ichabod crane

No, it isn't, you've made a fundamental mistake of Greek grammar here. Theos is the nominative masculine singular, and means "god", i.e. one of them, not a whole lot of them. It cannot mean anything plural. The nominative plural is theoi, not theos. Whenever translating 'elohim into Greek, and the translators thought this word was intended as a plural, they always translated with the plural (theoi etc), not the singular. For example, at the end of Psalm 82 verse 1, in the Greek Septuagint, the phrase "he judges in the midst of the gods" is en meso theous diakrinei. The word theous is the accusative plural form. Here is the complete declension table for the word theos - to make it clear I've used the letter w for omega (long "O") to distinguish it from omicron (short "O"), and [i] means an iota subscript:

The word theos is completely unlike the Hebrew word 'elohim in this respect, it is not ambiguous about whether it is singular or plural.

This is again just wrong. John 10:34 says theoi, the plural nominative, not theos. Hence the only correct translation here can be, "I said, you are gods?". This does refer to the divine council, and is quoting from the Septuagint.

In the Septuagint which you quoted, Yahweh is called a theos singular (i.e. a god) and Chemosh is also called a theos singular (i.e. also a god). Whatever you want to make of that, in neither case is the divine council of 'elohim plural being referred to, at least in the mind of the translators - and rightly so, given the Hebrew grammar.

But it's the plural theoi, as noted above, not the singular theos. Jesus might have been one of these theoi, but it is grammatically impossible to say "I" (singular) am "gods" (plural).

Hope this helps clear things up.

Loomis

Yes. Excellent. Thanks for taking the time to make that post.
Yes. I understood that. The LXX says Yahweh was a god (theos), and it says Chemosh was a god (theos).

I didn’t mean to say that there was any direct referral to a pantheon, but just that it is weak evidence to favor polytheism because – like I said – Yahweh and Chemosh appear to be on a level playing field.

My point was to convince you that just because GJohn calls Yahweh a theos, that it doesn’t necessarily mean that Yahweh was the only theos.

Do you agree?

ichabod crane

Yes, you're right, there is certainly no in principle reason that theos couldn't be used with reference to more than one being.

But I'm now a bit confused about your hypothesis. I thought you were proposing that in GJohn Jesus was OT Yahweh, but "the Father" was OT 'El. The point I was making is that this doesn't work because "theos" when it occurs in the singular is synonymous with "the Father", and refers to OT 'El/Yahweh as one being, as was the general understanding of the time. I don't see the author making the distinction that you see. That's all. I agree that John 10:34-36 refers to the divine council and could be construed as meaning that Jesus was a member of that council, which is consistent with your theory. I agree that John 1:1 could be read as saying that the Word was a distinct deity, which would also be consistent with your theory. But the problem is, that I can't see anything else in John that in any way supports this theory, and I see a lot that seems to me to clearly refute it. And while these two passages can be read in a manner that supports your theory, there are other straightforward ways of reading them that don't.

ichabod crane

Hi Loomis.

I've just got some urgent work that's come up and I might have to pull out of this discussion now if that's OK. It's been very interesting.

It will give us both some time to do some more reading and thinking, anyway.

All the best,

Ichabod.

rchuso

Another wrinkle, that nobody seems to have latched onto, is the use of the phrase "pros ton theon" - which is unfortunately translated "with God" in Jn 1.1,1.2. Every other time it's "to God", "toward God", "pertaining to God", and even "against God". The phrase occurs almost 20 times in the NT, but only here and in Rom 5.1 is it translated "with God", and the one in Romans rightly demands 'direction'. Any translation of Jn 1.1 that uses some form of 'positionally with' God is in error. The phrase in Rev 16.6 'blasphemy "against God"' is also "pros ton theon", and seems to clinch the argument.

The author of John probably means to talk about the logos (plan, rationale, idea, etc.) and its purpose. Hence the reversal of Gesenius' rule to reverse the order of "God was the logos"! John was undoubtedly writing against the waning gnostic belief of the impalpable and transcendent first-mover, making the "plan" his directly, and with his direct involvement.

But then again, I could really be in left field here. :-)

rand.