John 1:1a

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ADNAN
Muslim polemic on John 1:1  (From Mishal Al Kadhi's book)


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Another verse quoted in defense of the "Trinity" is the verse of John 1:1 :
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God." 

When I first learned of this verse it appeared to me that I had finally
found my elusive goal. However, after substantial research into Christian
theological literature, I would later come to learn that this verse too can
not be interpreted to justify a "triune" God. My own experience has shown
that this verse is the one most popularly quoted by most Christians in
defense of the Trinity. For this reason I shall spend a little more time in
its analysis than in the analysis of the other verses.

First of all, it is quite obvious from simply reading the above verse that
even in the very best case, this verse speaks only of a "Duality" not a
"Trinity." Even the most resolute conservative Christian will never claim
to find in this verse any mention whatsoever of a "merging" of a Holy Ghost
with God and "the Word." So even if we were to accept this verse at face
value and just have faith, even then, we find ourselves commanded to
believe in a "Duality" and not a "Trinity." But let us see if this verse
does in fact even command us to believe in a "Duality." To do this we need
to notice the following points: 

1) Mistranslation of the text:

In the "original" Greek manuscripts (Did the disciple John speak Greek?),
"The Word" is only described as being "ton theos"(divine/a god) and not as
being "ho theos" (The Divine/The God). A more faithful and correct
translation of this verse would thus read: "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was divine" (If you read the New
World Translation of the Bible you will find exactly this wording). 

Similarly, in "The New Testament, An American Translation" this verse is
honestly presented as 

"In the beginning the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was
divine." The New Testament, An American Translation, Edgar Goodspeed and J.
M. Powis Smith, The University of Chicago Press, p. 173 

And again in the dictionary of the Bible, under the heading of "God" we read:

"Jn 1:1 should rigorously be translated 'the word was with the God [=the
Father], and the word was a divine being.'" The Dictionary of the Bible by
John McKenzie, Collier Books, p. 317 

In yet another Bible we read: 

"The Logos (word) existed in the very beginning, and the Logos was with
God, the Logos was divine" The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New
Testaments, by Dr. James Moffatt 

Please also see "The Authentic New Testament" by Hugh J. Schonfield and
many others. 

If we look at a different verse, 2 Corinthians 4:4, we find the exact same
word (ho theos) that was used in John 1:1 to describe God Almighty is now
used to describe the devil, however, now the system of translation has been
changed:

"the god of this world (the Devil) hath blinded the minds of them which
believe not." 

According to the system of the previous verse and the English language, the
translation of the description of the Devil should also have been written
as "The God" with a capital "G." If Paul was inspired to use the exact same
words to describe the Devil, then why should we change it? Why is "The God"
translated as simply "the god" when referring to the devil, while "divine"
is translated as the almighty "God" when referring to "The Word"? Are we
now starting to get a glimpse of how the "translation" of the Bible took
place? 

Well, what is the difference between saying "the word was God," and between
saying "the word was a god (divine)"? Are they not the same? Far from it!
Let us read the bible:

"I have said, Ye (the Jews) are gods; and all of you are children of the
most High" Psalms 82:6: 

"And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made you a god to Pharaoh"
Exodus 7:1 

"the god of this world (the Devil) hath blinded the minds of them which
believe not." 2 Corinthians 4:4 

What does all of this mean? Let me explain.

In the West, it is common when one wishes to praise someone to say "You are
a prince," or "You are an angel" ..etc. When someone says this do they mean
that that person is the son of the King of England, or a divine spiritual
being? There is a very slight grammatical difference between saying "You
are a prince" and between saying "You are THE prince," however, the
difference in meaning is quite dramatic. 

In the West, we sometimes find people telling their friends "break a leg!"
Are these words intended to convey a sign of hostility? Obviously these
words prove that these two people wish evil upon one-another, right? 

In the West, it is quite common to hear people describing other people as
being "light hearted." Does this mean that this is equivalent to having a
"small heart"? In other words, does it mean that this person is unmerciful
and evil? Obviously a "small" heart would also be "light," right? Well
then, does it convey a literal meaning? Have they cut out their hearts and
weighed them? So what then do they mean? 

In the Mideast, the equivalent to the Western phrase "light hearted" is the
phrase "light blood." Someone might say "your blood is light." This phrase
is used to describe someone as being happy and full of mirth. If Arabic
were to die out as a spoken language for many centuries and then were to be
reconstructed many centuries later using elements of other languages, and
then we were to attempt to translated the meaning of this phrase, should we
then say that it "obviously" describes a doctor who is testing a patient
for anemia? The meaning is "clear," right?

