Is Jesus God?

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John also calls Jesus a god in John 1:1 but he differentiated between THE God because he used the definite article 'ton' before one but not the other which indicated that he was speaking of two different Gods.

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This is a misunderstanding of the Greek grammar. The phrase at the end of the verse not only omits the definite article, it also reverses the normal word order, placing the predicate before the subject. This Greek construction is used to stress quality or essence. It is usually rendered "and the Word was God", but a better rendering would be "and the Word was DEITY" or "and what God was the Word was." For a detailed discussion of this, see the translator's note in the NET Bible.

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4. As for any 'grammatical rules' concerning word order concocted in the last century or two, they are simply false. Consider the following which have the same 'unusual' word order as John 1:1c. Notice that trinitarian Bible translators have not worded these any differently than they would if they were in the 'normal' word order.

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Your author does not like the implications of this grammatical rule, so he wants to deny that the rule exists--not surprising. He is wrong, of course. Most grammars (e.g. Dana and Mantey) give plenty of support for these grammatical rules--too much to reproduce here. Instead, here is an excerpt from NET note #3 for John 1:1 which describes the rule and its implications here:

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1. John 4:9 (a) - indefinite ("a Jew") - all translations

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Yes, but the Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a Jew, and this is somewhat lost in the English. A better translation might be "being Jewish."

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2. John 4:19 - indefinite ("a prophet") - all

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Yes, but the Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a prophet, and this is somewhat lost in the English.

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3. John 6:70 - indefinite ("a devil"/"a slanderer") - all

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No, NET translates this as "the devil," similar to "(the) God" in Jn 1:1c.

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4. John 8:48 - indefinite ("a Samaritan") - all

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The Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a Samaritan, and this is somewhat lost in the English. The NLT captures this fairly well as "You Samaritan devil!"

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5. John 9:24 - indefinite ("a sinner") - all

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Yes, but the Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a sinner, and this is somewhat lost in the English. Perhaps a better translation here would be "sinful."

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6. John 10:1 - indefinite ("a thief and a plunderer") - all

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Yes, but the Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a thief, and this is somewhat lost in the English.

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7. John 10:33 - indefinite ("a man") - all

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Wrong--not the same grammatical construction as Jn 1:1c, so not applicable.

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8. John 18:35 - indefinite ("a Jew") - all

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Yes, but the Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a Jew, and this is somewhat lost in the English. Perhaps a better translation here would be "Jewish."

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9. John 18:37 a - indefinite ("a king") - all

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Yes, but the Greek is stressing the quality or essence of a king, and this is somewhat lost in the English. Instead of "a king," perhaps a better translation here would be "royalty."

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10. John 18:37 b - indefinite ("a king") - in Received Text

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As above; "royalty" is perhaps a better translation.

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So, we can see that the literal translation of John 1:1c is, "And the Word was a god."

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No, this is a very poor translation. Much better is "and the Word was DEITY."

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Although noted trinitarian scholars refuse to admit that this is what John intended, nevertheless many will admit that this is the literal rendering.

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I don't believe it. Please list the "many" "noted trinitarian scholars" who "will admit that this is the literal rendering."

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If anyone has more scriptures, please put them on the table and im pretty sure they can be shown to not mean what they are purported to mean.

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There are many, many passages that testify to the deity of Christ (that Jesus was truly and fully God). I'll start posting a few, but will include only one argument per post to make things easier to follow.First one: "Son of Man" was a term that Jesus used of Himself. Note that He claims that these are HIS angels and HIS kingdom. But other places in the Gospels refer to angels as "angels of God" (e.g. Lk 12:8-9; Jn 1:51). And the Gospels quite often refer to the kingdom as the "kingdom of God" (e.g. Mt. 12:28; 19:24; many others).Jesus seems to be equating Himself with God in saying that God's angels and God's kingdom are His angels and His kingdom.

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If anyone has more scriptures, please put them on the table and im pretty sure they can be shown to not mean what they are purported to mean.

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What about Jesus' claim to be able to forgive sin? The scribes understood that this was a claim to Deity: Jesus heard them, and had a perfect opportunity to correct them if they had misunderstood His implication or had misinterpreted the Old Testament regarding forgiveness of sin. But He did NOT correct them. Instead He reinforced his claim to be able to forgive sin: Here Jesus made a clear claim to be able to forgive sin, a prerogative that belongs to God alone. In doing this, He is claiming to be God.

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The Authorized Version or Douay Version of John 1:1 reads: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was WITH God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

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Surely John was not so unreasonable as to say that someone (the Word) was with some other individual (God) and at the same time was that other individual (God). I dont think the greek grammar could be so backward as to actually make this possible.

