John 1:1 and the Jehovah’s Witnesses – Episode 13, The Word Was The God?

“…and the Word was God.”  (John 1:1c)
kai [no definite article] theos en ho [definite article] logos

The Greek definite article “the” is the word ho (with the masculine noun, he with the feminine noun, and to with the neuter noun).  There is no Greek indefinite article “a” or “an,” so Greek speakers in Bible times dropped the definite article “the” off the noun to signify it was indefinite.  But they didn’t always mean a noun to be indefinite simply because they left the definite article “the” off of it.  And to compound the problem of interpretation, leaving off the article could also be a way the Greek speaker signaled that the noun should be understood as qualitative. Here is an example of that:

Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” (Luke 12:1)

“Hypocrisy” is the predicate nominative noun in this sentence (yeast…is hypocrisy) and Luke does not put a definite article on it (If he had it could be translated, “which is the hypocrisy,” which, however, doesn’t make sense in context). Luke left off the definite article but it does not make sense to say Luke meant, “which is ‘a’ hypocrisy.” The yeast of the Pharisees, the thing about them that permeates all they do, is not ‘a’ hypocrisy, but is the quality of hypocrisy.

Here is another example of how leaving off the article leads to a qualitative sense to the noun:

“What was good to me became death” (Romans 7:13)

What was good to Paul, the law of Moses, did not become ‘a’ death, nor ‘the’ death, to Paul, but the quality of death, death itself.

This use or lack of use of the definite article is especially confusing for English speakers when it comes to proper names and titles. Here in John 1:1 the apostle puts an article on “God” in the second part of his sentence, but in English we don’t translate it, “and the Word was with ‘the’ God.” We would say that of course there is only one God so we don’t need the definite article in this case. Now if we thought John was emphasizing the one and only true God, and that the Word was with the one and only God, we would put the article in our translation. And maybe John was emphasizing this, but it would still work for our translation to simply say, “the Word was with God,” because for English speakers that communicates the true God.

So what does it mean when John leaves the article off of the word “God” in the last part of John 1:1? Well, it could mean one of three things. Either John still intends the word “God” to be considered definite, “and the Word was [the] God,” or he meant it to be indefinite, “and the Word was a god,” or he meant it to be qualitative, “and the Word was Godness/divine/deity.” How do we decide?  We can John’s intended meaning by looking at described Jesus in other parts of his writings and his theological assumptions expressed elsewhere.