John 1:1

History

Tertullian in the early third century wrote:

Now if this one [the Word] is God according to John ("the Word was God"), then you have two: one who speaks that it may be, and another who carries it out. However, how you should accept this as "another" I have explained: as concerning person, not substance, and as distinction, not division.

And a little later:

And that you may think more fully on this, accept also that in the Psalm two gods are mentioned: "Thy throne, God, is forever, a rod of right direction is the rod of thy kingdom; thou hast loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee." If he is speaking to a god, and the god is anointed by a god, then also here he affirms two gods... More is what you will find just the same in the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God": One who was, and another in whose presence he was.

Origen of Alexandria, a teacher in Greek grammar of the third century, wrote about the use of the definite article:

We next notice John's use of the article in these sentences. He does not write without care in this respect, nor is he unfamiliar with the niceties of the Greek tongue. In some cases he uses the article, and in some he omits it. He adds the article to the Logos, but to the name of God he adds it sometimes only. He uses the article, when the name of God refers to the uncreated cause of all things, and omits it when the Logos is named God.... The true God, then, is The God (ho theos)."

Elsewhere, Origen refers to Christ as a "second God".

John 1:1 in English versions

The traditional rendering in English is:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Translations by James Moffatt, Hugh J. Schonfield and Edgar Goodspeed render part of the verse as "...and the Word was divine." Murray J. Harris writes,

[It] is clear that in the translation "the Word was God", the term God is being used to denote his nature or essence, and not his person. But in normal English usage "God" is a proper noun, referring to the person of the Father or corporately to the three persons of the Godhead. Moreover, "the Word was God" suggests that "the Word" and "God" are convertible terms, that the proposition is reciprocating. But the Word is neither the Father nor the Trinity… The rendering cannot stand without explanation."

An Eastern/Greek Orthodox Bible commentary notes:

This second theos could also be translated 'divine' as the construction indicates "a qualitative sense for theos". The Word is not God in the sense that he is the same person as the theos mentioned in 1:1a; he is not God the Father (God absolutely as in common NT usage) or the Trinity. The point being made is that the Logos is of the same uncreated nature or essence as God the Father, with whom he eternally exists. This verse is echoed in the Nicene Creed: "God (qualitative or derivative) from God (personal, the Father), Light from Light, True God from True God… homoousion with the Father."

Other variations of rendering John 1:1 also exist:

Difficulties

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." The early church heresy of Arianism understood it to read, "and the word was a God."

There are two issues affecting the translating of the verse, theology and 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 staunchly oppose the translation ...a god, while other scholars believe it is possible or even preferable.

Grammar

The Greek article is often translated the, which is the English definite article, but it can have a range of meanings that can be quite different from those found in English, and require context to interpret. Ancient Greek does not have an indefinite article like the English word a, and nominatives without articles also have a range of meanings that require context to interpret.

In interpreting this verse, Colwell's rule should be taken into consideration, which says that a definite predicate which is before the verb "to be" usually does not have the definite article. Ernest Cadman Colwell writes:

"The opening verse of John’s Gospel contains one of the many passages where this rule suggests the translation of a predicate as a definite noun. Καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος [Kai theos ēn ho logos] looks much more like “And the Word was God” than “And the Word was divine” when viewed with reference to this rule. The absence of the article does not make the predicate indefinite or qualitative when it precedes the verb, it is indefinite in this position only when the context demands it. The context makes no such demand in the Gospel of John, for this statement cannot be regarded as strange in the prologue of the gospel which reaches its climax in the confession of Thomas [Footnote: John 20,28]."

The question is whether Colwell's rule helps in interpreting John 1:1. It has been pointed out that Colwell's rule has been misapplied as its converse, as though it implied definiteness. Rodney J. Decker has stated, "it has often been misused by well-intentioned defenders of the deity of Christ."

Daniel B. Wallace argues that the use of the anarthrous theos (the lack of the definite article before the second theos) is due to its use as a qualitative noun, describing the nature or essence of the Word, not due to Colwell's rule.

