And The Word Was God
John 1:1's Last Phrase, Explained
John 1:1 reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the original Greek, the last phrase of this verse (“and the Word was God”) looks like this: καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. Consider the following two aspects of this phrase.
1. Word Order
If we were to translate each word in order, it would say “and God was the Word.” But in English, that word order would make “God” the subject (the person or thing about whom the statement is made). In Greek, that’s not what’s being said.
Word order is less important in Greek. So, as biblical scholar Rob Plummer says, in phrases like this, the subject is often the one that has the article. Here, λόγος (“word”) has the article ὁ (“the”), so it is the subject. That’s why it’s translated into English as “and the Word was God,” not “and God was the Word.”
2. “God” or “a god”?
The fact that θεὸς (“God”) doesn’t also have an article bothers some students of Greek, because they wonder if it means “God” is not definite here and should be translated as “a god.” This is the argument Jehovah’s Witnesses make.
But a rule of Greek grammar called “the Colwell Rule” resolves the issue. It states, “A definite predicate nominative has the article when it follows the verb; it does not have the article when it precedes the verb.” Here, the predicate nominative is θεὸς, and it comes before the verb ἦν, so it’s not expected to have the article.
In other words, the absence of the article is merely a feature of Greek grammar, not a suggestion that the Word (Jesus) is a separate god from the One True God.
The gospel of John, Plummer observes, is “extremely clear about the deity—the full diety—of the second Person of the Triune God [Jesus].” He offers the example of John 20:28, where θεὸς does have the article:
“Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”
P.S. A version of this brief Bible insight originally appeared in Project 18:15, my weekly briefing of news, Bible, and history. Get the next one in your inbox this weekend:
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