And the Word was A GOD

tonychanyt said:

New World Translation, John 1:


The above translation had little justification grammatically or theologically.

ESV:


Stephanus Textus Receptus 1550:


The Greek definite article is not in there. The anarthrous noun does not always imply an English indefinite article. In fact, on Biblehub, 39 versions translated as "and the Word was God"; 3 as "and God was the Word"; 0 used "a god". Translators overwhelmingly favored no indefinite article. NWT is the only exception that I know of.

What would the Greek look like if you translated John 1:1b to “and the word was a god”?

To explicitly refer to some (one) god, I would write:
καὶ ἕνας θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

There is no indefinite article in Koine. G1520-εἷς can sometimes function similarly to an indefinite article in some contexts.

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Daniel9v9 said:

Yes, it's pure mishandling of God's Word.

I talk about this a lot, but I think one of the better texts to illustrate Christ's divinity, that He is YHWH, is Romans 10, where Paul refers to Jesus as the one Lord and applies an OT passage about YHWH directly to Jesus. I'm aware that JW have answers (albeit weak!) for John 1, the I AM statements, and Thomas' confession of faith, but I don't think many have considered Romans 10:9-13 which quotes Joel 2:32.

Needless to say, there are many problems with the New World Translation, but the verses above actually work against their religion, for they write:

Joel 2:32: "And everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved" — Here we see that the object of faith is YHWH.

Romans 10:9-13: "For if you publicly declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and exercise faith in your heart that God raised him up from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one exercises faith for righteousness, but with the mouth one makes public declaration for salvation. For the scripture says: “No one who rests his faith on him will be disappointed.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. There is the same Lord over all, who is rich toward all those calling on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.”

In Greek, Paul actually uses the word "Lord", but in JW's text, they've quoted Joel with its reference to YHWH. So in a way, their own text actually calls Jesus YHWH more explicitly.

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