Why John 1:1 Cannot Be Translated, “And the Word was a god”
In John 1:1 it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God” (New International Version). The Greek reads like this:
En archē
ēn ho logos,
In the beginning
was the Word and the Word was with the God
kai theos
kai ho logos
ēn pros ton theon,
ēn ho logos.
And God was the Word.
I have placed an English equivalent under the Greek transliteration following the word order of the
Greek but that is not necessarily the way it should be translated. How it should be translated is, of
course, at issue. The Greek language does not depend entirely on word order, as does English, to
communicate meaning. In the sentence, “I hit the ball to Charlie,” we know the subject, direct object
and indirect object (all nouns) by their place in the sentence. The only way we could change the word
order and still say the same thing is, “I hit Charlie the ball.” Those of us who speak the language know
that “I” of this sentence did not hit Charlie (as though he were the direct object of the verb). But in
Greek nouns have different spellings (case endings, if you have ever studied Latin) that show what
their function in the sentence is. The Greek could say, “Charlie I the ball hit” or “Charlie the ball I hit”
and mean what our English equivalent means by giving “Charlie” the indirect object ending and “ball”
the direct object ending. The subject “I” could either be included in the form of the verb or as a
pronoun with the verb (like English).
All this is to point out that in John 1:1 the word order is not the final determinative of meaning. What
is different about John 1:1, however, is that the endings in the last two nouns “God” and “Word” are
both the ending for the subjects of sentences in Greek. This is because the verb that connects them is a
verb of being (“was”) which requires that the noun that is the subject and the noun that is the predicate
(the one which follows the verb) must agree as to ending. The question is, which noun is the subject
and which is the predicate? We could either read, “God was the Word” or “the Word was God.”
Because “the Word” is the topic of the whole sentence and the subject of the verb right before this (“the
Word was with God”) it only makes sense to see it as the subject here, also. All the translations in
“Should You Believe in the Trinity?” (the Jehovah's Witness publication that I’ll just abbreviate as
SYBT from now on) agree with this.
The next question, naturally, is why in the Greek there is no definite article “the” before “God” when
John says, “the Word was God.” It is hard for English speakers to understand how the Greeks used the
definite article or why, at times, they left if off. We know that they used the definite article like we do
often, to mark a noun as definite (not “a man” but “the man,” that is, a certain one in particular, perhaps
one that has just been referred to previously). They sometimes used it as a relative pronoun, “the one
who” like in John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God, the taking away the sin of the world one,” that is,
“the one who takes away the sin of the world.”
The definite articled could be left off (there is not an indefinite article like “a” or “an” in Greek) to
make something indefinite as in John 1:6, “There was a man sent from God.” Or the article could be
left off if the writer wanted to emphasize the noun as a quality, as John does in 3:2, “(Nicodemus) came
to (Jesus) by night” (“night” is the noun and has no article). But there are times when the noun is
definitely definite and you would expect the definite article to be there and it is not. In John 1:18 it
says, “No one has seen God at any time,” but “God” does not have the article. We would not translate
it “No one has seen a god at any time.” Similarly, in John 3:2 Nicodemus said to Jesus, “We know that
you are a teacher sent from God,” but there is no article on “god” and certainly Nicodemus did not
mean, “We know that you are a teacher sent from a god.” Many such instances can be found (Mt. 6:24;
Lk. 2:14; 20:38; Rom. 8:8,33; 2 Cor. 1:21; 5:19; Gal. 2:19; 4:8; 2 Thess. 1:8; Tit. 1:16; etc., etc.) but it
is obvious in each context that the true God is meant. Thus a Greek speaker could mean the noun to be
definite without using the definite article.
In John 1:1 there is also another issue. In the phrase “the Word was God” God is the predicate but
actually comes before the verb “was” in the Greek. The rule of Colwell referred to in SYBT suggests
that when a predicate noun is meant to be definite and it comes before the verb it does not usually have
the definite article on it. If that were true, John could leave off the article on “God” and still mean the
true God and not “a god.” This fits with several instances where to translate the predicate noun as
indefinite (“a…”) would not make sense. In John 8:54 Jesus says, “It is my Father who glorifies me,
whom you say that He is our God.” “God” comes before the verb in the Greek without the article
(“that God of us He is” is a word for word translation) but could not mean, “He is a god of ours.”
On the other hand, SYBT points out that in John 8:44 Satan is said to be “a murderer from the
beginning” and “a liar and the father of lies” but “murderer” and “liar” are predicate nouns coming
before the verb. Why wouldn’t they be translated “the murderer” and “the liar” according to Colwell’s
rule? Well, they could be. SYBT is wrong when it says, “most translations insert the word ‘a’ because
Greek grammar and the context require it.” Greek grammar certainly does not “require” it as we have
seen and though the context suggests it, it does not require it. But the other error here is that Colwell’s
rule does not refer to all predicate nouns coming before the verb, but to all definite predicate nouns
coming before the verb, that is, nouns which have already been judged to be definite.
I realize this is confusing if you are not familiar with Greek grammar, and it sounds like Colwell’s rule
is begging the question. What right do we have to assume that John views “god” as a definite noun in
John 1:1? Why could he not view “god” as indefinite and so mean it to be translated indefinitely, “The
Word was a god?” Well, consider what that would have John saying. John is a Jew who has been
taught, “I am the LORD (Jehovah) your God…. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus
20:2,3). And, “All the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD (Jehovah) made the heavens” (1
Chron. 16:26). Also, “What god is there in heaven and on earth who can do the deeds and mighty
works you do?” (Deut. 3:24). And, “Before Me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me”
(Isa. 43:10). And yet we are expected to believe, if the New World Translation (Jehovah's Witnesses'
own translation) is right, that John would call Jesus “a god” who was formed after God, who made the
heavens and earth, who does the mighty works of God.
Then John proceeds to describe this Jesus not only as the one through whom all things were made
(1:3), but the light of men who has light in himself that gives life, the true light who has glory and is
full of grace and truth (1:4-14). For John to say that Jesus was even “a god” would be to fly in the face
of all the Old Testament teaching about God’s uniqueness. On SYBT’s view John is introducing a
concept that directly contradicts Isaiah 43:10. He would be saying that there was a god formed after
God, who is in league with God, to be sure, but who is accorded special honor as God’s special servant.
So because of the Greek and the teaching of the Old Testament to which John subscribed, John 1:1
must be translated, “and the Word was God.”