I have seen references on this board that one cannot translation John 1:1 as "the Word was a god." Well it is simply not true.
These are snippets from the Chapter in Dr. BeDuhn's book "And the Word was ... What?" Enjoy.

Grammatically, John 1:1 is not a difficult verse to translate. It follows familiar, ordinary structures of Greek expression. A lexical ("interlinear") translation of the controversial clause would read: "And a god was the Word." A minimal literal ("formal equivalence") translation would rearrange the word order to match proper English expression: "And the Word was a god." The preponderance of evidence, from Greek grammar, from literary context, and from cultural environment, supports this translation, of which "the Word was divine" would be a slightly more polished variant carrying the same basic meaning. Both of these renderings are superior to the traditional translation which goes against these three key factors that guide accurate translation. The NASB, NIV, NRSV, and NAB follow the translation concocted by the KJV translators. This translation awaits a proper defense, since no obvious one emerges from Greek grammar, the literary context of John, or the cultural environment in which John is writing...

Bias has shaped most of these translations much more than has accurate attention to the wording of the Bible. The NW translation of John 1:l is superior to that of the other eight translations we are comparing.

TRUTH IN TRANSLATION
For orders and information please contact the publisher - UNIVERSITY PRESS of AMERICA, INC.
4501 Forbes Blvd. Suite 200 - Lanham, Maryland 20706 - 1-800-462-5220 www.univpress.com

Today @ 10:00 AM post located here
Cal_Minian:

I have seen references on this board that one cannot translation John 1:1 as "the Word was a god." Well it is simply not true.
These are snippets from the Chapter in Dr. BeDuhn's book "And the Word was ... What?" Enjoy.

Bias has shaped most of these translations much more than has accurate attention to the wording of the Bible. The NW translation of John 1:l is superior to that of the other eight translations we are comparing.

If one ignores the most relevant historical information available. The entire early church. But of course Mssr. DeBuhn knows more than they did.

Today @ 06:54 PM post located here
OldShepherd:



If one ignores the most relevant historical information available. The entire early church. But of course Mssr. DeBuhn knows more than they did.

He does discuss that in his book and still comes to the conclusion that the translation "and the Word was a god" is FAR superior to "and the Word was God."

Kind Regards,
Cal

Today @ 11:59 AM post located here
Cal_Minian:

He does discuss that in his book and still comes to the conclusion that the translation "and the Word was a god" is FAR superior to "and the Word was God."

As I said Mssr DeBuhn presumes to be more knowledgeable than all the early church fathers. How does one prove that ALL the historical sources were wrong?

Most Kindest Regards,
Carlos.

Is it just me or is that not an argument at all? Read this quotation again:

Grammatically, John 1:1 is not a difficult verse to translate. It follows familiar, ordinary structures of Greek expression. A lexical ("interlinear") translation of the controversial clause would read: "And a god was the Word." A minimal literal ("formal equivalence") translation would rearrange the word order to match proper English expression: "And the Word was a god." The preponderance of evidence, from Greek grammar, from literary context, and from cultural environment, supports this translation, of which "the Word was divine" would be a slightly more polished variant carrying the same basic meaning. Both of these renderings are superior to the traditional translation which goes against these three key factors that guide accurate translation. The NASB, NIV, NRSV, and NAB follow the translation concocted by the KJV translators. This translation awaits a proper defense, since no obvious one emerges from Greek grammar, the literary context of John, or the cultural environment in which John is writing...

Bias has shaped most of these translations much more than has accurate attention to the wording of the Bible. The NW translation of John 1:l is superior to that of the other eight translations we are comparing.

It is very clear that all he is saying is: I am right, you are wrong, so nyah.

He gives no argumentation other than straight assertion. He never once shows any of those cultural norms he talks about nor dfoes he give a single example. He assumes he is right and never makes a case for it. In other words, he has no argument, only supposition.

Today @ 04:31 PM post located here
Jaltus:

Is it just me or is that not an argument at all? Read this quotation again:

It is very clear that all he is saying is: I am right, you are wrong, so nyah.

He gives no argumentation other than straight assertion. He never once shows any of those cultural norms he talks about nor dfoes he give a single example. He assumes he is right and never makes a case for it. In other words, he has no argument, only supposition.

What he said! That is what I was trying to get out but Dr. J , said it much better than I could.

Jaltus,

Exactly.

Dear Cal

I found this comment by BeDuhn on a Jehovah's Witness apologetic website, can I have your comments, please:

"The Greek phrase is theos en ho logos, which translated word for word is "a god was the word."

Greek has only a definite article, like our the, it does not have an indefeinite article, like our a or an. If a noun is definite, it has the definite article ho. If a noun is indefinite, no article is used. In the phrase from John 1:1, ho logos is "the word." If it was written simply logos, without the definite article ho, we would have to translate it as "a word". So we are not really "inserting" an indefinite article when we translate Greek nouns without the definite article into English, we are simply obeying rules of English grammar that tell us that we cannot say "Snoopy is dog," but must say "Snoopy is a dog."

