NOGO

The Word was there in the begining.
It does not say that he was there a bit later when God created him.
The Word was "divine" because he was part of God.
The Word was God.

Paul believed that they were one.

Philippians 2:10-11
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven, and [things] in earth, and [things] under the earth; And [that] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ [is] Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Isaiah 45:23
I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth [in] righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

In Philippians 2:10-11 Paul is speaking about Jesus. In Isaiah 45:23 it is clear and must have been clear to Paul that the text is talking about Yahweh.

This is but one example. There are others.

You can call the Word a messenger or angel but that does not make it an inferior being as the JW claim.

With the JW it is not the translation which is wrong it is the theology.

Sheshbazzar

This has been debated at length in other threads and forums, so I will leave it lie, other than reiterating that many devout Jews were unable, and even forbidden to learn, or to speak Greek, therefore, for the message of the NT to be intelligible to them, it would need be either written or spoken in a language that they could understand, within Jerusalem if Greek was being deliberately shunned by the pious the choice would have pretty well been limited to Aramaic, and/or Hebrew.
"..as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah..." (Lu. 4:16-17) The custom was to read from TaNaKa scrolls in the sacred Hebrew, even as all devout Jews continue to this day to train their children to read and recite from the Hebrew text.
Um, perhaps speculation, but then again as I initially posted here, anyone that would undertake to translate, or to accurately render John 1:1 into the Hebrew, would be presented with the same few choices of words.
As for the statement that there is no physical evidence of such a phrase, you need only examine Hebrew translations John 1:1.
Of course what you are really saying is that there are no known surviving 1st century Hebrew texts of John 1:1 to use as physical evidence, but this is different than saying such a text did not, or could not have existed, actually from my perspective it is irrelevant whether such a text existed, in as much as those that were offended by the implications of John1:1 certainly got the message.
Might I inquire, what makes you think 'adonai' is "the more reverent"? Anyway, the question would not be, "was He adonai?" but "was He Elohim?" even that self-same Elohim that had said in the beginning, "Let there BE Light". The term 'adonai' is introduced into the text far latter, and was most commonly applied to men, and translated as "lord" (small letter L) the equivalent of the English "sir", only after prohibitions on speaking or writing the actual divine Name and titles, did it become used as a "more reverent" dodge to avoid using the Name.

NOGO

And yet Paul believed!

NOGO

Right and since for the writer there is only one God then there is no point putting a definite article. There are cases where there is no definite article and the subject is clearly Yahweh.

Sheshbazzar

hallelu-Yah! yes he did!

NOGO

Yes and it is a good bet that all early Christians were Jews as well.
Devout Jews I may add.
They created an affront to their own faith and then spread it to the unsuspecting.

spin

Rabid religionists should realise that they are here on the good will of the forum. This means that you should behave. Overly zealous displays of faith are the sorts of things that got displayers locked up in the past. A good English poet called Christopher Smart is such a case. He wrote his most interesting poetry in an insane asylum. I suppose in America such people went to New Orleans.


spin

yummyfur

There was no real Jerusalem after 70 AD, and very few pious Jews left around the area, so my guess is that since John was very probably written well after 70AD and was very probably not from Jerusalem or even Jewish nor attempting to reach a non-existant audience in a non-existant Jerusalem, one suspects these highly debatable issues on pious Jews being forbidden to learn Greek, are not even relevant.

Sheshbazzar

Spin, I truly appreciate your concern, and make here my public apology for my rabid display of enthusiasm.
You have in previous threads proven that you are better versed and learned in the peculiarities of the Hebrew language than most of those posting on here, so I am really pleased to see you join in this thread. Of course I am most curious as to how you would render John 1:1 in Hebrew?

spin

I wouldn't. And I would caution you against this stuff: 'The play on ancient words furthermore was use to link "YAH" the creator with "YAH-ha-shua", "YAH-the-Deliverer" or "AM-the-Deliverer"'. You know that the name was Yehoshua (yhw$w(, "Yhw saves", so your theorized late folk etymology would be baseless, especially as it would need a double HE.

The text as we have it is in Greek and I see no reason to suppose a Hebrew original. en arxh can easily be found at the beginning of the LXX.

In Hebrew the second clause would probably be verbless.

If the logos is derived from the Philonic literature it would be a straight Greek tradition going back eventually to Heraclitus. I tend to think though that there is just as much an element of the word (dbr) of god, ie wisdom, which is personified in Hebrew tradition and was present at the creation. It was the word of god which actually did the creation (eg Pr 3:19), so in the beginning was the word, the word was with god (as Wisdom was), and divine was the word (well afterall it is the word of god). The word becoming flesh returns us to wisdom walking the streets (eg Pr 1:20).

The importance you give to hyh needs to be also established for the writer. I don't see how that can be done. Do you?


spin