JOHN 1:1 who is the WORD?

[NickHassan]

Hi WJ,
It is not allowed for us to resolve what seems to be contradictions by adding in extraneous human ideas.

Let scripture speak and every man be silent.

[david]

I'm still not understanding your logic.
The devil wanted Jesus to “falsely” worship him…you mean like, only pretend worship him, or not really worship him.

No, I'm pretty sure the devil wanted an act of worship directed towards him.

actually, what do you mean by “falsely proskyneo him.”

[david]

You know, there are a few threads on proskyneo.
This thread is on John 1:1. If we liked, we could discuss the coptic version of John 1:1, but since an even more specific thread has been started for that, it would make more sense to do so there.

[Worshipping Jesus]

Hi David

I have already commented on the Coptic version….here…

I will post it again…

Hi David

Quote (david @ Oct. 06 2008,18:32)

Therefore, it is all the more strange that insights of the Sahidic Coptic text of John 1:1 are largely ignored by popular Bible translators. Might that be because the Sahidic Coptic Gospel of John translates John 1:1c in a way that is unpopular in Christendom?

I think that translating John 1:1c as “a god” also would be unpopular to the Hebrews that believed there is only one “True God”.

Here is some information concerning the Sahidic Coptic translation.

John 1:1 in the Sahidic Coptic Translation
Several Jehovah's Witness apologists have claimed that the Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1 fully supports the rendering of the New World Translation (NWT): “and the Word was a god.”

I have written on this topic here.

Recently, Witness apologist Solomon Landers and an anonymous blogger calling himself “Memra” have created several blogs and websites touting the Sahidic Coptic translation. One would think that two apologists (assuming Memra is not Solomon) would only need to bring up two sites, but perhaps they are trying to create the impression of 'buzz' on the Internet.

In any event, both apologists have attempted to respond to my comments. I have no doubt that others may soon jump on board, as Witnesses see the Sahidic translation – a translation dating back to at least the 3rd Century – as vindication of the NWT in a big way.

Click here for more.

None of the early church Fathers like Ignatius a disciple of John (approx AD 110) ever referred to Yahshua as “a God”.

But, did refer to Yahshua as “The True God”.

WJ

[NickHassan]

Hi WJ,
There are many things Jesus did not forbid.
He did not forbid John to worship Peter and James etc.
We should rather focus on what he did teach such as true worshipers worship the Father.

Are you then a true worshiper?

Should we rely on scripture or allow gnostic ideas like trinity to be introduced?

Surely we should not just pay lip service to the foundational truth of Scripture

[Worshipping Jesus]

Quote (david @ Oct. 17 2008,12:32)

I'm still not understanding your logic.   The devil wanted Jesus to “falsely” worship him…you mean like, only pretend worship him, or not really worship him. No, I'm pretty sure the devil wanted an act of worship directed towards him. actually, what do you mean by “falsely proskyneo him.”

David

You know what I mean.

But I understand that you really do not want to see my point.

Fine.

WJ

[NickHassan]

Hi WJ,
Does scripture ever tell us to worship Jesus?
Did he ever tell us to?

If not why do you?

[david]

Quote

I have written on this topic here.

WJ, are you Robert? Are you saying you're the one who wrote about Horner on that website or that that is your website?

[david]

Quote

That only solidifies my point. The Devil tried to get Yahshua to falsly “proskuneo” him and yet Yahshua uses the same “proskuneo” for true worship to the Father.

Are you suggesting it solidifies your point because you think proskyneo should only be translated “worship”?

[david]

Quote

I think that translating John 1:1c as “a god” also would be unpopular to the Hebrews that believed there is only one “True God”.

What if I said: “I believe there is only one true Captain of the enterprise–William Shatner.”

You'd of course know and understand what I mean. There's been more than one captain. But saying this would mean for me, that no one else compares to Captain Kirk.

You get that don't you? I know you have to. It's how people talk.

(As a side note, I much prefer Picard.)

[Worshipping Jesus]

Quote (david @ Oct. 17 2008,16:34)

Quote I have written on this topic here. WJ, are you Robert?  Are you saying you're the one who wrote about Horner on that website or that that is your website?

Hi David

I also have responded to this question here!

I will paste the response….

Quote (WorshippingJesus @ Oct. 07 2008,13:03)

Quote (david @ Oct. 07 2008,12:42) Quote I have written on this topic here. WJ, I'm confused by this.  Is that your website? Hi David No! That is the writers quote, I just included his own link to his quote. WJ

David, do you even read my post?

