[Power of the Word] A Controversial Verse - Part 2
Daniel Brady
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
--John 1:1
If you have not read the “Power of the Word” entry prior to this one, you need to go back and read it. With this entry, I am continuing a discussion I started last time, and I am going to just pick up where I left off, with very little review.
The little bit of review I will give is that I ended the last entry by saying that in English, the word order of a sentence is: Subject – Verb – Object. In Greek, however, this is not the case And I gave an example of how the same sentence might appear differently in Greek, depending on what the writer intends to emphasize.
In addition, when the verb is an action verb, the subject and the object of a sentence have different endings (called “case endings”, if you’re interested). In such sentences, the case ending gives away which is the subject and which is the object of a sentence.
So the case endings are used to tell the subject from the object, and the word order tells you which is being emphasized. However, like I said, this is when an action verb is being used. In John 1:1, though, there is no action being performed. “The Word’ is performing no action on “God”, and “God is performing no action on “The Word.” What we call an equative verb is used. The two are being compared with each other. In this case, one was the other.
Now, in sentences using the equative verb, both the subject and the object have the same case ending. So in comparing the two words, there is no way of knowing which is the subject and which is the object. So the question is, Was the Word God, or was God the Word? And as a side note, “God” appears first in the Greek: “And God was the Word.”
So we have a sentence with an equative verb, and we have both nouns in the subjective case. And the word order does not help in determining which is the subject and which is the object. How are we to know?
Enter in the definite article. Mounce explains that in such sentences, the subject is given the definite article. In John 1:1, “Word” has the definite article, making “the Word” the subject of the sentence. Hence, the proper rendering (in English) is “the Word was God,” rather than “God was the Word.” And because of the kind of sentence it is, as well as its surrounding context, the indefinite article does not come into play. Just because John did not write, “the Word was the God,” that does not mean (as the Jehovah’s Witnesses maintain) that John meant to say, “the word was a god.”
Furthermore, the word order found in the original language tells us that John was emphasizing the fact that the Word was indeed God. Had the word order been reversed, John would be telling us that it was indeed the Word that was God. As it is, John wants to convey to us that everything God was, the Word also was. Everything that was true of God was also true of the Word.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.