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Correct--God the Son is not the same person as God the Father. The Father and Son are two persons who share one essence. The Greek grammar of John 1:1 has this trinitarian implication. The first "God" in Jn 1:1 has the article, and is referring to God the Father. The second "God" is anarthrous and with inverted word order, stressing quality or essence, so means "deity". As the NET note on Jn 1:1 states:

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Many have clued onto this. In the book The Patristic GospelsAn English Version of the holy Gospels as they existed in the Second Century, by Roslyn D’Onston. In John 1:1 this version reads: and the Word was God. but it has this footnote: The true reading here is, probably, of God. See Critical Note.Page 118.

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This is not too bad--it is another way to stress the essence or quality. But I think the word "deity" conveys it more clearly.

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and yet the high priest had authority to forgive the sins of the whole nation...

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Reference, please?

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Some of these trinitarian sources which admit that the Bible actually describes men who represent God (judges, Israelite kings, etc.) and God's angels as gods include:

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Your long cut and paste does not address my question. Most of the quotes do no directly address Jn 1:1. The closest thing is a Coptic translation, which is interesting but not very definitive.

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Even distinguished NT scholar (trinitarian) Robert M. Grant, when discussing the writings of the noted 2nd century Christian, Theophilus, said that this respected early Christian wrote that if Adam had remained faithful, he would have become 'perfect' and would have been 'declared a god'! Dr. Grant then added that this corresponds with Jesus being 'declared a god' elsewhere in the Gospel of John! So this highly respected trinitarian NT scholar admits that Jesus himself was called a god in John's Gospel. - p. 171, Greek Apologists of the Second Century, The Westminster Press, 1988.

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Perhaps this is one trinitarian scholar who would translate it as "a god," but the quote is not clear that his comments specifically apply to Jn 1:1.

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And the earliest Christians like the highly respected NT scholar Origen and others - - including Tertullian; Justin Martyr; Hippolytus; Clement of Alexandria; Theophilus; the writer of "The Epistle to Diognetus"; and even super-trinitarians Athanasius and St. Augustine - - also had this understanding for "a god." And, as we saw above, many highly respected NT scholars of this century agree.

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References, please? Where do they say that the meaning of Jn 1:1 is "a God" rather than "God?"I see nothing else in your post where a trinitarian directly addresses Jn 1:1.Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

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#5, 6, and 7 show some of the best and earliest authorites which render John 1:1 as "a god" rather than "God."

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I've already responded to these in Message 19.The rest of the examples give essentially say that while "and the Word was a god" is grammatically possible, "and the Word was God" is to be preferred. This is not very strong support for your position.

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The reason they are compelled to admit that it is the literal translation is that most often a nominative case noun (used as a subject or predicate noun), when it is without the article ('the') in the original language, and is a "non-prepositional" count noun ('man,' lamb,' 'house,' 'prophet,' 'sinner,' 'god,' etc.), will be translated properly into English with the indefinite article ('a,' or 'an').

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For example, all the uses of the nominative "man" (anthropos) as found in John's Gospel which are used as described above:

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John 1:6; 3:1; 3:4; 3:27; 5:5; 7:23 [UBS text (3rd ed.) and Received Text]; 7:46; 9:16; 10:33; 16:21 All are properly translated as "a man"!

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Not relevant. Your poster misunderstands the grammatical construction and grammatical rule involved in John 1:1c--he does not capture all of the unique features.The construction here is an anarthrous predicate nominative which precedes the verb. (i.e. no definite article on the noun, noun is not the subject but the predicate, and this noun precedes the verb.) This construction emphasizes the quality or essence of the noun as opposed to the individuality of the noun.

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So only thru the priests could forgiveness of sins take place.

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Yes, but this is very different from your earlier claim that

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and yet the high priest had authority to forgive the sins of the whole nation...

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"thru the priests" only says that they are the means, not the source of forgiveness.According to the OT, forgiveness of sins comes from God alone but comes through the sacrificial system (sacrifices, priests, tabernacle/temple, etc.). The experts in the Law understood this--no one can forgive sins except God. This is why they reacted to Jesus as they did in Mark 2, accusing him of blasphemy.If your contention is correct (that priests can actually forgive sins), why didn't the experts in the Law understand this? And why didn't Jesus point out their error? (He had a perfect opportunity to do so.) No, this contention doesn't make any sense.