You should do some reading of the early church fathers writings.

Here is a few links that may help…

Early Church Fathers.

Early Church Fathers.

Early Church Fathers.

WJ

[Worshipping Jesus]

Quote (WorshippingJesus @ Oct. 17 2008,12:35)

I think that translating John 1:1c as “a god” also would be unpopular to the Hebrews that believed there is only one “True God”.

Quote (david @ Oct. 17 2008,16:39)

What if I said: “I believe there is only one true Captain of the enterprise–William Shatner.” You'd of course know and understand what I mean.  There's been more than one captain.  But saying this would mean for me, that no one else compares to Captain Kirk. You get that don't you?  I know you have to.  It's how people talk. (As a side note, I much prefer Picard.)

Hi David.

Quote (david @ Oct. 17 2008,16:39)

What if I said: “I believe there is only one true Captain of the enterprise–William Shatner.”

Bad analogy.

Ok…

“One True Captain” = “One True God”

“The Enterprise” = “The Creation”

If you can show where their is more than “One Creation” or “Enterprise”, then maybe there is more than “One True God” or Captain of that enterprise.

You get that don't you David?

Remember David…

All things came into being through Him, and “apart from Him nothing came into being” that has come into being. John 1:3

I like the fact that there is only One Enterprise and One Captain.

WJ

[david]

never mind. Wrong thread.

[gollamudi]

Hi brothers and sisters in Heavennet,
Here are some thoughts for you on understanding Jn 1:1 in a Jewish point of view. Please go through with open mind.

1. John and the Preexistent Purpose of God:
One day a theological storm is likely to erupt over the translation of John’s prologue in our standard versions. At present the public is offered a wide range of renderings, from the purely literal to the freely paraphrased. But do these translations represent John’s intention? Or are they traditional, based on what “everyone accepts”? Have they sometimes served as a weapon in the hands of Christian orthodoxy to enforce the decisions of post-biblical creeds and councils? The seeker after Truth of the Berean style (Acts 17:11) should investigate all things carefully.

According to the findings of a recent monumental study of the origin of Christ in the Bible, Bible readers instinctively hear the text of John 1:1 as follows: “In the beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God,” or “In the beginning was the Son and the Son was with the Father…”[2]

This reading of the passage provides vital support for the traditional doctrine of the Godhead, shared equally by Father and Son from eternity. Paraphrased versions sometimes go far beyond the Greek original. The Contemporary English Version interprets John to mean that two beings were present at the beginning. “The Word was the One who was with God.” No doubt, according to that translation, the Word would be equivalent to an eternal Son. It would certainly be understood in that sense by those schooled on the post-biblical creeds.

But why, Kuschel asks, do readers leap from “word” to “Son”? The text simply reads, “In the beginning was the word,” not “In the beginning was the Son.” The substitution of “Son” for “word,” which for millions of readers appears to be an automatic reflex, has had dramatic consequences. It has exercised a powerful, even mesmerizing influence on Bible readers. But the text does not warrant the switch. Again, John wrote: “In the beginning was the word.” He did not say, “In the beginning was the Son of God.” There is, in fact, no direct mention of the Son of God until we come to verse 14, where “the word [not the Son] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of a unique Son, full of grace and truth.” Until verse 14 there is no mention of a Son. The Son is what the word became, but what is the word?

Imagine I told my child, “Our car was once in the head of its designer, and now here it is in our garage.” The child might respond: “How could that car fit into the head of the designer? It would be too big.” Fair point, but based on a large misunderstanding. The application to our problem in John 1:1 is simply this: The fact that the word became the man Jesus, the Son of God, does not necessarily or automatically imply that Jesus, the Son of God is one-to-one equivalent to the word before Jesus’ birth. What if the word, the self-expression of God, became embodied in, was manifested in, the man Jesus? That makes very good sense of John 1:14. It also avoids the fearful, never-resolved complexities of Trinitarianism by which there are two or three who are fully and equally God. If our theory is right, John will have been speaking about a preexisting divine Purpose, not a second divine person.

