Sorry Barney, my accusation was meant for 2nd Tim Group. I'm 100% in accord with your position. I despise the doctrine of the trinity, I am convinced that it is straight from the devil, for all the reasons that you stated and more...
I meant to support you by replying to your post, attempting to add to what you had already stated. Sorry for the confusion.
There is not one glorifying aspect of that doctrine on any level, on any facet of Christian theology, not one. It is the most ignoble doctrine in all of Christendom!
Sorry you're right I thought you believed in the Trinity and was speaking out against what I was saying. I'm sorry.
well that is teh New World Mistranslation which no respectable scholar accepts. God in both cases is THEOS so if Jesus is DIVINE so isn't the Father.
The Word was with THE GOd(the article appears) and the Word was God (construct is not an anarthrous noun as the Watchtower has lied to you)
that is true but that son existed in eterntiy past as Jehovah, just as Isaiah saysJesus is!
Yes He did say He was God and it wouldn't surprise me if the Watchtower edited it out of their paraphrase of Scripture.
At John
1:1 Marshall’s interlinear translation of it reads: “In [the] beginning was the Word, and the Word was with — God, and God was the Word.” As noted above, no “the” appears before “God” in the final clause of this verse. The New World Bible Translation Committee chose to insert the indefinite article “a” there. This helps to distinguish “the Word,” Jesus Christ, as a god, or divine person with vast power, from the God whom he was “with,” Jehovah, the Almighty. Some persons familiar with Greek claim that in doing so the translators violated an important rule of Greek grammar. Why so?
The problem, they say, is word order. Back in 1933 Greek scholar E. C. Colwell published an article entitled “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament.” In it he wrote: “A definite predicate nominative has the article when it follows the verb; it does not have the article when it precedes the verb. . . . A predicate nominative which precedes the verb cannot be translated as an indefinite or a ‘qualitative’ noun solely because of the absence of the article; if the context suggests that the predicate is definite, it should be translated as a definite noun in spite of the absence of the article.”
At
John 1:1 the anarthrous predicate noun
the·osʹ does precede the verb, the Greek word order being literally: “God [predicate] was [verb] the Word [subject].” Concerning this verse Colwell concluded: “The opening verse of John’s Gospel contains one of the many passages where this rule suggests the translation of a predicate as a definite noun.” Thus some scholars claim that the only really correct way to translate this clause is: “And the Word was God.”
Do these statements of Colwell prove that “a god” is a mistranslation at
John 1:1? Perhaps you noticed this scholar’s wording that an anarthrous predicate noun that precedes the verb should be understood as definite
“if the context suggests” that. Further along in his argument Colwell stressed that the predicate is indefinite in this position “only when the context demands it.” Nowhere did he state that
all anarthrous predicate nouns that precede the verb in Greek are definite nouns. Not any inviolable rule of grammar, but
context must guide the translator in such cases.
The Greek text of the Christian Scriptures has many examples of this type of predicate noun where other translators into English have added the indefinite article “a.” Consider, for example, Marshall’s interlinear translation of the following verses: “Says to him the woman: Sir, I perceive that a prophet [predicate] art [verb] thou [subject].” (
John 4:19) “Said therefore to him—Pilate: Not really a king [predicate] art [verb] thou [subject]? Answered—Jesus: Thou sayest that a king [predicate] I am [verb, with subject included].”—
John 18:37.
Did you notice the expressions “a prophet,” “a king” (twice)? These are anarthrous predicate nouns that precede the verb in Greek. But the translator rendered them with the indefinite article “a.” There are numerous examples of this in English versions of the Bible. For further illustration consider the following from the Gospel of John in
The New English Bible: “A devil” (
Joh 6:70); “a slave” (
Joh 8:34); “a murderer . . . a liar” (
Joh 8:44); “a thief” (
Joh 10:1); “a hireling” (
Joh 10:13); “a relation” (
Joh 18:26).
Alfred Marshall explains why he used the indefinite article in his interlinear translation of all the verses mentioned in the two previous paragraphs, and in many more: “The use of it in translation is a matter of individual judgement. . . . We have inserted ‘a’ or ‘an’ as a matter of course where it seems called for.” Of course, neither Colwell (as noted above) nor Marshall felt that an “a” before “god” at
John 1:1 was called for. But this was not because of any
inflexible rule of grammar. It was “individual judgement,” which scholars and translators have a right to express. The New World Bible Translation Committee expressed a different judgment in this place by the translation “a god.”
Certain scholars have pointed out that anarthrous predicate nouns that precede the verb in Greek may have a qualitative significance. That is, they may describe the nature or status of the subject. Thus some translators render
John 1:1: “The Logos was divine,” (
Moffatt); “the Word was divine,” (
Goodspeed); “the nature of the Word was the same as the nature of God,” (
Barclay)
; “the Word was with God and shared his nature,” (
The Translator’s New Testament)
.