The rendering as "a god" is justified by some non-Trinitarians by comparing it with Acts 28:6 which has a similar grammatical construction' "The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead; but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god."^{[Ac. 28:6 NIV]}. However, it was noted that the Hebrew words El, HaElohim and Yahweh (all referring to God) were rendered as anarthrous theos in the Septuagint at Nahum 1:2, Isaiah 37:16, 41:4, Jeremiah 23:23 and Ezekiel 45:9 among many other locations. Moreover, in the New Testament anarthrous theos was used to refer to God in locations including John 1:18a, Romans 8:33, 2 Corinthians 5:19, 6:16 and Hebrews 11:16 (although the last two references do have an adjective aspect to them). Therefore, anarthrous or arthrous constructions by themselves, without context, cannot determine how to render it into a target language.

In the October 2011 Journal of Theological Studies, Brian J. Wright and Tim Ricchuiti reason that the indefinite article in the Coptic translation, of John 1:1, has a qualitative meaning. Many such occurrences for qualitative nouns are identified in the Coptic New Testament, including 1 John 1:5 and 1 John 4:8. Moreover, the indefinite article is used to refer to God in Deuteronomy 4:31 and Malachi 2:10.

Coptic scholar George Horner renders the Sahidic Coptic of John 1:1c as "and [a] God was the word," while his apparatus mentions, "Square brackets imply words used by the Coptic and not required by the English".

Biblical parallels

"In the beginning (archē) was the Word (logos)" may be compared with:

"The reference to the opening words of the Old Testament is obvious, and is the more striking when we remember that a Jew would constantly speak of and quote from the book of Genesis as "Berēshîth" ("in the beginning"). It is quite in harmony with the Hebrew tone of this Gospel to do so, and it can hardly be that St. John wrote his Berēshîth without having that of Moses present to his mind, and without being guided by its meaning.

"...was God (Theós)" may be compared with Acts 28:6:

From the Biblos Interlinear Bible:

From Scrivener's Textus Receptus 1894:

Logos

The Greek word λόγος or logos is a word with various meanings. It is often translated into English as "Word" but can also mean thought, speech, account, meaning, reason, proportion, principle, standard, or logic, among other things. It has varied use in the fields of philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion.

Christology

Of the canonical gospels, John has the highest explicit Christology. Here Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the True Vine, etc. In 1:1, John identifies Jesus as the Logos, that which made the existence of the created world possible.

In mainstream Christian understanding of John's Christology, the conception that Jesus Christ is the Logos has been important in establishing the doctrine of Jesus' divinity, as well as that of the Trinity, as set forth in the Chalcedonian Definition.

The debate about the nature of Christ from the first century through the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE must be understood in light of the pervasive world view of Platonic dualism. Platonism is normally divided into four periods: Old Academy (347-267 BCE), New Academy (267-80 BCE), Middle Platonism (80BCE-250 CE), and Neoplatonism (250 CE through the Reformation).

Some scholars of the Bible have suggested that John made creative use of double meaning in the word Logos to communicate to both Jews, who were familiar with the Wisdom tradition in Judaism, and Hellenic polytheism, especially followers of Philo, often called Hellenistic Judaism. Each of these two groups had its own history associated with the concept of the Logos, and each could understand John's use of the term from one or both of those contexts. Especially for the Hellenists, however, John turns the concept of the Logos on its head when he claimed "the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us" (v. 14).

Gordon Clark translated Logos as "Logic" in the opening verses of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God." He meant to imply by this translation that the laws of logic were contained in the Bible itself and were therefore not a secular principle imposed on the Christian worldview.

Following Jesuit translations of the 18th century, most modern Bible translations into Chinese use the word "Tao" in John 1:1 to translate "Logos", following the use as "Idea" in Taoism.

Alternative views

In Unitarianism there are other interpretations of John 1:1. In the commentaries on John 1 by Lelio Sozzini (Zurich, c.1559) and his nephew Fausto Sozzini (Lyons, c.1562) the "word" being "made flesh" is taken as a reference to the virgin birth, and not to the personal pre-existence of Christ. The passages in the New Testament referring to the Logos were explained by Fausto Sozzini as relating to the foreknown work of Christ as the author of the new creation, not as relating to the "old" Genesis creation. Fausto Sozzini aimed to "completely de-Platonize" the reading of John 1:1-15.