An EO’s New Testament Translation

1 In the origin there was the Logos, and the Logos was present with GOD,^a and the Logos was god; This one was present with GOD in the origin.

All things came to be through him, and without him came to be not a single thing that has come to be. In him was life, and this life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not conquer it.

There came a man, sent by GOD, whose name was John; This man came in witness, that he might testify about the light, so that through him all might have faith —But only that he might testify about the light; he was not that light.

It was the true light, which illuminates everyone, that was coming into the cosmos. He was in the cosmos, and through him the cosmos came to be, and the cosmos did not recognize him.

He came to those things that were his own, and they who were his own did not accept him. But as many as did accept him, to them he gave the power to become GOD’s children—to those having faith in his name, Those born not from blood, nor from a man’s desire, but of GOD.

And the Logos became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the Father’s only one, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him and has cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has surpassed me, for he was before me.’”

For we all have received from his fullness, and grace upon grace; Because the Law was given through Moses, the grace and the truth came through Jesus the Anointed.

No one has ever seen GOD; the one who is uniquely god, who is in the Father’s breast, that one has declared him. John 1:1-18 (p. 157)

a. To understand my translation of the first eighteen verses of the Gospel, the reader should refer to “A Note on the Prologue of John’s Gospel” in my postscript to this volume.

Here in the Gospel’s prologue, as well as in the closing verses of chapter twenty below, I adopt the typographical convention of the capital G followed by small capitals to indicate where the Greek speaks of ὁ θεός (ho theos), which clearly means God in the fullest and most unequivocal sense, and I use one capital letter followed by two lowercase letters to indicate where the Greek speaks only of θεός (theos) without the article; but, to make the matter more confusing, I have indicated three uses of the word without article (vv. 6, 12, and 13), all concerning the relation between the divine and the created, in all small capitals, to indicate that it is not clear in these instances whether the distinction in forms is still operative, and whether the inarticular form of the noun is being used simply of God as related to creatures through his Logos.

And then, in v. 18, I assume the first use of the inarticular form of theos still refers to God in the fullest sense, God the Father, though again the clause in question concerns the relation of creatures to the divine. (p. 192)

There may perhaps be no passage in the New Testament more resistant to simple translation into another tongue than the first eighteen verses—the prologue—of the Gospel of John. Whether it was written by the same author as most of the rest of the text (and there is cause for some slight doubt on that score), it very elegantly proposes a theology of the person of Christ that seems to subtend the entire book, and that perhaps reaches its most perfect expression in its twentieth chapter.

But it also, intentionally in all likelihood, leaves certain aspects of that theology open to question, almost as if inviting the reader to venture ever deeper into the text in order to find the proper answers. Yet many of these fruitful ambiguities are simply invisible anywhere except in the Greek of the original, and even there are discernible in only the most elusive and tantalizing ways. Take, for example, the standard rendering of just the first three verses.

In Greek, they read, 1Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος· 2οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν· 3πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἓν ὃ γέγονεν· (1En archēi ēn ^ho logos, kai ^ho logos ēn pros ton theon, kai theos ēn ^ho logos; 2^houtos ēn en archēi pros ton theon; 3panta di’ avtou egeneto, kai chōris avtou egeneto oude hen ^ho gegonen.) I am aware of no respectable English translation in which these verses do not appear in more or less the same form they are given in the King James Version: “1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

Read thus, the Gospel begins with an enigmatic name for Christ, asserts that he was “with God” in the beginning, and then unambiguously goes on to identify him both as “God” and as the creator of all things. Apart from that curiously bland and impenetrable designation “the Word,” the whole passage looks like a fairly straightforward statement of Trinitarian dogma (or at least two-thirds of it), of the NiceneConstantinopolitan variety.

The average reader would never guess that, in the fourth century, those same verses were employed by all parties in the Trinitarian debates in support of very disparate positions, or that Arians and Eunomians and other opponents of the Nicene settlement interpreted them as evidence against the coequality of God the Father and the divine Son. The truth is that, in Greek, and in the context of late antique Hellenistic metaphysics, the language of the Gospel’s prologue is nowhere near so lucid and unequivocal as the translations make it seem.

For one thing, the term logos really had, by the time the Gospel was written, acquired a metaphysical significance that “Word” cannot possibly convey; and in places like Alexandria it had acquired a very particular religious significance as well. For the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, for instance, it referred to a kind of “secondary divinity,” a mediating principle standing between God the Most High and creation.