It is commonly known to Bible readers that in Proverbs 8 wisdom was “with [Hebrew, etzel; LXX, para] God.” That is to say, God’s wisdom is personified. It is treated as if it were a person, not that Lady Wisdom was really a female personage alongside God. We accept this sort of language, usually without any confusion. We do not suppose that Prudence, who is said to be dwelling with Wisdom (Prov. 8:12), was herself literally a person. When the famous St. Louis Arch was finally completed after several years of construction a documentary film announced that “the plan had become flesh.” The plan, in other words, was now in physical form. But the arch is not one-to-one equivalent with the plans on the drawing board. The arch is made of concrete; the plans were drawn on paper.

2. The Misleading Capital on “Word”:
Here is a very remarkable and informative fact: If one had a copy of an English Bible in any of the eight English versions available prior to 1582, one would gain a very different sense from the opening verses of John: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. All things came into being through it, and without it nothing was made that was made.”

“All things came into being through it [the word],” not “through him.” And so those English versions did not rush to the conclusion, as does the King James Version of 1611 (influenced by the Roman Catholic Rheims version, 1582) and its followers, that the word was a person, the Son, before the birth of Jesus. If all things were made through “the word,” as an “it,” a quite different meaning emerges. The “word” would not be a second person existing alongside God the Father from eternity. The result: one of the main planks of traditional systems about members in the Godhead would be removed.

There is more to be said about that innocent sentence: “In the beginning was the word.” There is no justification in the original Greek for placing a capital “W” on “word,” and thus inviting readers to think of a person. That is an interpretation imposed on the text, added to what John wrote. But was that what he intended? The question is, what would John and his readers understand by “word”? Quite obviously there are echoes of Genesis 1:1ff here: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…and God said [using His word], ‘Let there be light.’ ” “God said” means “God uttered His word,” the medium of His creative activity, His powerful utterance. Psalm 33:6 had provided commentary on Genesis: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” And so in John 1:1 God expressed His intention, His word, His self-revealing, creative utterance. But absolutely nothing in the text, apart from the intrusive capital letter on “word” in our versions, turning word into a proper noun, would make us think that God was in company with another person or Son. The word which God spoke was in fact just “the word of God,” the expression of Himself. And one’s word is not another person, obviously.

3. The Meaning of “Word”:
Sensible Bible study would require that we attempt to understand what “word” would mean in the background of John’s thinking. Commentators have long recognized that John is thoroughly Hebrew in his approach to theology. He is steeped in the Hebrew Bible. “Word” had appeared some 1,450 times (plus the verb “to speak” 1,140 times) in the Hebrew Bible known so well to John and Jesus. The standard meaning of “word” is utterance, promise, command, etc. It never meant a personal being — never “the Son of God.” Never did it mean a spokesman. Rather, word generally signified the index of the mind — an expression, a word. There is a wide range of meanings for “word” according to a standard source. “Person,” however, is not among these meanings.

The noun davar [word] occurs some 1455 times…In legal contexts it means dispute (Ex. 18:16, 19; 24:14), accusation, verdict, claim, transfer and provision…[otherwise] request, decree, conversation, report, text of a letter, lyrics of a song, promise, annals, event, commandment, plan (Gen. 41:37; II Sam. 17:14; II Chron. 10:4; Esther 2:2; Ps. 64:5, 6; Isa. 8:10), language…Dan. 9:25: decree of a king; [also:] thing, matter or event. Of particular theological significance is the phrase “the word of the Lord/God came to…”…In Jud. 3:19-21 Ehud delivers a secret message (i.e. a sword to kill him)…Yahweh commands the universe into existence. Yahwe
h tells the truth so everyone can rely on Him. The word of the Lord has power because it is an extension of Yahweh’s knowledge, character and ability. Yahweh knows the course of human events. Similarly human words reflect human nature (“the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart/mind”)…Words are used for good or evil purposes (Prov. 12:6)…Words can cheer, correct and calm.[3]

We might add that “As a man thinks in his heart [and speaks] so is he” (Prov. 23:7). A person “is” his word. “In the beginning there was the word,” that is, the word of God. Clearly John did not say that the word was a spokesperson. Word had never meant that. Of course the word can become a spokesperson, and it did when God expressed Himself in a Son by bringing Jesus onto the scene of history. So then Hebrews 1:2 says: “God, after He had spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, at the end of these days has spoken in a Son.” The implication is that God did not earlier speak through His unique Son, but later He did. There is an important chronological distinction between the time before the Son and the time after the Son. There was a time when the Son was not yet.

