Mbona huhoji Jn 1:1-3[emoji47] [emoji4]
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.