In late antiquity it was assumed widely, in pagan, Jewish, and Christian circles, that God in his full transcendence did not come into direct contact with the world of limited and mutable things, and so had expressed himself in a subordinate and economically “reduced” form “through whom” (δι᾽ αὐτοῦ [di’ avtou]) he created and governed the world. It was this Logos that many Jews and Christians believed to be the subject of all the divine theophanies of Hebrew scripture. Many of the early Christian apologists thought of God’s Logos as having been generated just prior to creation, in order to act as God’s artisan of, and archregent in, the created order.

Moreover, the Greek of John’s prologue may reflect what was, at the time of its composition, a standard semantic distinction between the articular and inarticular (or arthrous and anarthrous) forms of the word theos: the former, ὁ θεός (^ho theos) (as in πρὸς τὸν θεόν [pros ton theon], where the accusative form of article and noun follow the preposition), was generally used to refer to God in the fullest and most proper sense: God Most High, the transcendent One; the latter, however, θεός (theos) (as in καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος [kai theos ēn ^ho logos]), could be used of any divine being, however finite: a god or a derivative divine agency, say, or even a divinized mortal. And so early theologians differed greatly in their interpretation of that very small but very significantly absent monosyllable.

Now it may be that the article is omitted in the latter case simply because the word theos functions as a predicate there, and typically in Greek the predicate would need no article. Yet the syntax is ambiguous as regards which substantive should be regarded as the subject and which the predicate; though Greek is an inflected language, and hence more syntactically malleable than modern Western tongues, the order of words is not a matter of complete indifference; and one might even translate καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος as “and [this] god was the Logos.”

But the issue becomes at once both clearer and more inadjudicable at verse 18, where again the designation of the Son is theos without the article, and there the word is unquestionably the subject of the sentence. Mind you, in the first chapter of John there are also other instances of the inarticular form where it is not clear whether the reference is the Father, the Son, or somehow both at once in an intentionally indeterminate way (as though, perhaps, the distinction of articular from inarticular forms is necessary in regard to the inner divine life, but not when speaking of the relation of the divine to the created realm).

But, in all subsequent verses and chapters, God in his full transcendence is always ^ho theos; and the crucial importance of the difference between this and the inarticular theos is especially evident at 10:34–36. Most important of all, this distinction imbues the conclusion of the twentieth chapter with a remarkable theological significance, for it is there that Christ, now risen from the dead, is explicitly addressed as ^ho theos (by the Apostle Thomas).

Even this startling profession, admittedly, left considerable room for argument in the early centuries as to whether the fully divine designation was something conferred upon Christ only after the resurrection, and then perhaps only honorifically, or whether instead it was an eternal truth about Christ that had been made manifest by the resurrection. In the end, the Nicene settlement was reached only as a result of a long and difficult debate on the whole testimony of scripture and on the implications of the Christian understanding of salvation in Christ (not to mention a soupçon of imperial pressure).

Anyway, my point is not that there is anything amiss in the theology of Nicaea, or that the original Greek text calls it into question, but only that standard translations make it impossible for readers who know neither Greek nor the history of late antique metaphysics and theology to understand either what the original text says or what it does not say.

Not that there is any perfectly satisfactory way of representing the text’s obscurities in English, since we do not distinguish between articular and inarticular forms in the same way; rather, we have to rely on orthography and typography, using the difference between an uppercase or lowercase g to indicate the distinction between God and [a] god. This, hesitantly, is how I deal with the distinction in my translation of the Gospel’s prologue, and I believe one must employ some such device: it seems to me that the withholding of the full revelation of Christ as ^ho theos, God in the fullest sense, until the Apostle Thomas confesses him as such in the light of Easter, must be seen as an intentional authorial tactic.

Some other scholars have chosen to render the inarticular form of theos as “a divine being,” but this seems wrong to me on two counts: first, if that were all the evangelist were saying, he could have used the perfectly serviceable Greek word theios; and, second, the text of the Gospel clearly means to assert some kind of continuity of identity between God the Father and his Son the Logos, not merely some sort of association between “God proper” and “a god.” Here, I take it, one may regard chapter twenty as providing the ultimate interpretation of chapter one, and allow one’s translation to reflect that. (pp. 441-443)

a. Or “god was the Logos,” going entirely by word order. In general, however, when two nominatives are placed in apposition and only one of them lacks an article, that inarticular noun is taken for the predicate and the articular for the subject. Still, there are many contrary examples in extant texts, word order is not entirely unimportant even in an inflected tongue like Greek, and the wording here seems intentionally elliptical, so as to avoid speaking of the Logos in a way that, in late antique usage, was reserved properly for the Father.