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Im sure these translators cannot all be wrong on the rendering of John 1:1

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I can find many more translations that render it "and the Word was God." And I'm equally sure these translators cannot all be wrong on the rendering of John 1:1.

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What is interesting about trinitarian translators is that they insist on rendering John 1:1, The Word was God, and yet they don't hesitate to use the indefinite article (a, an) in their rendering of other verses where a singular anarthrous predicate noun occurs before the verb.

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Are you sure? I suspect the good translators DO hesitate about adding the indefinite article in these places. Some of them translate it in other ways or explain things in a footnote. The indefinite article misses the nuances of the Greek construction.

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Such as at John 6:70. Both JB and KJ refer to Judas Iscariot as a devil, and at John 9:17 they describe Jesus as a prophet.

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I've already commented on Jn 6:70 in Message 8--NET renders this as "the devil" instead of "a devil."Jn 9:17 would perhaps better be translated as "prophetic" instead of "a prophet," to better capture the qualitative implication of the Greek.

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they willingly insert an indefinite article into these verses which have exactly the same sentence construct, yet they say that its not gramatically correct to insert the indefinite article in John 1:1.... thats evidence enough which shows they are deliberately fudging the numbers to make a case for their theology.

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Not at all. The indefinite article is not an ideal translation for any of these passages. It does not adequately capture the implications of the Greek.

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If anyone has more scriptures, please put them on the table and im pretty sure they can be shown to not mean what they are purported to mean.

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This is a well-known verse, so you probably already have an answer for it. But I'd like to hear it anyway: Note the verb tense. Jesus didn't say "before Abraham came into existence, I was." Instead, He used the present tense, "I am." Both phrases would claim that He pre-existed Abraham, but the latter implies even more. It implies that to Jesus, all time is like the present. This suggests that He is eternal.How do you explain Jesus' claim to pre-exist Abraham, and the further suggestion that He is eternal?

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If anyone has more scriptures, please put them on the table and im pretty sure they can be shown to not mean what they are purported to mean.

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What about Hebrews 1? The writer is arguing that Jesus is superior to the angels, and then applies Psalm 45:6 to Jesus: Thus the writer to the Hebrews claims that Jesus is God.

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If anyone has more scriptures, please put them on the table and im pretty sure they can be shown to not mean what they are purported to mean.

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Revelation 1 has this description of God: And again in chapter 21, God is seated on the throne: A similar phrase is used in Isaiah: The titles "Alpha and Omega", "Beginning and End", and "First and Last" are titles for God in Scripture.But Jesus applies all three of these titles to Himself: In claiming divine titles for Himself, Jesus is claiming to be God.

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Notice Jesus didnt say I am the authority and the source of forgiveness, he said

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"The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins"

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Yes, He has authority to forgive sins. I.e., Jesus can actually forgive sins.He did NOT tell them that all priests have the authority to forgive sins, because this is not true.According to the OT, it is only GOD who can forgive sins: I can find no passage which says that priests can forgive sins, and you have yet to show any. The priests were to act as intermediaries between man and God. They were to offer sacrifices to God so that God would forgive sins: The OT priests did not do the forgiving--they were a conduit for God's forgiveness.Yes, Christ is a priest (and a prophet and a king). But none of these titles give him the authority to forgive sins. No prophet, priest, or king in the OT could forgive sins. He has authority to forgive sins only because He is God, as the experts in the Law well understood:

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The expression used at John 8:58 is far different from the one used at Exodus 3:14. Jesus did not use it as a name or a title but as a means of explaining his prehuman existence. He did have a prehuman existence because he is the 'son of God'

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I was not arguing that Jesus was applying this title of God to Himself (though I do believe this was part of His implication as well.) Rather, I was looking only at the grammar of "Before Abraham was, I am," with the unusual use of a present-tense verb where a past-tense would normally have been used. By doing this, Jesus claims that to Him, all past time is in the present. This is a claim to more than just pre-existence.

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to be a son of God he must have lived in the heavens with God before he came to earth as a man. The heavens are full of other 'sons' of God and these are called Angels. They also lived before Abraham existed.

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But if this is all that He meant, He would have used the past tense as does the passage you quote from Job 38. His use of the present tense suggests something more--it suggests eternality.

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But you should know that John 8:28 is not rendered as 'I am' by all translators.

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No, I did not know this. Perhaps they are paraphrasing it a bit to try to make it flow better in English?The Greek is clearly in the present tense, I am (egw eimi). There is no dispute about this and no major Greek manuscript variants that have anything other than the present tense. The proper translation is "I am," whether one is trinitarian or not.