It would be a serious mistake of interpretation to discard the massively attested meaning of “word” in the Hebrew matrix from which John wrote and attach to it a meaning it never had — a “person,” second member of a divine Trinity. No lexicon of the Hebrew Bible ever listed davar (Hebrew for “word”) as a person, God, angel or man.

4. The Word “With God”:
John’s prologue continues: “And the word was with God.” So read our versions. And so the Greek might be rendered, if one has already decided, against all the evidence, that by “word” John meant a person, the Son of God, alive before his birth.

Allowance must be made for Hebrew idiom. Without a feel for the Hebrew background, as so often in the New Testament, we are deprived of a vital key to understanding. We might ask of an English speaker, “When was your word last ‘with you’?” The plain fact is that in English, which is not the language of the Bible, a “word” is never “with” you. A person can be “with you,” certainly, but not a word.

But in the wisdom literature of the Bible a “word” certainly can be “with” a person. And the meaning is that a plan or purpose — a word — is kept in one’s heart ready for execution. For example Job says to God (10:13): “Yet these things you have concealed in your heart; I know that this is with you.” The NASV gives a more intelligible sense in English by reading, “ I know that this is within you.” The NIV reads “in your mind.” But the Hebrew literally reads “with you.” Again in Job 23:13, 14 it is said of God, “What his soul desires, that he does, for he performs what is appointed for me, and many such decrees are with him,” meaning, of course, that God’s plans are stored up in His mind. God’s word is His intention, held in His heart as plans to be carried out in the world He has created. Sometimes what God has “with Him” is the decree He has planned. With this we may compare similar thoughts: “This is the portion of a wicked man with God and the inheritance which tyrants receive from Him” (Job 27:13). “I will instruct you in the power of God; what is with the Almighty I will not conceal” (Job 27:11).

We should also consider the related concept of “Wisdom.” In Job we find this: “The deep says ‘It [Wisdom] is not in me.’ And the sea says, ‘It is not with me’ ” (Job 28:14). To have wisdom or word “with” one is to have them in one’s mind and heart. “With him is wisdom and strength. To him belong counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13). And of course Wisdom, that is Lady Wisdom, was with (Hebrew, etzel; LXX, para) God at the beginning (Prov. 8:22, 30).

In Genesis 40:14 we read “Keep me in mind when it goes well with you,” and the text reads literally “Remember me with yourself…” From all these examples it is clear that if something is “with” a person, it is lodged in the mind, often as a decreed purpose or plan. Paul remarked in Galatians 2:5 that the Gospel might continue “with [pros] them,” in their thinking. John in his Gospel elsewhere uses para, not pros to express the proximity of one person to another (John 1:39; 4:40; 8:38; 14:17, 23, 25; 19:25; cp. 14:23. Note also meta in John 3:22, 25ff, etc. See New Int. Dict. of NT Theology, Vol. 3, p. 1205).

Thus also in John 1:1, “In the beginning God had a plan and that plan was within God’s heart and was itself ‘God’ ” — that is, God in His self-revelation. The plan was the very expression of God’s will. It was a divine Plan, reflective of His inner being, close to the heart of God. John is fond of the word “is.” But it is not always an “is” of strict identity. Jesus “is” the resurrection (“I am the resurrection”). God “is” spirit. God “is” love and light (cp. “All flesh is grass”). In fact, God is not actually one-to-one identical with light and love, and Jesus is not literally the resurrection. “The word was God” means that the word was fully expressive of God’s mind. A person “is” his mind, metaphorically speaking. Jesus is the one who can bring about our resurrection. God communicates through His spirit (John 4:24). The word is the index of God’s intention and purpose. It was in His heart, expressive of His very being. As the Translators’ Translation senses the meaning, “the Word was with God and shared his nature,” “the Word was divine.”[4] The word, then, is the divine expression, the divine Plan, the very self of God revealed. The Greek phrase “theos een o logos”[5] (“the word was God”) can be rendered in different ways. The subject is “word” (logos) but the emphasis falls on what the word was: “God” (theos, with no definite article), which stands at the head of the sentence. “God” here is the predicate. It has a slightly adjectival sense which is very hard to put exactly into English. John can say that God is love or light. This is not an exact equivalence. God is full of light and love, characterized by light and love. The word is similarly a perfect expression of God and His mind. The word, we might say, is the mind and heart of God Himself. John therefore wrote: “In the beginning God expressed Himself.” Not “In the beginning God begat a Son.” That imposition of later creeds on the text has been responsible for all sorts of confusion and even mischief — when some actually killed others over the issue of the so-called “eternal Son.”

