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Umb5,
You simply can not be with God, and be God at the same time
You are limiting yourself to a Trinitarian interpretation of the words.
I agree with your statement and therefore that interpretation is wrong. It is simply telling us the word has the characteristics of God without being God. The “without being God” is not explicitly stated but relies on the person having knowledge before hand.
John did not know about the idea of the Trinity as it is a twisting of his words and those of others by ignorant and corrupt individuals.
I take the clause “the was God” literally as meaning the utterance of God has the characteristics of God and has been with God since the beginning.
The Word does not have the characteristics of humanity until it become flesh. That is when Jesus takes on the characteristics of God’s word.
John 1 is not a proof passage because it context that the original readers of John’s history knew.
It is easy to disprove the claim that Jesus is God it is a broken teaching. Those that claim he was an angel that became a man then went back to being an angel have a better case because their doctrine has fewer breaks. Of course they have to somehow neutralize the passage that claims Jesus is the human that mediates between humanity and God.
Tigger,
John 18:13 does not correspond to John 1:1c. First, John 1:1c has en ho logos not en theos.
I gave the English order of the words. In Koine Greek it is theos ēn ho logos.
ēn is translated to was and so I looked up other cases that said x was y and I made sure y is the same form as theos is in John 1:1. The one discrepancy I see is the order of words in the Koine Greek language. I am not sure how important that is.
Did you examine the John 18:13?
Tigger,
There is no preposition in the sentence that applies to the high priest clause.
Even English translations do not use a preposition.
John 18:13New King James Version (NKJV)
13 And they led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year.
Tigger and Umb5,
In John 1:1c the word theos is emphasized in Koine Greek. You can tell that because it is shifted left. John 1:1a & b use the neutral order which tells us that unlike the English translators John did not emphasize either logos or theos.
Note: He may or may not be emphasizing them in other ways than word order.
In John 18:13 “high priest that year” is not emphasized.
Just as the order of elements within a noun phrase (or a verb phrase) is free, so is the order of elements within the clause. The same principle applies; namely, that the further to the left aword or phrase occurs the more prominent it is within its clause.
Kerwin wrote:
“Tigger,
“There is no preposition in the sentence that applies to the high priest clause.
“Even English translations do not use a preposition.”
……………………………..
As explained before, a nominative noun modified by a genitive (an “of” noun) are included in “prepositional” constructions and are, therefore, improper examples.
18:13 … who was the High Priest of that year. – The Interlinear Bible.
John 18:13 – WH – … ος ην αρχιερευς του ενιαυτου εκεινου.
του ενιαυτου εκεινου is literally: “of the” (tou – genitive article) “of year” (ενιαυτου – genitive) “of that” (εκεινου – genitive).
Kerwin wrote:
“Tigger,
“It sounds like you are discarding those variations that disagree with your conclusion. Some Trinitarians believe God is God’s proper name and that is one your discard.”
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I discard examples that Trinitarian scholars also discard. For example:
Personal names such as “Jesus,” “Abraham,” “Mary,” etc. should not be included as they may take a definite article in NT Greek or not according to the whim of the writer and yet in English are always translated without the definite article.
Wallace, Harner, and Colwell all properly exclude them as examples for their rules. It is obvious that this is also a proper exception because personal names take the definite article with such irregularity that no rule (including Colwell’s and Sharp’s “Rules”) which is based on article usage (or non-usage) can properly use them.
Great irregularity of article usage with proper names has also been noted by most other recognized NT Greek scholars: “with proper names. Here the article is used or not at the will of the writer.” – A. T. Robertson, Grammar, p. 791.
Here are some examples from the NT Greek text in the first chapters of the Gospel of John showing how the article is used with proper names:
1:45 – _Philip found the Nathanael
1:46 – _Nathanael said to him
1:47 – Jesus saw the Nathanael
1:48 – _Nathanael said to him
1:48 – _Jesus answered
1:49 – _Nathanael answered
1:50 – _Jesus said
2:2 – The Jesus and the disciples
2:4 – The Jesus said
2:7 – The Jesus said
2:11 – The Jesus did this as the beginning
2:17 – The Jesus went up
2:19 _Jesus answered
2:24 – But _Jesus himself
3:3 – _Jesus answered
3:4 – The Nicodemus
3:5 – The Jesus answered
3:9 – _Nicodemus answered
3:10 – _Jesus answered
3:14 – _Moses lifted up
3:22 – The Jesus and the disciples
3:23 – The John
3:24 – _John had not yet been thrown
4:7 – The Jesus said to her
4:10 – _Jesus answered and saidTigger,
I doubt it is pure whim. It may be it is used for a slight emphasis or more likely for another reason as it is rather common.
Wikipedia says about Modern Greek use of the definitive:
The definite article is used frequently in Greek, such as before proper names and nouns used in an abstract sense.
tigger @ UMB5,
I also found this piece of information.
greek-language.comWith Equative Verbs
The Greek article may also be used to indicate the subject of any equative verb. In the sentence θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (John 1:1), the article (ὁ) marks λόγος as the subject of the verb ἦν, so the translation should be “The word was God,” not “God was the word.” Here the article usually is translated, but it serves a function not found in English.