To understand my translation of the first eighteen verses of the Gospel, the reader should refer to “A Note on the Prologue of John’s Gospel” in my postscript to this volume. Here in the Gospel’s prologue, as well as in the closing verses of chapter twenty below, I adopt the typographical convention of the capital G followed by small capitals to indicate where the Greek speaks of ὁ θεός (^ho theos), which clearly means God in the fullest and most unequivocal sense, whereas I confine myself entirely to lowercase letters to indicate where the Greek speaks only of θεός (theos) without the article; but, to make the matter more confusing, I have indicated three uses of the word without article (vv. 6, 12, and 13), all concerning the relation between the divine and the created, in all small capitals, to indicate that it is not clear in these instances whether the distinction in forms is still operative, and whether the inarticular form of the noun is being used simply of God as related to creatures through his Logos.

And then, in v. 18, I assume the first use of the inarticular form of theos still refers to God in the fullest sense, God the Father, though again the clause in question concerns the relation of creatures to the divine. As for the phrase translated in v. 1 as “present to God” (πρὸς τὸν θεόν, pros ton theon), it might be read any number of ways. Technically, the preposition when attached to an accusative would mean “toward” or “at,” and so might be read here as saying that the Logos was “facing” God, which would suggest at least a pictorial continuity with a tradition of seeing the Logos or “secondary god” as the heavenly high priest, turned toward the unknowable Father and leading the worship of God by all rational creatures. It also might be taken as meaning “pertaining to” or “in attendance upon” the Father. (pp. 168-169)

“Thomas answered and said to him, ‘My LORD and my GOD.’”^ad (p. 191)

ad. ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου (^ho kyrios mou kai ^ho theos mou): Here, Thomas addresses Jesus as ho theos, which unambiguously means “God” in the absolute sense (see my remarks on John’s prologue in the postscript).

He addresses him also as ^ho kyrios, again with the honorific article, which also happens to be the Greek rendering of the Hebrew Adonai in the Septuagint, the preferred textual circumlocution for God’s unutterable name, the tetragrammaton (YHWH). Thomas’s words here, then, appear to be the final theological statement of the Gospel at its “first ending.” (p. 195)

And hearing this the gentiles were elated and gave glory to the Lord’s word, and as many as were disposed to the life of the Age had faith; Acts 13:48 (p. 218)

“Watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Spirit, the Holy One, has set you as supervisors, to shepherd God’s assembly, which he purchased by his own blood.” (p. 229)

Theirs the fathers, and from them—according to the flesh—the Anointed; blessed unto the ages the God over all things, amen.^ac (p. 258)

ac. A verse whose syntax and uncertain punctuation make it liable to a variety of interpretations. It can be read, as it is here, as if the “Anointed” comes at the end of a sentence or clause, followed by a doxology.

Or it could be read: “the Anointed, who is God over all things, blessed unto the ages, amen.” Or (though less plausibly), “the Anointed, over all things; blessed be God unto the ages, amen.” Or (less plausibly still), if a scribal error transformed the plural genitive pronoun ὧν (hōn) (“of whom”) into the present participle ὤν (ōn) (“being”), the last phrase may complete the list of 270 Israel’s special prerogatives begun in v. 4: “theirs the God over all things, blessed unto the ages, amen.”

Theological tradition favors the first of these alternate renderings; but, though Paul in Philippians speaks of Christ’s equality with God, and though Christ’s divinity is obviously indubitable for him, he nowhere else speaks of Christ simply as ὁ θεός (ho theos), “God” specified by the definite article, which it seems likely was for him (as for most of his contemporaries) a privileged name for the Father. Moreover, the concluding “amen” seems to indicate a doxological, not a predicative, formulation. (pp. 270-271)

Yet for us there is one God, the Father—out of whom come all things, and we for him—and one Lord, Jesus the Anointed—through whom come all things, and we through him.ⁿ 1 Corinthians 8:6(p. 280)

n. Paul should be taken fairly literally in these two verses: He really means that, in a sense, there are such things as “gods” in heaven and earth, though as a pious Jew and Christian he would more naturally call them angels or demons. Most Jews, Christians, and educated pagans of late antiquity drew an absolute distinction between, on the one hand, the spiritual or divine powers that rule the nations and inhabit the cosmos and, on the other, the one God who is the source of existence from whom everything comes forth (gods no less than other limited beings).

