John 1:1 is the first verse in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The traditional and majority translation of this verse reads: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God., Douay-Rheims, KJV, RSV, NIV Other translations have been made or considered.
"The Word", a translation of the Greek λόγος (logos), is widely interpreted as referring to Jesus, as indicated in other verses later in the same chapter, for example, "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14; cf. 1:15, 17).See verses 14-17: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'") ... For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
History This text was composed sometime between 70-110AD.
Tertullian, in the early third century, used this verse in developing his views on the Trinity, although he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine. He 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.Qui si ipse deus est secundum Ioannem - Deus erat sermo - habes duos, alium dicentem ut fiat, alium facientem. alium autem quomodo accipere debeas iam professus sum, personae non substantiae nomine, ad distinctionem non ad divisionem. Adversus Praxeas 12.
In the same text, he uses Psalm 45:6: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.Et ut adhuc amplius hoc putes, accipe et in psalmo duos deos dictos: Thronus tuus, deus, in aevum, <virga directionis> virga regni tui; dilexisti iustitiam et odisti iniquitatem, propterea unxit te deus, deus tuus. Si ad deum loquitur, et unctum deum a deo, affirmat et hic duos deos... Plus est quod in evangelio totidem invenies: In principio erat sermo et sermo erat apud deum et deus erat sermo: unus qui erat, et alius penes quem erat. Adversus Praxeas 13.
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 [...] Now there are many who are sincerely concerned about religion, and who fall here into great perplexity. They are afraid that they may be proclaiming two Gods, and their fear drives them into doctrines which are false and wicked. Either they deny that the Son has a distinct nature of His own besides that of the Father, and make Him whom they call the Son to be God all but the name, or they deny the divinity of the Son, giving Him a separate existence of His own, and making His sphere of essence fall outside that of the Father, so that they are separable from each other. [...] The true God, then, is "The God."
Source text and translations
Language John 1:1 text Koine Greek The Greek English New Testament. Christianity Today. 1975 Syriac Peshitta Sahidic Coptic Bohairic Coptic Vetus Latina Latin Vulgate
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.
Other variations of rendering, both in translation or paraphrase, John 1:1c also exist:
14th century: "and God was the word" – Wycliffe's Bible (translated from the 4th-century Latin Vulgate) 1808: "and the Word was a god" – Thomas Belsham The New Testament, in an Improved Version, Upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome's New Translation: With a Corrected Text, London. 1822: "and the Word was a god" – The New Testament in Greek and English (A. Kneeland, 1822.) 1829: "and the Word was a god" – The Monotessaron; or, The Gospel History According to the Four Evangelists (J. S. Thompson, 1829) 1863: "and the Word was a god" – A Literal Translation of the New Testament (Herman Heinfetter [Pseudonym of Frederick Parker], 1863) 1864: "the LOGOS was God" – A New Emphatic Version (right hand column) 1864: "and a god was the Word" – The Emphatic Diaglott by Benjamin Wilson, New York and London (left hand column interlinear reading) 1867: "and the Son was of God" – The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible 1879: "and the Word was a god" – Das Evangelium nach Johannes (J. Becker, 1979) 1885: "and the Word was a god" – Concise Commentary on The Holy Bible (R. Young, 1885) 1911: "and [a] God was the word" – The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, by George William Horner. 1924: "the Logos was divine" – The Bible: James Moffatt Translation, by James Moffatt. 1935: "and the Word was divine" – The Bible: An American Translation, by John M. P. Smith and Edgar J. Goodspeed, Chicago. 1955: "so the Word was divine" – The Authentic New Testament, by Hugh J. Schonfield, Aberdeen. 1956: "And the Word was as to His essence absolute deity" – The Wuest Expanded Translation 1958: "and the Word was a god" – The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Anointed (J. L. Tomanec, 1958); 1962, 1979: "'the word was God.' Or, more literally, 'God was the word.'" – The Four Gospels and the Revelation (R. Lattimore, 1979) 1966, 2001: "and he was the same as God" – The Good News Bible. 1970, 1989: "and what God was, the Word was" – The New English Bible and The Revised English Bible. 1975 "and a god (or, of a divine kind) was the Word" – Das Evangelium nach Johnnes, by Siegfried Schulz, Göttingen, Germany 1975: "and the Word was a god" – Das Evangelium nach Johannes (S. Schulz, 1975); 1978: "and godlike sort was the Logos" – Das Evangelium nach Johannes, by Johannes Schneider, Berlin 1985: "So the Word was divine" - The Original New Testament, by Hugh J. Schonfield. 1993: "The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one." — The Message, by Eugene H. Peterson.For a complete list of 70 non traditional translations of John 1:1, see http://simplebibletruths.net/70-John-1-1-Truths.htm 1998: "and what God was the Word also was" – This translation follows Professor Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John, ed. Daniel J. Harrington. 2017: "and the Logos was god" - The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart.