Tigger,
As explained before, a nominative noun modified by a genitive (an “of” noun) are included in “prepositional” constructions and are, therefore, improper examples.
So according to you a proposition or a genitive noun causes difficulties.
The thing is that archiereus translated high priest is not a genitive noun. The genitive noun is eniautou translated year and the other genitive is the pronoun ekeinou translated same.
Kerwin,
I have been waiting for you to (1) find your elementary error in your last post., and (2) reveal your error here.
Will you do that?
Tigger,
I realize I make errors of one type or another and that is one reason I converse. If you see an error explain it to me. I will test what you say as that is what I strive to do at all times.
I really am not concerned about the letter of Scripture as long as it conveys the Spirit of truth.
I seem prefer traditional wording as I do not have to deal with what I view as an unimportant issue when I discuss the spirit of the Writings.
So please let me know what error you see so that I can learn. Thank you.
Kerwin wrote:
“Tigger,
‘As explained before, a nominative noun modified by a genitive (an “of” noun) are included in “prepositional” constructions and are, therefore, improper examples.’
“So according to you a proposition or a genitive noun causes difficulties.
“The thing is that archiereus translated high priest is not a genitive noun. The genitive noun is eniautou translated year and the other genitive is the pronoun ekeinou translated same.”
……………………………
As has been pointed out before (even in your above quote by me) the exception (admitted even by Trinitarian scholars) is a NOMINATIVE count noun governing or modified by a genitive. That is what makes your example a faulty example.
Yes, archiereus is a nominative count noun just as theos is in John 1:1c. But unlike John 1:1c the nominative noun in question is modified by a genitive. I would give you some quotes from Trinitarian scholars concerning this exception, but it seems that it would go unread by you.
tigger,
There is psychos ēn in John 18:18 which also has the Nominative shifted to the left Just as John 1:1c does. Unlike in John 1:1c there is a conjunction previous to it.
kerwin,
So you won’t comment on my correction of your mistaken post above?
Psychos (‘cold’) is not a count noun. We cannot properly say in this verse, ‘it was a cold’ or ‘it was the cold.’ Nor can you make it plural (‘it was colds‘). So it is not a proper example for John 1:1c.
tigger,
I am looking at descriptive nouns and thus “was cold”.
If you restrict the possibilities to count nouns then it follows you assume that the theos in John 1:1c is a count noun.
In modern Greek the indefinite actually means one. Koine has the word one.
Lesson B includes the following:
For this part of the analysis, we need to remember that there are exceptions where the article (‘the’) may be used at random as seen in part A. above. So we are trying to find how John intends the lack of an article with a noun (like god, man, cave, etc.). Such nouns must be “count nouns.” That means, using the example of ‘man,’ it must be capable of being counted (a ‘count noun’): one man, two men, three men, etc. It also must be capable of using the English indefinite article (‘a,’ ‘an’): ‘a man.’
It is basic knowledge for NT Greek beginners that there is no indefinite article in the Greek. So a count noun without the article (anarthrous) in the Greek is properly translated into English with an indefinite article (‘a,’ ‘an’).
So, again, with a good interlinear and concordance try finding uses of ‘man’ in John’s writing. I know you will find some that do not have the article (ho) used with them. So look up in all the translations you can find to see how those have been rendered into English. I found ‘anthropos’ or ἄνθρωπος (‘man’) at John 1:6; 3:4; 3:27 (and many more) did not have the article (ho) used with them, so they were rendered as “a man” in all the Bibles I checked.
For example, look at John 10:33. The predicate noun “man” (anthropos) comes before its verb ὢν (“being”) in the NT Greek text (ἄνθρωπος ὢν), and yet we do not find it consistently translated, even by trinitarian scholars and translators, as: “you, being human” (qualitative) or “you being the man” (Colwell’s Rule”).
If they truly believed the “qualitative” rule or “Colwell’s Rule,” they certainly would not have rendered it “you, being a man,” (indefinite) as they so often do:
See KJV; Douay-Rheims; ASV; ESV; ERV; NKJV; MKJV; NASB; RSV; NIV; NEB; REB; JB; NJB; AT; LB; GNT; NLT; ISV; KJIIV; NAB (’70); NAB (’91); CEV; BBE; LEB; NLV; WYC; ABC; ACV; Third Millennium Bible; 21st Century KJV; GOD’S WORD Translation; Updated Bible Version 1.9; World English Bible; C.B. Williams; Darby; Holman; Lamsa; Lattimore; Moffatt; Mounce; Phillips; Rotherham; Webster; Wesley’s; William Barclay; William Beck; Weymouth; Young’s.
So by now we should be able to see that in John 1:1c (‘theos was the Word’) the word theos does not have the article (ὁ or ‘ho’) and, according to John’s usage of such nouns, it would normally be translated as ‘a god.’
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Is there anyone here who understands the above and is willing to discuss the “Seven Lessons” at the beginning of this discussion?
the way i understand John 1 ;is that God is not alone, and the the one he is with ,was with God from the beginning ,
now if we go to Col;1;15-21 Paul stated that it was the man on earth called Jesus that was with God in the beginning, for it says that all things were created through Jesus ,John also said this ,
so why are some people twisting scriptures in favor of their own opinions beats me
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