For Paul, these “powers on high,” “archons,” and so on are the gods worshipped by the several nations, but are ultimately only angelic governors of the cosmos, often either rebellious or incompetent; this seems to include even the angel governing Israel, who, according to Galatians, delivered a defective version of the Law to Moses. In Paul’s time, the idea of angelic “gods of the nations” would have been, for instance, an unproblematic interpretation of Deuteronomy 32:8–9, which describes God as dividing the nations among the “sons of God [El],” as well as 32:43, in which these same sons of God, along with the nations they govern, are called to make obeisance to God (in the Rabbinic Masoretic Text of the Hebrew, which is a later synthetic redaction, the phrase in v. 8 becomes “sons of Israel,” but in the Septuagint—the favored text of Paul and much of the Greek-speaking Diaspora—it was still “sons of God” or perhaps, in some copies, “angels of God”; and in v. 43 the Masoretic Text omits the reference to the sons of God and the angels of the nations altogether, though, again, they are still present in the Septuagintal version).

As will emerge in chapter fifteen below, it is a large part of Paul’s understanding of the gospel that these cosmic “gods” have been conquered and placed in proper order by Christ and will, at the end of time, be handed over in proper subordination to the Father so that God may be “all in all.” (pp. 293-294)

If anyone does not cherish the Lord, let him be accursed. Marana-Tha!^ae The grace of the Lord Jesus with you. My love with all of you in the Anointed One Jesus. 1 Corinthians 16:22-24 (p. 291)

Be of that mind in yourselves that was also in the Anointed One Jesus, Who, subsisting in God’s form, did not deem being on equal terms with God^a a thing to be grasped,^b But instead emptied himself,^c taking a slave’s form, coming to be in a likeness of human beings; and, being found as a human being in shape,^d He reduced^e himself, becoming obedient all the way to death, and a death by a cross.

For which reason God also exalted him on high and graced him with the name that is above every name, So that at the name of Jesus every knee—of beings heavenly and earthly and subterranean—should bend, And every tongue gladly confess that Jesus the Anointed is Lord, for the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5-11 (p. 329)

a. τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ (to einai isa theōi): a somewhat obscure phrase. Literally, perhaps, it might be translated as “the [state of] being equal to God,” the whole infinitive phrase functioning as a single substantive. But the form of the predicate “equal,” ἴσα, is the neuter plural, not the masculine singular (ἴσος [isos]). And the plural neuter traditionally has a number of distinctive uses: in a very formal legal sense, for instance, it can denote equality of rights, privileges, and duties (the “equal things” common to all enfranchised citizens); or it can mean “equal shares” or “fair shares” (a connotation that would perhaps fit neatly with the word ἁρπαγμός [harpagmos], which precedes it in the Greek text of the verse: see following note).

b. ἁρπαγμός (harpagmos), a word that typically means “something seized” or “stolen,” “plunder,” but that might also have much the same connotation here as ἅρπαγμα (harpagma), a “windfall” or perhaps “prize.” Or perhaps it should be read as “something to be clung to” or “held onto,” a prize Christ might have jealously kept to himself, but which instead he relinquished in “emptying” or “impoverishing” himself for us (see following note).

c. ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσιν (heavton ekenōsen): “emptied himself,” “impoverished himself,” “divested himself.”

d. σχήματι . . . ὡς ἄνθρωπος (schēmati . . . hōs anthrōpos). The word σχῆμα (schēma) means “shape,” “figure,” “form,” but also often has the meaning of “appearance” or “outward aspect” (as opposed to “inward reality”).

e. ἐταπείνωσεν (etapeinōsen): “reduced,” “lessened,” “lowered,” “humbled, “abased.” (pp. 332-333)

Who delivered us from the power of the darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his love’s Son, In whom we have the price of liberation, the forgiveness of sins, Who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation,^a Because in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, the visible as well as the invisible (whether Thrones or Lordships or Archons or Powers);^b all things were created through him and for him; And he is before all things, and all things hold together in him, And he is the head of the body, of the assembly—who is the origin, firstborn from the dead, so that he might himself hold first place in all things—For in him all the Fullness was pleased to take up a dwelling,^c And through him to reconcile all things to him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens. Colossians 1:13-20 (pp. 334-335)

a. πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως (prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs): perhaps “of every creature the firstborn” or “born prior to all creation [every creature].” This last reading may accord best with the following verse’s assertion that all things were created in Christ.

b. Again, these are all titles for the invisible spiritual powers—angelic or daemonian—who hold sway over this cosmos.