In the Mideast it is common to ask one-another "what color are you?,"
meaning "how are you today?." Once again, if the Arabic language were to
die out as a spoken language, and only exist in writing, and then be
reconstructed over a thousand years later, shall we then understand that
the person asking the question is color blind? 

Further, it is necessary when translating a verse to also take into account
the meaning as understood by the people of that age who spoke that
language. One of the biggest problems with the Bible as it stands today is
that it forces us to look at ancient Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures through
Greek and Latin glasses as seen by people who are neither Jews, Greeks, nor
Romans. All of the so called "original" manuscripts of the NT available
today are written in Greek or Latin. The Jews had no trouble reading such
verses as Psalms 82:6, and Exodus 7:1, while still affirming that there is
only one God in existence and vehemently denying the divinity of all but
God Almighty. It is the continuous filtration of these manuscripts through
different languages and cultures as well as the Roman Catholic church's
extensive efforts to completely destroy all of the original Hebrew Gospels
(see last quarter of this chapter) which has led to this misunderstanding
of the verses. 

The Americans have a saying: "Hit the road men." It means "It is time for
you to leave." However, if a non-American were to receive this command
without any explanation then it is quite possible that we would find him
beating the road with a stick. Did he understand the words? Yes! Did he
understand the meaning? No! 

In the Christian church we would be hard pressed to find a single priest or
nun who does not address their followers as "my children." They would say:
"Come here my children", or "Be wary of evil my children" ... etc. What do
they mean? 

A fact that many people do not realize is that around 200AD spoken Hebrew
had virtually disappeared from everyday use as a spoken language. It was
not until the 1880s that a conscious effort was made by Eliezer Ben-Yehudah
to revive the dead language. Only about a third of current spoken Hebrew
and basic grammatical structures come from biblical and Mishnaic sources.
The rest was introduced in the revival and includes elements of other
languages and cultures including the Greek and Arabic languages. 

Even worse than these two examples are cases when translation into a
different languages can result in a reversal of the meaning. For example,
in the West, when someone loves something they say "It warmed my heart." In
the Middle East, the same expression of joy would be conveyed with the
words: "It froze my heart." If an Mideasterner were to greet a Westerner
with the words: "It froze my heart to see you," then obviously this
statement would not be greeted with a whole lot of enthusiasm from that
Westerner, and vice versa. 

This is indeed one of the major reasons why the Muslims have been so much
more successful in the preservation of their holy text than the Christians
or the Jews; because the language of the Qur'an has remained from the time
of Muhammad (pbuh) to the present day a living language, the book itself
has always been in the hands of the people (and not the "elite"), and the
text of the book remains in the original language of Muhammad (pbuh). For
this reason, a translator must not and should not "translate" in a vacuum
while disregarding the culture and traditions of the people who wrote these
words. As we have just seen, it was indeed quite common among the Jews to
use the word "god" (divine) to convey a sense of supreme power or authority
to human beings. This system, however, was never popularly adopted by them
to mean that these individuals were in any way omnipotent, superhuman, or
equal to the Almighty. 

Such "translation" methods as we have just seen, sadly, are
indiscriminantly employed at the translator's leasure throughout the Bible
based only upon the doctrine he wishes the reader to adopt. For example, in
the King James Version of Psalms 8:4-5 all humans are described as follows:

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou
visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and
hast crowned him with glory and honor." Psalms 8:4-5 

Which is not very noteworthy until we go back to the original Hebrew text
and discover the the translators have chosen to "translate" for us the
Hebrew word "elohiym" (God) into English as "angels." In the New Revised
Standard Version of the Bible the same verse is more honestly translated as
follows: 

"What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care
for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them
with glory and honor." Psalms 8:4-5 

Notice how they manage to manipulate the word "God" as they wish when it
suits them, however, when their techniques are exposed then, suddenly,
those who oppose their "translation" techniques are "warping the meanings
of the verses" and attempting to pervert "clear" claims of divinity for Jesus? 

