Posted by Hugh in This morning I was roused from my bedroom at the unearthly hour of 10am. I was expected the gas man, so I just picked up the phone and buzzed him in. To my surprise I was greeted at the door by two averagely well dressed young men. They said they were from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and asked me if I’d like a leaflet about the Bible… you can guess where this is going.
I said I already knew a fair bit about the Bible and that I was a Christian. I think they might have left it there, but I couldn’t resist asking them why my translation of John 1:1 was so different to theirs… I kept trying to get an answer as to why their translation, the New World Translation, changes the phrase “and the Word was God”, to “and the Word was a god“. I tried to explain that all other translations I know of, those translated before and after the NWT all use “was God”, and only theirs renders it differently - and completely changes the meaning.
These guys weren’t able to answer the obvious translation issue. But they’re not stupid (well they are a bit) they had another argument up their sleeve… If Jesus is God then why did he pray to his Father in John 17? This brought back happy memories of Mike Reeves on the Trinity at Word Alive, I explained that Jesus is in nature God, but is a distinct person from the Father, and the Spirit… you know, Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit loving each other?? They said, “oh you believe in the Triune God?” as if it was some weird and wacky belief.
The other guy then took me to Colossians 1 - “Jesus is the firstborn”. I explained that firstborn is not the same as being born first, or being created first but is to do with Jesus’ pre-eminence and heir status over creation. I asked them why humanly speaking Jesus died, why it was that that the Jews brought blasphemy charges against Jesus??
The first guy sensed they weren’t really getting anywhere so made moves to go… I enquired once more about the accuracy of their bible, but no answers. But they said they might come back, part 2 pending, maybe…
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Nice work HB. Those lies need to be squashed in and for the sake of love.
Many who take issue with Jehovah’s Witnesses’ “New World Translation” of ‘theos’ in John 1:1c (as, “a god”) often miss the point that this is ‘a singular anarthrous predicate noun *preceding the verb*’ - that is, not just that use of the noun ‘theos’ in the third clause lacks the Greek definite article.
This would explain why some of the examples many feel inclined to provide (John 1, verses 2, 6, 12, 13, 18 and 51), that is, as NWT violations of another guideline (that these also do not have the Greek definite article, and yet they translate these as “God”), do not apply; and this is simply because, those other instances do not fit the same Grammatical, syntatical criteria as that found within John 1:1c.
[I'm not publishing all of the comment... it's sooo long, check the link below for more. Basic premise that it's right to translate as "a god"]
For this, please examine the contents of the following link:
http://nwtandcoptic.blogspot.com/2006/09/john-11c-word-was-god.html
Obviously, there need be more evidence to substantiate such a position; but, otherwise, that is just one of the many points I hope to bring out within my forthcoming work entitled, “What About John 1:1?”
Agape, Alan.
I don’t know much greek, about 10 words maybe, and I don’t know what the coptic translations are, and why you think they’d be more accurate than others… in fact I’m pretty rusty with verbs too, we didn’t get teached English at school!
What I do know is that every major English translation (KJV, ESV, NIV, RSV, Darby, Young’s, Holman, ASV, NLT… and more) renders John 1:1c as “and the Word was God”.
I also know that the NWT has systematically removed references to the deity of Christ throughout its text, see - http://www.evangelicalbible.com/jw.htm
Furthermore, I know that the whole canon of scripture points to the fact that Jesus is fully man and fully God, and that this has been a foundational belief in Christianity passed down from the Apostles and early church.