c. εὐδόκησεν πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι (evdokēsen pan to plērōma katoikēsai): The verb “was pleased” (εὐδόκησεν) here seems naturally to take “all the Fullness [Plērōma]”—divine? creaturely? both?—as its subject, but perhaps God the Father or Christ is the subject intended. Moreover, πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα is neuter, but as the sentence continues to unfold in the following verse the present participle “making peace” (εἰρηνοποιήσας [eirēnopoiēsas])—which should take the same subject—is masculine. This may simply be a case of personification, or perhaps the subject at that point has casually and somewhat ungrammatically shifted to Christ, consequent upon the preceding phrase. (p. 338)

Because in him dwells all the Fullness of deity bodily,^e Colossians 2:9 (p. 335)

e. As in 1:19 above, the formula πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα (pan to plērōma), but here identified specifically as “all the Fullness of deity” (θεότητος [theotētos]). (p. 339)

Awaiting the blissful hope, and the appearing of the glory, of the great God and of our savior, the Anointed One Jesus, Who gave himself on our behalf so that he might buy us out of all lawlessness, and might purify for himself a people of his very own, zealous for good works. Titus 2:13-14 (p. 360)

Simon Peter, a slave and Apostle of Jesus the Anointed, to those who have obtained a faith equally precious to our own, through the justice of our God and of our savior Jesus the Anointed: 2 Peter 1:1 (p. 394)

God, having of old spoken to the fathers by the prophets, in many places and in many ways, At the end of these days spoke to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir to all things, and through whom he made the ages: Who— being a radiance of his glory and an impress of his substance, and upholding all things by the utterance of his power—took his seat at the right hand of the Majesty in the places on high once he had accomplished a purification of sins, Becoming as far superior to the angels as the name he has inherited surpasses theirs in distinction.

For to which of the angels did he ever say, “You are my Son, this day I have begotten you”? And again, “I shall be a Father to him, and he shall be a Son to me”? And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “And let all of God’s angels make obeisance to him.”

And, as regards the angels, he says, “The one who makes his angels spirits, a and his ministers a flame of fire.” But, as regards the Son: “Your throne, O God, is unto the age of the age, and the rod of rectitude is the rod of his Kingdom. You have loved justice and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you, above your fellows, with the oil of gladness.” And: “You, Lord, at the beginnings laid the earth’s foundation, and the heavens are works of your hands; They will perish, but you perdure; and all will grow old like a garment; And you will furl them up like a mantle, and like a garment they will be changed; but you are the same and your years will not fail.”

And to which of the angels has he at any time said, “Sit at my right hand until I set your enemies as a footstool for your feet”? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth into service for those about to inherit salvation? Hebrews 1:1-14 (p. 364)

The First Letter of Peter

AUTHOR UNKNOWN (p. 386)

The Second Letter of Peter

AUTHOR UNKNOWN (p. 394)

For certain men have crept in, those who had long ago been predicted for this judgment, a impious men, translating the grace of our God into wantonness^b and denying our only master and Lord, Jesus the Anointed. But I am determined to remind you—although you once knew all this—that Jesus,^c having saved a people from the land of Egypt, secondly destroyed those who were faithless; Jude 1:4-5 (p. 409)

c. Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous): that is, “Jesus,” which is the Greek rendering of Joshua (Yeshua). Many texts, especially of the Byzantine type, have “Lord” here, and a few have “Christ God,” but the best textual evidence favors “Jesus.” Most scholars who accept this nevertheless find the verse problematic, recognizing that—even if the author might have seen Jesus as the preexistent divine Son, and seen the acts of God in Hebrew scripture as being executed through the Son—talk of Jesus acting in the events of the book of Exodus is without much precedent or analogue in early Christian literature.

Alternatively, perhaps the name should be rendered “Joshua.” I have hesitated to do so only because this passage seems to be the first in a series of descriptions of episodes of divine punishment of sinners (see vv. 6–7), rather than a simple warning that the one who saves the righteous is also the one who will punish the iniquitous. And in Exodus Joshua is not explicitly involved in the liberation of Israel from Egypt—though he soon appears as Moses’s lieutenant and chief warrior. And the mention of the destruction of the faithless might refer to Joshua’s presumed participation in the slaughter of the Israelite idolaters after the fashioning of the golden calf (Exodus 32:17–35), or perhaps simply to his campaign against the Amalekites in Rephidim (Exodus 17:8–16), or even to his conquest of Canaan (pp. 410-411)