Can we find any more similar examples of this "translation" technique in
the Bible? Sadly, yes. For example: 

"Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him
to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear
through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever." Exodus 21:6 

Which is more correctly translated in the New Revised Standard Version as:

"Then his master shall bring him before God; he shall be brought to the
door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with with an awl;
and he shall serve him for life." Exodus 21:6 

Actually, for those who insist on telling us that God is a trinity since He
is refered to in the plural sence in the Bible (see section 1.2.2.8 and
chapter 14), for these peope, we say you need to then be consistant and
"translate" Exodus 21:6 as:

"Then his master shall bring him before gods" 

You can see yet another similar example in Exodus 22:8-9.

When reading all of this we begin to see how the word "god" was sometimes
applied in the Bible to humans in order to convey to mankind that these
humans were calling to the path of God or implementing the words of God on
earth. Thus, for example, in Exodus 21:6 mankind was commanded to bring
others "before God." An impossible task. However, what the verse meant was
that they are to bring these people before those who carried out the law of
God on earth, specifically, the judges. In this manner, bringing these men
in front of the judges is the same as bringing them in front of God. This
is why we also read in the Bible for example that the house of David is God:

"In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he
that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of
David [shall be] as God, as the angel of the LORD before them." Zechariah 12:8 

This was a common theme in the Bible whereby on many occations God would
send a representative to mankind in order to speak in His name and present
His command to them. "Behold," declared God to Moses, "I send an Angel
before thee, to keep thee in the way ... beware of him, and obey his voice
... for My Name is in him" (Exod. 23:20). The angel was God's messenger,
but not God Himself. 

What we see from all of this is that Jesus (pbuh) was by no stretch of the
imagination the only person in the Bible ever to be referred to in such a
fashion. However, with everyone BUT Jesus the Church is adamant that the
verses "obviously" should not be taken literally. The same is true when
prophets or "peacemakers" etc. are called "sons of God" in the Bible. In
this case, once again, the Church reassures us that the term must not be
taken "literally." However, whenever these exact same terms are applied to
Jesus (pbuh), now we are told that it is equally "obvious" that Jesus is
the one exception to this rule and that "son of God" etc. must be taken
literally in this case. 

2) Basic message of John:

Now that we have seen the correct translation of the verse of John 1:1, let
us go a little further in our study of the intended meaning of this verse.
This verse was taken from the "Gospel of John." The very best person to ask
to explain what is meant by a given statement is the author of that
statement himself. So let us ask "John" what is his mental picture of God
and Jesus (pbuh) which he wishes to convey to us:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord;
neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him." John 13:16. 

So the author of John tells us that God is greater than Jesus. If the
author of this Gospel did indeed wish us to understand that Jesus and God
are "one and the same," then can someone be greater than himself? Similarly, 

"Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come [again] unto you.
If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for
my Father is greater than I." John 14:28. 

Can someone "go" to himself? Can someone be "greater" than himself?

"These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said,
Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify
thee:" John 17:1. 

If John meant to tell us that "Jesus and God are one and the same" then
shall we understand from this verse that God is saying to Himself "Self,
glorify me so that I may glorify myself"? Does this sound like this is the
message of John?

"While I (Jesus) was with them in the world, I kept them in thy (God's)
name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but
the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled." John 17:12. 

If the author of John wanted us to believe that Jesus and God are one
person then are we to understand from this verse that God is saying to
Himself "Self, while I was in the world I kept them in your name, self.
Those who I gave to myself I have kept ..."? Is this what the author
intended us to understand from his writings? 

"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I
am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou
lovedst me before the foundation of the world." John 17:24. 

Similarly, did the author intend us to interpret this as "Self, I will that
they also whom I have given myself be with me where I am; that they my
behold my glory which I have given myself, for I loved myself before the
foundation of the world"?

So, we begin to see that in order to understand the writings of a given
author, it is necessary to not take a single quotation from him in a vacuum
and then interpret his whole message based upon that one sentence (and a
badly mistranslated version of that sentence at that). 

3) Who wrote the "Gospel of John"?:

The "Gospel of John" is popularly believed by the majority of regular
church-goers to be the work of the apostle John the son of Zebedee.
However, when consulting Christianity's more learned scholars of Church
history, we find that this is far from the case. These scholars draw our
attention to the fact that internal evidence provides serious doubt as to
whether the apostle John the son of Zebedee wrote this Gospel himself. In
the dictionary of the Bible by John Mckenzie we read :

"A. Feuillet notes that authorship here may be taken loosely." 

