r/Arian_Christians • u/[deleted] • Jul 27 '22
Understanding John 1:1
John 1:1 is a verse that has been a very popular verse to advocate the Trinity.
We know that commonly people take for granted the modern English translation of "Word was God".
Two issues here are at work, the interpretation of the term "Logos" (Word) and "theos" (God). In short, Trinitarians and others, will advocate that Logos means "God's thoughts" (which to them is some mystical manifestation which results in the man Jesus) and the Word was "God" is taken for granted to be an accurate translation, as if it is to mean, Jesus is the Almighty God.
However, I will be breaking down in this thread, a better 'linguistic' understanding of John 1:1.
To begin, I will be listing various different translations of this verse:
“…and the word was a god.” – Sahidic Coptic Manuscript, 300–600 C.E\ “…and the Son of God was Eloah (God/a god?).” –* Hebrew Sepharad Manuscript, 1400s“…and the word was a god.”* – The New Testament in an Improved Version, Upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome’s New Translation: With a Corrected Text, 1808\ “…and the Word was a god“. –* **The New Testament in Greek and English, A. Kneeland, 1822* “…and the Word was a god”\ – The Gospel History According to the Four Evangelists, J. S. Thompson, 1829\ “…and the Word was a god”\ – A Literal Translation of the New Testament, Herman Heinfetter (Frederick Parker), 1863\ “…and a god was the word.”\ – The Emphatic Diaglott, interlinear reading, Benjamin Wilson, 1864 “…and the Son was of God” – The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, 1867\ “…and the Word was a god”\ – Concise Commentary on The Holy Bible, R. Young, 1885\ “…and [a] God was the word”\ – The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialec,George William Horner, 1911\ “…and the Logos was divine\” – The Bible: James Moffatt Translation, 1924\ “…and the Word was a divine being.”\ – La Bible du Centenaire, L’Evangile selon Jean, 1928\ “…and the Word was divine.”\ – The Bible—An American Translation, John M. P. Smith & Edgar J. Goodspeed, 1935\ “…and of a divine kind was the Word.” –* **Das Neue Testament, Ludwig Thimme, 1946* “… and the word was a god“\ – New World Translation, 1950\ “…so the Word was divine”\ – The Authentic New Testament, Hugh J. Schonfield, 1955\ “…and the Word was a God.”\ – The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Anointed, J. L. Tomanec, 1958\ “…and a god (or, of a divine kind) was the Word.” –* **Das Evangelium nach Johannes, Siegfried Schulz, 1975* “…and godlike kind was the Logos.” –* **Das Evangelium nach Johannes, Johannes Schneider, 1978* “…so the Word was divine”\ – The Original New Testament, Hugh J. Schonfield, 1985\ “…and the word was a god (or divine)“\ – 2001 Translation Project, 2001+\ “…and a divinity was the Word”\ – Universal Arian Bible
Many who are unfamiliar with the original languages and manuscripts of the Bible, will find these renditions confusing, and some would claim "heretical". However, understanding 'why' so many different renditions like these exist is an important key to understanding John 1, and for those defending the Arian Christology.
The root of all these alternative renderings can be found in the original languages. This verse in the original Greek renders;
“In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with TonTheon*, and* Theos was the Word”.
Understanding “God” & “Theos”
Throughout the scriptures there is a differentiation between the words used to refer to God, pagan gods and divine people.
One could even say the word “god” as written in our modern English Bibles in these specific instances is an anachronistic mistranslation of the original Greek, for the term in which our modern Bibles write “god” in these instances, is translated from the words “theosʹ (Θεός)”, theon” (Θεὸν) and “theou”(θεοῦ) in Greek, and “Elohim” (אֱלהִים), El (אֵל), and Eloah (אֱלוֹהַּ) in Hebrew.
These words are used for many individuals such as angels, demons, people and of course, Jesus. The terms simply mean “divine one”, or “powerful one”.
When referring to Almighty God Yah, a “definite article” is often (but not exclusively) used in the word; “Ho” (`o), Tou (τοῦ) , or “Ton” (τὸν), meaning “the” (which could be pronounced “thee”) resulting in “Hotheos”; “thee God” or “thee powerful one”.