Difficulties
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 may lead one to believe that the proper way to render the verse is the traditional rendering.William Arnold III, Colwell's Rule and John 1:1 at apostolic.net: "You could only derive a Trinitarian interpretation from John 1:1 if you come to this passage with an already developed Trinitarian theology. If you approached it with a strict Monotheism (which is what I believe John held to) then this passage would definitely support such a view." The opposing theology that Jesus is subordinate to God as his Chief agent may lead to the conclusion that "... a god" or "... divine" is the proper rendering.Beduhn in Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament chapter 11 states: "Translators of the KJV, NRSV, NIV, NAB, New American Standard Bible, AB, Good News Bible and LB all approached the text at John 1:1 already believing certain things about the Word...and made sure that the translations came out in accordance with their beliefs.... Ironically, some of these same scholars are quick to charge the NW translation with "doctrinal bias" for translating the verse literally, free of KJV influence, following the sense of the Greek. It may very well be that the NW translators came to the task of translating John 1:1 with as much bias as the other translators did. It just so happens that their bias corresponds in this case to a more accurate translation of the Greek." This highlights the importance of understanding and applying the proper grammatical rules to any translation to avoid bias.
Augustine of Hippo discusses John 1:1–2 in connection with ambiguities caused by punctuation rather than vocabulary. In De doctrina christiana he contrasts the reading In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum with what he calls a "heretical pointing", In principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat. Verbum hoc erat in principio apud Deum, which leaves the wording unchanged but alters the pause so that the clause "and the Word was God" no longer appears as a single unit. Augustine interprets this alternative as motivated by an unwillingness to confess that the Word is God and maintains that, in light of the Church's "rule of faith" and its teaching on the equality of the Trinity, the verse should instead be read with the predicate in the form et Deus erat verbum followed by hoc erat in principio apud Deum.Augustine, De doctrina christiana III.2, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, 1887).
The Greek Article 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."The Article" . A section heading in Robert W. Funk, A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek. Volume I. Second Corrected Edition. Scholars Press. Ancient Greek does not have an indefinite article like the English word a, and nominatives without articles can have a range of meanings that require context to interpret. In John 1:1c, "Theos" is a predicate nominative but has no article. Thus, it is called an anarthrous predicate, and makes translation more challenging.
Colwell's Rule Some interpreters use Colwell's rule which says that a definite predicate which is before the verb "to be" usually does not have the definite article. This tentative formulation addresses whether a definite predicate nominative uses a definite article, but does not determine if a predicate nominative is definite. E. C. Colwell doesn't address in depth how to identify whether an anarthrous predicate is either definite, indefinite or qualitative, which needs to be determined from context. Ernest Cadman Colwell writes:
Philip Harner assessed that many of the anarthrous predicates preceding linking verbs that E. C. Colwell had identified as definite were actually qualitative. This challenges E. C. Colwell's results who acknowledged that they hinged on the accuracy of his determinations for each anarthrous predicate and that the difficulty of the challenge meant some mistakes were inevitable.
Many scholars misunderstand Colwell's rule. It can't be used to deduce whether the predicate is definite or not.