[Remember that there were no uses of initial capital letters ( ‘
God,’ ‘
Lord,’ ‘
Jesus,’ etc.) in the NT manuscripts which translators use for today‘s Bibles.]
I intend to examine
John 1:1c to show that the very usage/grammar used by John himself shows the actual meaning (whether ‘the Word was God,” or the “Word was a god”).
Virtually every scholar on the planet will tell you that you cannot show this “grammatically”. As you just pointed out the oldest Greeks manuscripts we have were written in Uncial style which are all capital letters.
The
only way to properly translate John 1:1 is through
context, not grammar. Look, you would have a better argument if John 1:1c stood on its own, all by itself, encased in a silo with nothing else surrounding it. You would have a
better argument but still fall short of a
convincing one.
Secondly, I think it’s important to note that the Watchtower does not endorse or support what it considers “private interpretations” of scripture.
When in "the truth" the
inability to cite a WT source only brings suspicion that a sister or brother has been
“running ahead of the chariot”, a practice the WT frowns on. For instance, look at this recent post from another forum. Here a sister shared a song
“before the appointed time”:
Don't get me wrong...I applaud any Jehovah Witness that can think independently on their own. God gave us all the ability to think and expected us to use what we have, not offload it to 3rd parties. The only reason I bring this up is because I’ve been through similar arguments with debaters on other forums. It goes something like this:
JW: Tosses out private interpretation “A”
C: Disagrees
JW’s: Yes, argument “A” is correct!!
C’s: Shows argument “A” is logically incorrect
JW’s: Well, it was never something we actually believed anyways. For a list of our beliefs, go to JW.ORG!
I don't mind discussing anything you've found in scripture, but if you're assertions are also WT backed or supported, please cite them.
Of course what I have covered in this very first lesson does not prove my case for
John 1:1c. But it should prove that John used the article with theo
s when he intended "God." And that John (and other NT writers) when they used a count noun without the article, translators add the indefinite article.
If you disagree, please give me examples.
First, where does the WT argue “theos” as a
count noun? As
@Hockeycowboy pointed out on another thread, the WT considers theos as
qualitative, not
quantitative. How does one pluralize Divinity, and if one does, why bother categorizing into count and non-count nouns?
Source
Also, what is your definition of a
count noun, and does it differ from the WT's? I have seen JW's use the term but I've never seen it "officially" defined. Different grammarians will define count nouns differently, and the argument loses some sheen and credibility if we must come back to you for what is or isn't a count noun.
Does your definition account for possible language differences? "Homework" is a count noun in Spanish, its indefinite in English.
Secondly, as pointed out on another thread, the “official” WT interpretation (which doesn’t seem to include references
or even a definition of “count nouns”) cannot possibly be correct historically.
Source
As such, any such argument for “a god”…where “a god” is a
distinct, separate god… is simply
argumentative…an intellectual exercise that has no basis in actual history and therefore none at John 1:1.
Which gets to my third point…Christians (and this includes many non-Trinitarians) have no problem understanding an interpretation of ho theos to mean “the God” and “theos” to mean “God” even at John 1:1c if by “
a God” you mean "all that God was the Word was". The problem is that JW’s preloaded “
a god” to mean a
distinct, separate deity that is
less deity than God. From my perspective it would have been better to have translated this as
“…the Word was a God” then
“…the Word was a god” (no cap).
Quite frankly, if “a god” was the proper understanding of John 1:1c the early Christians would have never been labelled “atheists” by the Romans. The Watchtower is arguing that the early Christians had it wrong…they should have immediately recognized the emperor, the judges of Israel, Zeus, Odin, Jupiter and every pop up dictator since then as “a god” rather than face lions in the arena. This rather surprising and unsupported revelation is based solely in the belief that WT translators understood Greek grammar better than the early Christians.
This is not surprising. The WT also argues the fall of Jerusalem occurred in 607 BCE despite every encyclopedia, document, book and historian stating differently. In order to arrive at 1914 the WT needs the fall to occur in 607 BCE so our encyclopedias simply have it wrong and will continue to have it wrong until and unless their Governing Board has "new light".