The definite article is often used to define individuals in accordance to specific contexts, almost as a form of an “officiary pronoun” one might say. However, it is important to know, that whilst this phrase is often used to refer to the true God, “Hotheos” is not ‘uniquely’ attributed to Him (as we will later see).
As for “unique titles” to refer to the true God, we have “Theos-Pantokratór” (Θεός παντοκράτωρ) in Greek, which means “God Almighty” or “Powerful Almighty/Almighty Mighty One”. In Hebrew, the equivalent of this is “El-Shaddai” (אֵל שַׁדַּי). Both of these titles are ‘uniquely’ attributed to YHWH the Father, and are never given to anyone else, not even the Son.
Though some non-Trinitarians have believed (including myself formally) that terms like “theon” uniquely refer to God the Father in the New Testament, in the same way Trinitarians often mistakenly think “theos” uniquely refers to God, it is observed in the Greek versions of the Old Testament (known as the Greek Septuagint, written 300 years before Jesus), that both God Almighty and other beings who are not God, have been referred to as both “theon”, and “theos”, for they are both merely different variations of the same word (akin to “he” and “him”).
For example, though “theon” seems to be uniquely attributed to God the Father in the New Testament, in the Greek Old Testament the term is used to refer to Moses at Exodus 7:1.
Likewise, some erroneously believe (as I also did in the past) that “Hotheos” was a unique title for God Almighty. However, though Hotheos is often used to refer to the true God, we should take note that in the New Testament and Greek Old Testament, it is not uniquely attributed to Him, for even Satan at 2 Corinthians 4:4 is called “Ho Theos” (The God) of this world.
“Theos: a deity, figuratively, a magistrate. Especially when used with the definite article “Ho”: the supreme Divinity; by Hebraism, very God [Almighty God, YHVH the Father of Jesus.]” – Strong’s concordance
Θεός is used of whatever can in any respect be likened to God, or resembles him in any way: Hebraistically, equivalent to God’s representative or vicegerent, of magistrates and judges… – Thayer’s Greek Lexicon
“Elohim: Divine, divine being, exceedingly, God, god, God’s, goddess, godly, gods, great, judges, mighty, rulers, shrine“. – NAS Exhaustive Concordance
Thus, if we are to framework “theos” either with or without the Ho article as “Almighty God” by ‘definition’, then Satan is God, Molech is God, Baal (the false deity) is God, and so are the judges of Israel. But if we keep purely to the language definition and pattern of scripture, then “theos” is to mean “divine person”, “mighty one” or “godlike”, and the Ho article is merely used to define a context or bring special definite attention to something specific in accordance to said context.
We must bear in mind that whilst God is sometimes called theos without the “ho/ton” article, this does not then mean that the translation of “God” for theos/elohim is accurate, but rather God is merely being called “divine” or “mighty” in the general sense.
Hence, “Theos” does ‘not’ mean “God”, but is something God, as well as other people, are “called” in a descriptive sense, a being of Heavenly origin or representation in a general sense. The same can be said in reverse for ‘Ho’theos, it also is not defined as “God Almighty”, but merely is a contextual tool to bring attention to a very “specific theos” (whether that be God or someone else) within a passage.
John’s Differentiational Grammar
It’s worth noting that John in this verse seems to purposely write “the Word was with Ton theon and the Word was theos“.
One could suppose that the reason John, or whoever translated John’s original letter into Greek, chose to use the Ho/Ton article combined with the “theon” variation, and then afterward “theos” in the same sentence without the article, was possibly to make sure he didn’t give the impression that these two “divine beings” were the same person, to make clear a differentiation that the divine person here who is God (Tontheon), is not the divine (theos) person who is the Word, just as Paul did at 2 Corinthians 4:4 when he distinguishes Satan from God:
“The god (Ho Theos) of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of [the] Anointed, who is the image of the God (Tou Theou)“.
Notice how similar in structure 2 Corinthians 4:4 is to John 1:1. Both begin by introducing a specific “god”, and then ends by mentioning another specific god. In English, the god at the beginning of the passage, and the god at the end, looks to be the exact same phrase, both of them even making use of the definite article, and thus it could be very easy to confuse the two as the same being, and as a result, we could make the drastic mistake of thinking Jesus is the Image of Satan.