Regarding for example the claimed speaches of Jesus (pbuh) in this Gospel,
the author of the most authoritative and well-reasoned book "The Life of
Jesus Critically Examined" says:

"Modern criticism views these discourses [found in the Gospel of John] with
suspicion, partly on the account of their internal conjecture, which is at
variance with certain generally received rules of historical probability,
and partly on the account of their external relation to other discourses
and narratives." The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, David Strauss, p. 381 

Such claims are based on such verses as 21:24: 

"This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these
things: and we know that his testimony is true."? 

Did the apostle John write this about himself? Also see 21:20, 13:23,
19:26, 20:2, 21:7, and 21:20-23. The "disciple who Jesus loved" according
to the Church is John himself, but the author of this gospel speaks of him
as a different person.

Further, The Gospel of John was written at or near Ephesus between the
years 110 and 115 (some say 95-100) of the Christian era by this, or these,
unknown author(s). According to R. H. Charles, Alfred Loisy, Robert Eisler,
and other scholars of Christian history, John of Zebedee was beheaded by
Agrippa I in the year 44 CE, long before the fourth Gospel was written. Did
the Holy Ghost "inspire" the apostle John's ghost to write this gospel
sixty years after he was killed? . In other words, what we have here is a
gospel which is popularly believed to have been written by the apostle
John, but which in fact was not written by him. In fact no one really knows
for certain who wrote this gospel. 

"Since the beginning of the period of modern critical study, however, there
has been much controversy about [the Gospel of John's] authorship, place of
origin, theological affiliations and background, and historical value" The
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Volume 2, Abingdon Press, p. 932 

Even at that, it is recognized that the "Gospel of John" has undergone
extensive editing in multiple stages and was most likely not the work of
one author, but many:

"We have already noted that John's gospel is a literary unit, which may be
analyzed in terms of dramatic structure. But, despite the unity of the
gospel was we now have it, there are some features that suggest it was
composed in edited stages. For example there are differences in style and
language in various parts of the gospel, especially chaps. 1 and 21 … Thus
the first two signs performed by Jesus are numbered 'first' and 'second'
(2.11; 4.54), yet in 2.23 we hear of other signs that he did, and the
sequence is thus unaccountably interrupted. The geographical locations,
also, do not appear to be constantly exact. So in 3.22 we read that Jesus
went into Judea, whereas according to 2.23 he was already there; and in 6.1
it is implied that Jesus is in Galilee, although in the end of chap. 5 he
is in Jerusalem….It is possible to account for some but not all of these
variations, repetitions and breaks in continuity…." etc. The Oxford
Companion to the Bible, Bruce Matzger and Michael Coogan, p. 374 

4) Who "inspired" the author of this gospel to write this verse?:

The words of John 1:1 are acknowledged by most reputable Christian scholar
of the Bible as the words of another Jew, Philo of Alexandria (20BC-50AD),
who claimed no divine inspiration for them and who wrote them decades
before the "gospel of John" was ever conceived. Groliers encyclopedia has
the following to say under the heading "Logos"("the word"): 

"Heraclitus was the earliest Greek thinker to make logos a central concept
......In the New Testament, the Gospel According to Saint John gives a
central place to logos; the biblical author describes the Logos as God, the
Creative Word, who took on flesh in the man Jesus Christ. Many have traced
John's conception to Greek origins--perhaps through the intermediacy of
eclectic texts like the writings of Philo of Alexandria." 

T. W. Doane says: 

"The works of Plato were extensively studied by the Church Fathers, one of
whom joyfully recognizes in the great teacher, the schoolmaster who, in the
fullness of time, was destined to educate the heathen for Christ, as Moses
did the Jews. The celebrated passage : "In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word Was God" is a fragment of some Pagan
treatise on the Platonic philosophy, evidently written by Irenaeus. It is
quoted by Amelius, a Pagan philosopher as strictly applicable to the Logos,
or Mercury, the Word, apparently as an honorable testimony borne to the
Pagan deity by a barbarian........We see then that the title "Word" or
"Logos," being applied to Jesus, is another piece of Pagan amalgamation
with Christianity. It did not receive its authorized Christian form until
the middle of the second century after Christ. The ancient pagan Romans
worshipped a Trinity. An oracle is said to have declared that there was
'First God, then the Word, and with them the Spirit'. Here we see the
distinctly enumerated, God, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost,
in ancient Rome, where the most celebrated temple of this capital - that of
Jupiter Capitolinus - was dedicated to three deities, which three deities
were honored with joint worship." From Bible Myths and their parallels in
other religions, pp. 375-376. 

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