Now in English we simply say "God"; we do not say "The God." But in Greek, when you mean to refer to the one supreme God, instead of one of the many other beings that were called "gods," you would have to say "The God": ho theos. Even a monotheistic Christian, who beleives there is only one God and no others, would be forced to say in Greek "The God," as John and Paul and the other writers of the New Testament normally do. If you leave off the article in a phrase like John 1:1, then you are saying "a god." (There are some exceptions to this rule: Greek has what are called noun cases, which means the nouns change form depending on how they are used in a sentence. So, if you want to say "of God," which is theou, you don't need the article. But in the nominative case, which is the one in John 1:1, you have to have the article.)

So what does John mean by saying "the word was a god"? He is classifying Jesus in a specific category of beings. There are plants and animals and humans and gods, and so on. By calling the Word "a god," John wants to tell his readers that the Word(which becomes Jesus when it takes flesh) belongs to the divine class of things. Notice the word order: "a god was the word." We can't say it like this in English, but you can in Greek. The subject can be after the verb and the object before the verb, the opposite of how we do it in English (subject-verb-object). Research has shown that when ancient Greek writers put a object-noun first in a sentence like John 1:1 (a be-verb sentence: x is y), without the definite article, they are telling us that the subject belongs to the class represented by the object-noun: :"The car is a Volkswagen." In English we would accomplish the same thing by using what we call predicate adjectives. "John is a smart person" = "John is smart." So we would tend to say "The word was divine," rather than "The word was a god." That is how I would translate this phrase. "The word was a god" is more literal, and an improvement over "The word was God," but it raises more problems, since to a modern reader it implies polytheism.

No one in John's day would have understood the phrase to mean "The word was God" - the language does not convey that sense, and conceptually it is difficult to grasp such an idea, especially since that author has just said that the word was with God. Someone is not with himself, he is with some other. John clearly differentiates between God from the Word. The latter becomes flesh and is seen; the former cannot be seen. What is the Word? John says it was the agent through whom God made the world. He starts his gospel "In the beginning..." to remind us of Genesis 1. How does God create in Genesis? He speaks words that make things come into existence. So the Word is God's creative power and plan and activity. It is not God himself, but it is not really totally separate from God either. It occupies a kind of ambiguous status. That is why a monotheist like John can get away with calling it "a god" or "divine" without becoming a polytheist. This divine thing does not act on its own, however, does take on a kind of distinct identity, and in becoming flesh brings God's will and plan right down face to face with humans.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

Jason Beduhn

Northern Arizona University
Department of Humanities Arts and Religion

Now my question refers to the emboldened section, is he denying the personality of the Word? This is a more important issue than whether the last phrase should be "a god" or not (notice that he prefers 'divine' over 'a god' because of the polytheism issue!)

BeDuhn seems unaware of the scholarship presented in Hartley (on Colwell's rule) and cites Harner, but does he actually get to grips with Harner's argument? It appears convenient that you have posted his conclusions without presenting one of his arguments, Cal. Makes it difficult to assess the chapter properly.

(When I said he cited Harner, I meant in the book, sorry)
Thanks, from Guy

Today @ 07:31 AM post located here
Jaltus:

Is it just me or is that not an argument at all? Read this quotation again:



It is very clear that all he is saying is: I am right, you are wrong, so nyah.

He gives no argumentation other than straight assertion. He never once shows any of those cultural norms he talks about nor dfoes he give a single example. He assumes he is right and never makes a case for it. In other words, he has no argument, only supposition.

Because Cal only supplied a partial quote. There is a whole chapter dedicated to this.

-Tony

Hi Tony,

Have you read up on Dixon, Harner and Hartley's scholarly work on John 1:1?

Thanks, from Guy

Hmm, the above quotation that ghbearman gives shows a lack of understanding about what the article does and does not mean in Greek. Words without the definite article can very well be definite, especially when mentioned earlier with the article (the first use of ther article designates the specific and the following lack of the article points out to the definite usage from earlier).

Hi Jaltus,

did you mean me or Jason BeDuhn re:articles and definiteness?

I presented the quote to show the board what Jason thinks, because his conclusion only has so far been shown, not because I agree with it.

Thanks, from Guy

Guy:
Now my question refers to the emboldened section, is he denying the personality of the Word? This is a more important issue than whether the last phrase should be "a god" or not (notice that he prefers 'divine' over 'a god' because of the polytheism issue!)

BeDuhn seems unaware of the scholarship presented in Hartley (on Colwell's rule) and cites Harner, but does he actually get to grips with Harner's argument? It appears convenient that you have posted his conclusions without presenting one of his arguments, Cal. Makes it difficult to assess the chapter properly.