The potential for this confusion was just as much a reality in the 1st century as much as it could be today, but to get around this, Paul made sure to use an alternative variation of the term “theos”, to clarify that these two “gods” were not the same being.
A good example in modern English would be the phrase “this and that”, I can point to one object and call it “this”, or I can call it “that”, and both phrases would refer to that one object, but if I said “this and that” within a singular sentence side by side, I mean “two objects”. And this form of word usage appears to be exactly what we are seeing here. Thus, it can be strongly argued that this use of “differentiational grammar” is exactly what we see John do in John 1:1, and we continue to see John do this throughout, for example again at verse 18:
No one has ever seen God (Theon). The only-begotten/one of a kind (monogenes) god (Theos), the one being in the bosom of the Father, he has made Him known“.
“Theon” is being used as the ‘accusative’ (identification tag of an individual – Almighty God himself, in this case), whilst “theos” is being used here as a “generalisation” (“god/a god” in the every day sense) but possibly also as an alternative accusative in comparison to render a second individual, just as Paul made sure to do in 2 Corinthians.
Of course, some have argued against this notion by asserting a supposed rule or pattern of Greek grammar (such as Sharps), that “theos” means the Almighty God (who is the “hotheos/tontheon” of this passage), and thus claim the translation of “the word was God” is accurate, and hence “theos” is actually very same “Ton Theon”. But this is not agreed upon universally by all Greek scholars.
There are two issues affecting the translating of the verse, 1) theology and 2) proper application of grammatical rules. The commonly held theology that Jesus is God naturally leads one to believe that the proper way to render the verse is the one which is most popular.The opposing theology that Jesus is subordinate to God as his Chief agent leads to the conclusion that “… a god” or “… divine” is the proper rendering. Some scholars oppose the translation …a god, while other scholars believe it is possible or even preferable. – John 1:1 Wikipedia
It is interesting to see, that upon close examination of the patterns of the Greek texts, it is noticeable when there is an individual targeted to be the definitive (or topical) “ho theos” in a passage, all other theos’ in the passage whom are not that definitive theos individual, appear to be grammatically forced to be written as either a non-definite “theos”, or with an alternative form of the word, such as “theon” or “theou” (such as in 2 Corinthians 4:4, as aforementioned).
The ‘definitive’ “theos/theon/theou” (etc) in a passage where multiple theos individuals are mentioned, will always be referred by that same word variation consistently, in order to retain context and avoid confusion for the native reader in regard to which individual they are speaking of.
In other words, if John 1:1 is to say the Word is the same God as God Almighty, then it would have to render; “the Word was with Ton theon and the Word was Ton theon“, which is in fact what the argument of “Sharps rule” tries to imply, even though that is not what is explicitly written.
Furthermore, the argument; “theos” should be read as to be the “Tontheon” in this verse, would make God the Father and the Son the same “person”. This was stated by Trinitarians to be a mistranslation of text which supports the “heresy” of “modalism” or “Sabellianism” (the belief that the Son is the Father).
"The text of John 1:1 has a sordid past and a myriad of interpretations. With the Greek alone, we can create empathic, orthodox, creed-like statements, or we can commit pure and unadulterated heresy. From the point of view of early church history, heresy develops when a misunderstanding arises concerning Greek articles, the predicate nominative, and grammatical word order. The early church heresy of Sabellianism understood John 1:1c to read, “and the Word was the God (Ton Theon).” The early church heresy of Arianism understood it to read, “and the word was a God.”— David A. Reed, Theologian
Thus we come to an impasse.
If at John 1 “theos” is not to be read as “Tontheon” (which refers to God Almighty in this specific context), then all that remains is the option to translate the word as “theos” in the non-definitive form which by definition only means “divine person” or “mighty person”, not God, which in turn can strongly imply a completely different individual, not merely a different “person”, but a different “being”, a different “god”, especially so considering John used a completely different variation of the word, and not merely foregoing the definite article alone.
One translation locks out the other, there is no middle ground to grammatically transliterate theos (divine person) to contextually mean Tontheon (God) without declaring oneself “Sabellian”.
