Text of the Greek New Testament +  My Own Hyper-Literal Translation

† Note on the Transliteration of Logos in 1:1 and 1:14:

Most English Bibles translate Greek logos as "word," as I also did for many years. However, I now believe it is better not to translate logos, but rather simply to transliterate it (i.e. to render it in English with the five letters equivalent to its spelling in Greek). Why? Simply because Greek logos refers to so much more than simply one "w-o-r-d," a single semantic unit. It can also refer to a phrase, a sentence, an utterance, a whole speech, or indeed even the whole power of language-based thought and reasoning (similar to the English word "logic"). So, for example, the traditional counting of the "Seven Last Words of Christ" are not just seven individual "words" but rather the "seven last utterances," or "the seven last things that Jesus said" while dying on the cross.

The use of logos in the Johannine prologue is not just a reference to a single "word" (with "the word" = "Jesus," as some people suggest). Rather, it is an allusion to the manner in which God creates the whole world in Genesis 1, namely by speaking! Thus, the creative speech-act of Genesis 1 becomes the personified word/speech/logos of John 1.

* Notes on the Translation of 1:1-2:

My translation here is an attempt (maybe not completely successful?) to point out some curiosities and difficulties in the original Greek text of John 1:1-2.

In 1:1b, the preposition PROS does not just mean "with" (in the sense of things being close or side-by-side); rather, it indicates a "face-to-face" relationship, showing two people turned "toward" one another.

In 1:1c, the Evangelist writes, KAI ThEOS ĒN hO LOGOS. If the Evangelist meant to say, "and the Logos was God" (as it is often translated, with capital 'God' understood in the full Trinitarian sense of later Christianity), he probably would have written KAI hO ThEOS ĒN hO LOGOS, or maybe KAI hO ThEOS ĒN hO LOGOS - essentially saying A=B or B=A). Instead, he wrote KAI ThEOS ĒN hO LOGOS, without the expected articl hO in front of ThEOS.

To understand this Johannine passage, which might seem simple but is actually rather complex, one must understand several differences between Ancient Greek and Modern English, which sometimes provide difficulties in translation. (For those who know a little Greek: In the transcriptions of this note, a capital "Ē" is used for Greek Eta, capital "E" for Greek Epsilon, small "h" for the "aspiration" or "rough breathing" in front of vowels, and "Th" for Greek Theta).

The first difference/difficulty: In John 1:1c, the imperfect verb ĒN ("was") is used between two nouns, so it is not just stating the existence of something, but rather indicates predication (two nouns related to each other: "S is P," where "S" is the subject and "P" is the predicate). However, English and Greek tend to use opposite word order to indicate predication. While English normally says "S is P," Greek tends to say "P is S." In other words, to say "My father was a doctor," the usual biblical Greek word order would be "A doctor was my father." So in John 1:1c, the subject is hO LOGOS and the predicate is ThEOS, although we probably need to reverse the word order in English.

A second difference/difficulty: Ancient Greek has "definite articles" (in masculine, feminine, and neuter forms - but all equivalent to "the" in English), but it does NOT have any "INdefinite articles" (English "a, an"). In translation, we usually write "the" if the Greek noun is preceded by a definite article, while we often (but not always) have to ADD the word "a" or "an" in standard English when the definite article is missing in Greek (for example, hO STAUROS is "the cross," while STAUROS alone is "a cross"). On the other hand, it may be wrong to add "a/an" in front of some indefinite nouns in English: thus we say "water" (not "a water") or "peace" (not "a peace"). In some case, the including or excluding the indefinite article ("a") in English can have significantly different meanings ("spirit" vs. "a spirit"; "time" vs. "a time"; "truth" vs. "a truth). So translating KAI ThEOS HN hO LOGOS as "and the Word was a god" (as Jehovah's Witnesses do) adds an indefinite article in English that is not explicit in the original Greek text, and may not be appropriate in English translation.

A third difference/difficulty: When ancient Greek texts refer to "God" (ThEOS), they usually include the definite article in front, hO ThEOS, even though translating this too literally sounds strange in English. We usually just say "God," rather than "the God." Thinking of hO ThEOS as "the (one and only) God" might help, but still, we do not normally put "the" in front of "God." So most English translations simply drop the definite article whenever hO ThEOS refers to the Jewish or Christian monotheistic "God." In contrast, in polytheistic contexts, it is sometimes better to translate hO ThEOS as "the god" (for example, "He went to the temple of the god" - implying a particular god, maybe Apollo, from among the many gods in the Greek pantheon).

Interestingly, Arabic has a similar curiosity in its development of its God-language, reflecting the transition from pre-Islamic polytheism to Islamic monotheism. In Arabic, "Allah" originally literally meant "the God" (the Arabic definite article "al" is equivalent to English "the"). But today, "Allah" is usually just translated "God," rather than "the god." It is sometimes (falsely) considered the Islamic proper name for God (like Yahweh, or Zeus, or other "names" for God or gods), but it really just means "God" (or again, "the one and only God," in monotheistic thought).

So what did the Evangelist mean in John 1:1c? He certainly did not consider Jesus to be just one "divine being" or "deity" among many others. If he meant "divine" in this broader sense, he could have used the related Greek adjective ThEIOS, rather than the noun ThEOS. (See, for example, the adjective ThEIOS used twice in 2 Peter 1:3-4, referring to "divine power" and "divine nature"). Other texts in John clearly show that the Fourth Evangelist sees Jesus in a unique relationship with God, calling him "the one-of-a-kind/unique son" (TON hUION TON MONOGENĒ; 3:16), challenging us to believe "in the name of the unique son of God" (EIS TO ONOMA TOU MONOGENOUS hIOU TOU ThEOU; 3:18), referring to his glory "as of a father's unique son" (hŌS MONOGENOUS PARA PATROS; 1:14), and even calling him "the unique God" (MONOGENHS ThEOS; 1:18 - another difficult phrase, with several ancient textual variations).

To summarize: The Fourth Evangelist may not yet have thought of Jesus as the "second person of the Trinity" (theological language that took several centuries to develop in early Christianity - itself strongly influence by this Johannine passage); yet John certainly thought of Jesus as "divine" or "deity" or "god" in a unique sense, not merely "a god," just one deity among many others. Exactly what he meant in John 1:1c may not be easy to understand, and it is even harder to translate into English because of the difficulties mentioned above. So rather than fixate on any particular English translation, even the best of which might confuse us or lead us astray, we should try to continue deepening our understanding of what John's entire Gospel says about the uniquely close relationship of Jesus and the Father.

[For a much more extensive discussion of these grammatical and theological issues, see the Apologists Bible Commentary, by Robert Hommel.]

See also my PowerPoint presentation on John's Prologue,
presented March 23, 2012, at the "Religious Education Congress" of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles

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