5. A Disturbance of Monotheism:
The great difficulty which faces those who say that there was a “God the Father” in heaven while “God the Son” was on earth is that this implies two Gods! There was, on that theory, a God who did not become the Son and a God who became the Son. This dissolves the unity of God. It undermines and compromises the first commandment: “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One Lord ” (Mark 12:29). It also flies in the face of the great statement of Isaiah that God was unaccompanied as the Creator. “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: ‘I am the Lord, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth — Who was with me?’ ” (Isa. 44:24).

Of course, if one has taken a first false step by assuming that the “word” in the beginning was “the Son,” then the phrase “the word was God” can only confirm the impression that there are two members of the Godhead, both of whom are somehow One God. However problematic and illogical this leap into a duality in God may be, Bible readers have been conditioned to make that leap painlessly. They have made that leap despite the impossibility of understanding John 1:1c to mean “and the Son was the Father.” No Trinitarian believes that, but to av
oid it he must assign a different meaning to the word God in John 1:1c than he has given it in 1b, where he instinctively hears “and the Son was with God [= the Father].” But the whole idea of a duality of persons in John’s prologue contradicts Isaiah’s statement that no one was with the Lord in the beginning.[6] That fact in itself should have prevented translators from thinking that “word” was another person alongside the Lord God. Moreover, any introduction of a second divine being into John’s prologue is at the cost of contradicting what Jesus later said. Jesus elsewhere proves himself to be a staunch believer in the unitary monotheism (God is one person) of the great Jewish heritage. Addressing the Father, Jesus says unequivocally, “You, Father, are the only one who is truly God,” “the only true God,” “the one who alone is truly God” (John 17:3).

J.A.T. Robinson writes, “John is as undeviating a witness as any in the New Testament to the fundamental tenet of Judaism, of unitary monotheism (cp. Rom. 3:30; James 2:19). There is one true and only God (John 5:44; 17:3). Everything else is idols (1 John 5:20)…Jesus refuses the claim to be God (John 10:33).”

6. Unitary Monotheism is Not Abandoned by John or Jesus:
We really do not need an army of experts to help us understand that simple sentence. Jesus refers again to the Father as “the one who alone is God” (John 5:44). These are echoes of the pure, strict monotheism of the Hebrew Bible and thus of the Jews for centuries. God remains in the New Testament “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:6; 2 Cor. 1:3; 11:31; Eph. 1:3; 1 Pet. 1:3; Rev. 1:6). Jesus had, and has, a God, and Jesus’ God is the Father, the one and only God of John 17:3. How exactly like the Old Testament: “Have we not all One Father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:5). “You are great. You alone are God” (Ps. 86:10). “You alone whose name is the Lord are the Most High over all the earth” (Ps. 83:18). How beautifully this harmonizes with Paul’s great creedal declaration: “For us Christians there is one God, the Father, and none other than he” (see 1 Cor. 8:4, 6). That too is an unambiguous statement about how many persons there are in the Godhead: only one.

Thanks and peace to all
Adam

[pulivarthy]

adam,
I have not gone through fully.but, I grasped the contents/theme of your article.Word created everything according to genesis.that means life (living things)came through word.God the father created man and the word/God breathed the life/word into man so as to make lifeless(soulless) man a living being.when God (a person having spiritual personality also)is spirit and word is God, word is spirit.therefore Jesus was in his spirit before taking up the flesh.Already a living thing took flesh form in order to appear before all.
pulivarthy.

0 man a living being.

[TimothyVI]

Hi Adam,
Could you reference the article from which you copied and pasted this information?
I would be interested in reading further.

Thanks,
Tim

[Adam Pastor]

Try

http://focusonthekingdom.org/articles/john1.htm

[Worshipping Jesus]

Hi GM

The apologist writes…

Quote (gollamudi @ Oct. 18 2008,22:18)

But why, Kuschel asks, do readers leap from “word” to “Son”? The text simply reads, “In the beginning was the word,” not “In the beginning was the Son.” The substitution of “Son” for “word,” which for millions of readers appears to be an automatic reflex, has had dramatic consequences.

The apologist then writes…

Quote (gollamudi @ Oct. 18 2008,22:18)

We might add that “As a man thinks in his heart [and speaks] so is he” (Prov. 23:7). A person “is” his word. “In the beginning there was the word,” that is, the word of God.

And why should we substitute “The Word” with “the word of God”?

