Glad someone mentioned Jon 1:1, I guess I should have. I was going to cover this but it seemed long, but now its been broached well why not? We all swim in deep water here right?
If you understand the structure of the Greek there is actually no way to render the verse “…a god.”
First off John 1:1,2 is a poem. The structure is two couplets. The first and fourth lines begin and end with the same declaration while the last noun of the first line is the first of the second, the second the third. So the couplets are 1&4 which is an overall declaration and 2&3 which tell us something specific. It would look like this without verse markers.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος
καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν
καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος
οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν
For those who can’t read Greek, which I admit I am still learning and started learning because I came out of the LDS group and have some JW friends, it reads thus…
In beginning was the word
and the word was with the God
and God was the word
he was in beginning with the God
Now if you have had this discussion with JW’s they have told you there is no indefinite article in the Greek (there is no ‘a car’ there is only ‘car’) and they are right, and if the third line of the poem read “and the word was God” they would have an argument right? Well, no.
The reason why is the word that John uses for “God”. The Greek word for God is Theos, as in theology, and John uses two different words in the poem.
θεόν-“Theon”; gender neutral word for God.
θεὸς-“Theos”; masculine word for God.
Now when theon is used and if there is no definite article in front of the word then we can, but not necessarily must, assume ‘a’ may be used. For example, the JW’s have no problem inserting “the” before ἀρχῇ-“archae”; beginning, even though it could be rendered “In a beginning” this would clearly be outside the author’s intent so no one reads it this way.
So “a god” might be appropriate? The problem is both times John uses theon he precedes it with this word, “τὸν”, and that word means, “the”, so there is no doubt which God John is talking about.
The one time “the” does not precede the word “God” in the poem John uses the masculine form θεὸς, and in Greek you can never assume the indefinite article, you must always assume the definite article precedes the masculine form of any noun. In other words it is not “a car” but “this car”. That is why the proper reading of the Lord’s Prayer is “deliver us from the Evil One” πονηρός-“ponaeros” rather than “deliver us from evil” πονηρόν-“ponaeron”.
So if we want to want to insert all of the articles into the third line of the poem, as the JW’s insist, then it will read thus…
καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος
and (the) God was the word
In other words, you actually can’t translate this verse the way the JW’s do and remain faithful to the text.
That is why the JW “translation” is actually a “interpretation” and is not valid in this or any time.
God Bless
but, convincing them otherwise,from what I have been reading, would be a moot point. I actually debated one, before the spanish speaking guy, a few months back and I felt that I gave her a really good explanation. She hasn’t come back and it seems that I either struck a nerve or got her thinking. Anyway, all of this I have been reading is REALLY good. Makes for great “ammo” for a lack of a better word.