(When I said he cited Harner, I meant in the book, sorry)
Thanks, from Guy


Cal:
Dear Guy,
Jason discusses this in his book as well. He firsts talks about how grammatically John 1:1 should be translated and then a separate discussion on his interpretation. It looks to me as if he does not consider the LOGOS to have become a person until he became a man.

His prefaces that discussion by saying he is "lapsing into interpretation" and does not attempt to defend it with the Greek or force his interpretation onto the text.

He talks about Harner for three pages. I won’t quote all of it. He agrees with part of what Harner wrote but not all of it.

Harner states that the anarthrous predicate noun before the verb cannot be definite in (BeDuhn then lists them) and later he says:

( I found my first mistake! He means 6:60)

‘There are several other examples skipped by Harner. In John 6:20 we see a sentence set up exactly like John 1:1c which even has ho logos (here meaning simply “the saying” or “the teaching”) as the subject:
SKLHROS ESTIN hO LOGOS, “This word is a hard one (word-for-word: a hard one is the word this).” Notice how closely this resembles John 1:1c. The subject is ho logos, with the article, following the be-verb, just as in John 1:lc. The predicate noun precedes the verb, and lacks the article, just as in John l:lc. In meaning, the predicate noun is indefinite. We know this both from its lack of a definite article, and from the larger contextual meaning of the sentence. The word Jesus has spoken is not the one-and-only difficult saying he ever uttered, but is one of them. In other words, it is a hard saying. So, in the same fashion, in John 1:1, the Word is not the one-and-only God, but is a god, or divine being. I know that sounds strange and even seems impossible coming from the pen of a Christian writer. But the fact remains that that is what John wrote. His purpose in doing so was, at least in part, to avoid the notion that God the Father himself incarnated as Christ. The one who incarnated was somehow distinct from “God,” while still being “a god.”

… So, although Harner tries very hard to be deferential to Colwell and to not set up his article as a refutation of “Colwell’s Rule,” he recognizes in the end that the qualitative character of this kind of sentence precludes the definiteness of the noun. If Harner is right, then Colwell cannot be, and vice versa. … What Harner calls the “qualitative” function of Greek predicate nouns, and what I call the Greek “expression of class” amounts basically to the same thing.

Kind Regards,
Cal

Today @ 07:10 AM post located here
Tsmith:
Because Cal only supplied a partial quote. There is a whole chapter dedicated to this.

-Tony

Then give his arguments even if you are not quoting them, otherwise this is a pointless excercise.

As for the discussion of John 6:20, there is a mistake made by Jason BeDuhn: SKLHROS is an adjective, not a noun. In John 1:1 it is a noun for 1b, so there needs to be proof why it is not a noun for 1c. Also, OUTOUS has a tendancy to change constructions (note how it effects KAI according to the article in BDF that Cal keeps referring to in anotyher thread, something agreed upon by Turner and Wallace).

I wish I had more time to get into this, but I am leaving for a week's vacation tomorrow morning.

Today @ 11:40 AM post located here
Jaltus:




Then give his arguments even if you are not quoting them, otherwise this is a pointless excercise.

As for the discussion of John 6:20, there is a mistake made by Jason BeDuhn: SKLHROS is an adjective, not a noun. In John 1:1 it is a noun for 1b, so there needs to be proof why it is not a noun for 1c. Also, OUTOUS has a tendancy to change constructions (note how it effects KAI according to the article in BDF that Cal keeps referring to in anotyher thread, something agreed upon by Turner and Wallace).

I wish I had more time to get into this, but I am leaving for a week's vacation tomorrow morning.

Dear Jaltus,
If you claim that SKLHROS cannot be considered a substantive functioning as a predicate noun in John 6:60 I would 1) like to see you diagram this verse and 2) tell me what noun this "adjective" is modifying!"

I am also confused why you need hOUTOS to "change" this construction if SKLHROS is not functioning as a predicate noun and therefore a good example for BeDuhn to use in the first place.

Have you thought this through? Your two arguments are battleing each other with the result that the nullify each other!

Have a good vacation. Will you still post on the Smart's like you said yesterday or will that need to wait until next week?

Regards,
Cal

Um, it is a predicate adjective:

Cal is smart.

Cal = subject
is = verb
smart = adjective

The word is hard.

The = article
word = subject
is = verb
hard = adjective

Quite simple, you see.

I will probably not have time to go back to the other one. I am actually just doing some last minute moderating before I log of until next week (unless I sneak in early tomorrow if my wife doesn't notice).

Have a good week!

edit:

hOUTOS changes things, I was just pointing it out...I tend to add extraneous info every now and then... it is something my students havfe encouraged in me, so it has now crept into my posting.