Either way the conclusion is “The Word” is Yahshua!

John the Apostle through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit penned these words in light of the revelation he had of who Yahshua was and is.

This is what we proclaim to you: what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have “seen with our eyes”, what we have looked at and “our hands have touched” (concerning the “word of life” – and the life was revealed, and we have seen and testify and announce to you “the eternal life” that was with the Father and was revealed to us). 1:3 What we have seen and heard we announce to you too, so that you may have fellowship with us (and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ). 1:4 Thus we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. 1 John 1:1, 2

A spoken word cannot physically be seen nor touched. Yet John is appealing to the physical experience he had with “The Word of life” or “Eternal Life” that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

This is none other than Yahshua. A plan does not have life! A plan is not “Eternal life”.

Most scholars believe the Gospel of John and 1 John were written between AD 90 and 100.

It is likely John used the term “The Word” in referring to Yahshua based on his heavenly vision in Revelation.

And he [was] clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. Revelation 19:13

The book of Revelation, (Apocalypse) was written some 20 years earlier than the Gospel of John and the 1st Epistle or John.

Yahshua’s is given the name “The Word of God”.

To avoid the heretical teachings of Gnostisism, John uses the term “The Word” in refering to Yahshua being with the Father in the beginning so as not to imply that Yahshua did not come in the flesh which he verifies in John 1:1, 1:14 and 1 John 1:1, 2.

…the Word was with God,… The Word became flesh and “made his dwelling among us”. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,* “who came from the Father”, full of grace and truth.

…and the life was revealed, and we have seen and testify and announce to you “the eternal life” that was “with the Father” and was revealed to us)

Furthermore to say that “The Word” was merely “a plan” or “thought” of God would deny basic Greek rules of interpretation such as…

“and the Word was with God
In the second clause John’s language was typically precise and nuanced, he deliberately invoked a distinction in the two persons of “ton theon” and “ho Logos” and at the same time presented a new dynamic, they were coexisting in relationship. The significant word in the clause is “pros”, when used with the accusative it is widely regarded as being Greek shorthand for proswpon prov proswpon, which means face to face (in relationship). Here is how Robertson exegetes this clause:

With God (prov ton qeon). Though existing eternally with God the Logos was in perfect fellowship with God. Prov with the accusative presents a plane of equality and intimacy, face to face with each other. In 1 John 2:1 we have a like use of prov: “We have a Paraclete with the Father” (paraklhton exomen prov ton patera). See proswpon prov proswpon (face to face, 1 Corinthians 13:12), a triple use of prov. There is a papyrus example of prov in this sense to gnwston thv prov allhlouv sunhqeiav, “the knowledge of our intimacy with one another” (M.&M., Vocabulary) which answers the claim of Rendel Harris, Origin of Prologue, p. 8) that the use of prov here and in Mark 6:3 is a mere Aramaism. It is not a classic idiom, but this is Koin‚, not old Attic. In John 17:5 John has para soi the more common idiom.
(source)

So it’s in this clause that we have the John’s fullest expression of the type of relationship two subjects shared “in the beginning”. The Logos always existed in intimate fellowship with “ton theon” (The Father). Then in verse 3 a bombshell is dropped….”

Written by Isa 1:18 in a debate found here…

For centuries all attempts to change or prove that Yahshua is not “The Word” in John 1:1 has been futile.

The war against the nature of God and who Yahshua is still rages, but in the end the truth will shine brightly that Yahshua is our only Lord and Master.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude 1:4

To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Jude 1:25

WJ

[Not3in1]

Quote (Adam Pastor @ Oct. 19 2008,08:39)

Try http://focusonthekingdom.org/articles/john1.htm

Adam,

Now that I've seen the movie, I Am Legend, I have a whole new appreciation for your Avatar. Spooky.

Wish we heard more from you here, bro.

Love,
Mandy

[Worshipping Jesus]

Hi AP

Quote

Thus also in John 1:1, “In the beginning God had a plan and that plan was within God’s heart “and was itself ‘God’ ” — that is, God in His self-revelation.

Taken from AP's link emphasis mine…here…

Ok AP so the plan of God was God, so did the plan of God which was God “cease to be God” when it came in the flesh?

So then God was with himself?

If not then then Jesus is the Father in the flesh.

Truly amazing the inference and forcing of the text.

I think I would rather trust the translations and 100s of Greek scholars over a few apologist.

WJ

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