predicate nominative construction,
where a noun or pronoun is connected to the subject by a linking verb (usually
“is,” “was,” or “were,”), and
describes or renames the subject, and unlike most constructions in Greek, both
nouns have the same ending (both are in the nominative case), which can make it
tricky to know which is the subject, and which is the predicate.[6]
In English, the first noun is the subject, and the second noun is the predicate
nominative (a predicate serves a
similar function in this construction as a direct
object in most other sentences). Although it occasionally doesn’t matter
which is which (for example, “John is our
king” and “our king is John” are
virtually identical in meaning), it often does matter which is the subject and
which is the predicate. In the phrase “Tom
is cold,” we are saying that “being
cold” is something Tom is experiencing, not that “being Tom” is something cold is experiencing. Since this verse is
telling us about the Living Word, it does matter.
But
how do we know which is the subject and which is the predicate in a language as
free form as Greek? Believe it or not, this is one of the few instances in
Greek in which word order plays a role.
Here
are the rules for Biblical Greek:
1) If
both nouns have the article attached (“the
boy is the king”), just like English, the first (boy) is the subject and the second (king) is
the predicate.
2) If
NEITHER noun has the article attached (“Tom is king”), then again, just like English, the first (Tom)
is the subject and the second (king)
is the predicate.
3) If
ONE has an article, but the other does not (“the boy is king” or “king is the
boy”), then unlike English, the one
with the article is the subject (boy), and the one without the
article is the predicate (king) regardless of the order of the nouns.
Because
you can construct these kinds of clauses so many different ways, different word
orders would have subtly different meanings:
1) ο
λογος ην ο θεος = “The Living Word was The God,” and would mean
that the Logos was the exact same person as God the Father. This is known
historically as “Sabellianism,” and in modern times is usually called “the
Oneness doctrine.” Sabellianism was rejected by the church in the third
century, and this is not the
construction John uses here.
2) ο
λογος ην θεος = “The Living Word was a god,” and would mean that
the Logos was divine, but was a lesser god than the Father. This is known
historically as “Arianism,” and in modern times is the doctrine taught by
groups such as the “Jehovah’s Witnesses”
and the “Church of God of the Abrahamic
Way.” Arianism was rejected by the church in the fourth century, and this
is not the construction John uses
here.
3) θεος
ην ο λογος = “The Living Word was God,” which means that the
Living Word is fully God, but is not the same person as God the Father. Here is
how that works: The word “God” (θεος)
does not have the article, showing that it is not a reference to “the God” of
the second clause (“the Living Word was
with God”), but it is moved to the front of the clause for emphasis, which
tells us it is not to be read as “a god,”
but as “GOD.” This is the construction John uses.
I should also
note that it doesn’t really matter where you put the verb (ην ), what matters is
where you put the nouns. This is a breathtaking, beautifully concise way of
laying the initial theological groundwork for the teaching that the church
would later call “the Trinity doctrine.”
Let me emphasize
that it is not possible to move the
predicate θεος to the beginning of the clause for emphasis and also attach an
article to it. If you attach the article to the first noun, it is no longer
the predicate, it is now the subject. This would change the sentence so that it
would now read “and God was the Word.”
According to the rules of grammar in Greek, if you move the predicate to the
beginning of the clause you must
drop the article. Since the predicate is not allowed to have an article in this
position, the absence of the article cannot
mean the noun is indefinite. Since the rules don’t allow it to be there, the
absence of the article means nothing. Claiming that the lack of the article is
significant is like accusing a ten year old of being apathetic because they did
not vote. Since they are not allowed to vote at 10 years old, to infer some
kind of motive from their inaction would be nonsense. They can’t vote. Likewise,
a predicate at the beginning of this clause cannot have an article, so to infer
something from its absence is nonsense.
What matters is
WHY did the writer move the predicate to the front of the clause? In other
words, while the lack of an article doesn’t tell us much, the choice of that
position does tell us something. Because a predicate at the beginning of a
clause cannot have an article, the one translation that is not possible for the
construction that John used in his first verse is “and the Living Word was a god.”
Every single time you see a predicate at the beginning of this construction in
Greek, the only grammatically correct conclusion is that the predicate is being
emphasized. If John wanted the absence of the article to imply the indefinite
(“And the Living Word was a god”), the only construction he
could use is the second one listed above.
The Jehovah’s
Witnesses insist that the absence of the article always implies the indefinite,
so because θεος lacks the article in the third clause, this clause
MUST be translated “… and the Word was a
god,” as they do in the New Word Translation. However, as Daniel Wallace
explains, “The function of the article is
not primarily to make something
definite that would otherwise be indefinite. It does not primarily ‘definitize.’ There are at least ten ways in which a
noun in Greek can be definite without the article.”[7]
The irony here
is that the Jehovah’s Witnesses actually know the lack of an article does not
automatically imply the indefinite, as θεος does not have
an article in verses 6 (“There arose a
man that was sent forth as a representative of God: his name was John.” – New Word Translation) and 18 (“No man has seen God at any time…” New Word Translation), yet in both cases,
they translate θεος (without the article) as “God,” not “a god.” So the bottom
line is their own translations in 1:6 and 1:18 prove their argument in verse
1:1 is not true, and they know it.
This means that
John is making a bold statement that the Logos, the Living Word, is not just
with God, but is fully and completely God, and always has been. In the next few
verses, John builds on that argument.
[1]
This is debatable, as there is no English word that means exactly what ο λογος
means in John 1:1, and “Word” is
simply the traditional choice because no one has ever been able to come up with
a better one.
[2]
Not infamous by virtue of anything they actually did, but from the outrageous
distortions and inexcusable misrepresentations of what they did as reported in
the book, “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown.
[3]
That the traditional position was Trinitarian is not known from the existence
of the word, “trinity,” but from the reasoning used in the decision at Nicaea,
where they rejected Arius position, in part, because stretching all the way
back to the apostles, no one had ever heard of any such doctrine. It was a new
idea that defied the one they had all learned, that Jesus is God in every way
the Father is God. They created the Nicene Creed to codify what had been taught
since the first century.
[4]
The Nicene Creed of 325 AD, which was written in direct response to Arianism,
was, “We believe in one God, the Father
Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten; that is, of
the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God,
begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things
were made, both in heaven and on earth; Who for us men, and for our salvation,
came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he
rose again, ascended into heaven; From thence he shall come to judge the quick
and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But
those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he
was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or
'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'—they
are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.” This was expanded
and modified by the Council of Constantinople in 381 into the more general
statement of faith most of us know today as the Nicene Creed.
[5] A
few years after the decision of 325 against Arius, Constantine demanded that
the church reinstate Arius, which gave the whole controversy new wings.
Constantine’s governmental interference in church affairs caused this doctrinal
controversy to rage on for another 60 or so years.
[6]
In Martin Luther’s famous version, it at first appears he did not fully
understand the rules governing the predicate nominative construction, as he
mistranslated the third clause of verse one, flipping the subject and
predicate, yielding “und Gott war das
Wort” (“and God was the Word”).
This apparently is not the case, as he argues elsewhere that the lack of the
article (with theos) is against Sabellianism
(the belief that Jesus and the Father are the same person) and the word order
is against Arianism (the belief that Jesus is a lesser god than the Father),
showing he actually did understand the predicate construction. So it appears he
was attempting to preserve the emphatic word order found in the Greek, even
though it produced a grammatically incorrect translation in German.
[7] “The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An
Intermediate Greek Grammar,” Daniel B. Wallace, Kindle e-book, “The
Article: Function – What it IS NOT.” Emphasis original in the source.
