John's Gospel
Submitted by JohnQ on 2002-09-22 14:10:33, Sunday
In reply to I've compared the NWT to Hebrew and Greek Coine' submitted by Spirit on 2002-09-22 01:45:36, Sunday
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In his two books, "The Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts" and "Early Manuscripts and Modsern Translations of the New Testament" Philip Wesley Comfort has photocopies of the earliest known version of John's Gospel, dated through paleography to having been written between 125 and 175 A.D. In it the word "theos" (sorry, but I still can't figure out how to write in Greek here)is in the Nomen Sacrum, a special way of writing proper names of the Deity. Hence, contrary to the JW's attempt at translation, the word "God" in John 1:1 refers not to "a god" but to "God" the person. Also, the word "logos" does not mean merely "word" but "reason" having been used in this way all the way back to Plato and Aristotle (as shown in the Liddell-Scott lexicon) with a major emphasis during the time of the early church from the stoic philosophers. Hence, Athenagoras the Athenian in his apology of the Christian Church, entitled "The Embassy" was fully aware of how the emperor Marcus Aurelius (died 180 A.D.) would interpret his use of "logos" in the description of Christ, since Marcus Aurelius is the most famous of the stoic philosophers. So, John 1:1 in historical and contemporary context is better translated; "In the beginning was the Reason and the Reson was with God and God was the Reason." This isn't something the JW's want to deal with. |
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