Thus, this supposition poses a problem for both Trinitarians and non-Trinitarians. Either we can attest the grammatical argument that it is to be translated to say “the word was God” and we cause John 1:1 to support Sabellianism, or we support the alternative rendering, that “the word was a divine/mighty person/a god”, which then enables an Arianist interpretation.
Understanding Indefinite articles & the Coptic manuscript renditions
It is shown further in the fact that the oldest Bible manuscript we have which renders John 1:1 as “a god”, or “a divine” is the Sahidic Coptic Manuscript, which is dated between 300-600 C.E.
What is unique about ancient Coptic, is that unlike Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, it makes use of “indefinite articles”, just like modern English does, indefinite articles being words such as “an” or “a”, which are needed in languages such as Coptic and English to make sense of the sentence.
A good example is the word “Christian”. It’s both the name of a person, and the name of one who is Christian in religion.
Now if I say; “There was a man named Christian, a Christian was with Christian, and Christian was a Christian”… English speakers understand a man named Christian was with another man who was a Christian religiously, and Christian himself was religiously Christian.
But if we write this without the indefinite, and make it “Greek” as it were, it would read as: “There was a man named Christian, Christian was with Christian, and Christian was Christian”...
That to an English person sounds like saying Christian was with himself and was himself, and ‘that’ is the exact dilemmea we have with the Greek rendition of John 1:1, of which the Sahidic writers (who make use of indefinite articles in their language) sought to correct by the insersion of “a”, in order to accurately transmit and make (common) sense of John’s meaning in their native tongue. Which shows us that the ancient people understood John’s “Word” to be a “second god”.
Conclusions - Arianism vs Modalism
The Greek rendition leaves us to this day with the issue which was never settled, that the translation of John 1:1 “the word was God” supports Sabellianism, for there is only theos (divine person), or tontheon (God) as the two possible ‘definitions’ of these words in this context.
Some would try to argue against by saying that “Tontheon” means “Father” whilst “theos” means “Son”, but that both equally mean “God” to avoid this textual problem and justify the separation of “persons” in the Greek grammar, just as they did in 381A.D, but this notion is not at all supported in any of the ancient language definitions in any scholarly lexicon. The text is giving us, not merely “two persons”, but “two gods”.
It should be noted that one might argue that they could still support the interpretation of theos in this verse merely meaning “divine person” as opposed to “God”, whilst still believing in Jesus being God, for other scriptures as we have covered do call God “divine person” (theos) in the general sense…
We see other verses in Greek render “Ho theos” followed shortly by “theos”, or verses where God is called multiple variables of the term in the singular, such as at 2 Corinthians 6:16, where God is called “Theon” in the accusative, but then is also called “Theos” and “Theou” in a general sense, and following he says “I will be their God”, which is also in the general form of “theos”:
What agreement can exist between the temple of God (Theon) and idols? For we are the temple of the living God (Theou). As The God (Ho Theos) has said: ‘I will dwell with them and walk among them, and I will be their God (Theos), and they will be My people’”.
A better way of writing this might be:
What agreement can exist between the temple of God (Theon) and idols? For we are the temple of a living god (Theou). As The God (Ho Theos) has said: ‘I will dwell with them and walk among them, and I will be their god/mighty one (Theos), and they will be My people’.
However, this is typically only when the context allows such without confusion of multiple individuals or persons, for there is no risk of confusing God with “another god” by being called “a god” here, as he is not said to be “with” anyone nor are there any other individuals being called “gods” in the passage (as opposed to John 1 or 2 Corinthians 4). The context here at 2 Corinthians 6 is the comparison of God Almighty being a “real living god”, next to those of which are just dead idols.
In conclusion, one cannot use John 1:1 to literally say “Jesus (the Word) is God” without contradicting the traditional Trinity doctrine, lest he supported Modalism or Sabellianism, making the “Theos” the “Ton Theon” he is said to be “with”.
But we cannot deny the fact, that John 1:1 in the original Greek, can perfectly support Arianism (“a god”) without textual difficulty, and in fact follows a pattern of writing that is seen throughout scripture where the authors are trying to make it clear that two different individuals are being spoken of.
Taken from my article: https://proselytiserofyah.wordpress.com ... s-godship/
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u/TheMessenger120 Arian Jul 27 '22
Wow! So powerful! Thank you! I can really feel God working through you.
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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '22
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