These uses are all very roughly synonymous and are equally satisfactory; objecting over this is quibbling over what amounts to literary style. Whereas your mistranslation is a mistranslation according to substantive error.
Actually, I see quite a big difference in these translations.
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory,
the glory of the one and only Son
, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." NIV
The NIV translates this to explicitly say that the "Word" IS the "one and only Son", and that this "Word-Son" came from "the" Father. This is not even close to the original Greek.
"The Word became flesh and lived among us. We gazed on
his glory, the
kind of glory that belongs to
the Father's unique Son, who is full of grace and truth." ISV
The ISV makes it out like there are three entities, the Father, the Son, and the Word. It says that we gazed on "his" (logos) glory, and that his (logos) glory is "the kind of" glory that belongs to "the" Father's unique Son. Why is the Word's glory the "same kind of glory", rather than just "the glory"?
"The Word became human and lived among us. We saw his glory.
It was the glory that
the Father
shares with his only Son, a glory full of kindness and truth. " God's Word translation
This is a mistranslation of substantive error. The Greek doesn't even almost say this.
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
(and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
the Father,
) full of grace and truth." KJV
The KJV and most other translations are close, but they say the only begotton's father is "the" Father (capital F). They also add parentheses to further support their assumption. Although not explicit, this implies that the only begotton of this particular verse is definitely the Logos.
"And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we beheld his glory, glory
as of an only begotten
of a father, full of grace and truth." Young's Literal Translation
This one is much better, however, if it were to be rendered "Word became flesh" rather than "Word flesh becomes", I believe Word would have to be in the Dative Case so that it would be the indirect object of the verb "become". I'm not sure about this, so that is why I made two translations for this verse.
However, when it says "the glory
as of an only begotten
of a father", this allows us to interpret this as a
simile. Therefore, there is nothing in this verse that says the Logos
is the only begotten.
It is directly relevant to the cultural context in which St. John used "Logos." So in ignoring it, you are basically making an aesthetic judgment, which by the way was nit made even by ancient voices like Arius. In fact, one can argue Arius rather more perfectly encapsulates the Neo-Platonic/Hellenic Jewish tradition of the Logos than Trinitarian Christianity.
Of course Arius wouldn't bring this up. Like you just said, Arius more perfectly encapsulates this idea of a preexisting Logos. So what concern would it be of mine that Arius did not use my translation?
And that is, I fear, your tragedy.
I can understand God having an "explanation" for all things. I cannot comprehend the only God, the Father (John 17:3), having a "Word-tool" that He calls His son; whom is also God.
But not strongly enough to be on record criticizing the Geneva Bible for taking a different view. Thus an irrelevant red herring tangent.
Red herring? Is that like mentioning Tyndale was a trinitarian?
Here it would seem you prefer to simply reject, to your discredit, rather than engage with, the idea of personification. Our Lord is the Way, the Truth and the Life, but he is not literally for example, a paved road.
I may be able to accept that John was
personifying the Logos. I cannot accept that the Logos
is a person.
Ad hominem insult aside, you seem to fail to grasp the idea of "appeal to authority." It is not an appeal to authority in a semantic context to show someone how their use of, or interpretation of, words in a given language, are not useful with regards to a historical text, because their interpretation is entirely novel and unprecedented in antiquity. I could not use such evidence to refute you without fallacy if your argument was along the lines of "This is what St. John meant, but he did not realize he meant it."
It is on the other hand an appeal to authority to cite various encyclopedic texts and refer to various historical fogures out of context, with regards to the definition of just one word in your translation, in an attempt to suggest your translation represents some form of scholarly consensus, which is what you were doing.
Attempting to backtrack by claiming you were merely discussing examples and possibilities is clever, however, certainly a more competent a tactical move than I am used to, on this forum.
I stand by my statement that my translation is simply a "possibility". This is why I asked you to find me someone familiar with Greek. Whether my translation is incorrect will be determined if either 1) somebody explains why this translation is impossible, or 2) somebody finds a verse in John 1 that explicitly contradicts my translation. Neither of these things have been attempted, and we've only discussed about three verses so far.
I only brought up fallacies because I had read where you wrote that many people on this forum use Ad Hominem when they claim the Catholic Church is pagan. I couldn't resist the irony.
I myself have some knowledge of it, but rather more of Syriac and Latin, thus I prefer to defer to others. Although I will note the Vulgate and Peshitta do support a conventional interpretation that is at odds with your attempt at translation.
The Vulgate says "Verbum", which is a "word of action", by which we get our English word "verb". When an object is in action, the Laws of Physics tell us that this action had a Cause (and the Scriptures tell us the Cause is always of God). If a rational being is in action, we call this Cause "Reason", and John tells us this particular Reason is of God.
I believe that paragraph refers to Origen, if memory serves. Origen himself dabbled in polemics (see Contra Celsus).
I believe you're right. I didn't realize the parentheses went to the very end of this paragraph. So rather than Ad Hominem against Paul, this was Ad Hominem against Origen, which leads to a Guilt by Association fallacy towards Paul. Okay, can we end the fallacy issue. It's fun, but we're getting off track.
God bless you my friend.