I have just come across a passage in Philo’s On Dreams that merits an addendum to our earlier post on John 1. In that post, I argued that the prologue to John uses metaphors drawn from a well developed and well known wisdom tradition and applies them to Jesus. The “Logos” or “Word” who was “with God in the beginning” and who “was God” was said to have “become flesh and tabernacled among us.” There we noted that this image of Wisdom coming down from heaven and dwelling among humans was drawn from Wisdom poetry in which the Torah is depicted as the embodiment of Wisdom, “tabernacling among men.” We argued that in the Wisdom tradition, this was a metaphor for the belief that God’s wisdom (a characteristic of God, not really a separate person) was manifested in the words of the Torah. We argued, in turn, that the same language as applied to Jesus would also have been intended and received as metaphor.

In our last post, Colossians 1, we looked at the Prayer of Joseph, and noted a strong parallel there to the prologue of John’s Gospel. In the Prayer of Joseph, the patriarch Jacob is said to have been the eldest of the archangels, God’s firstborn Son (appellations, as we have seen, that have also been applied to the Logos). Moreover, the patriarch Jacob, whose heavenly name was Israel, was said to have descended from heaven to “tabernacle among men,” taking Jacob as a mundane name. This also strongly parallels the language of “incarnation” in John 1:14, and likewise should be understood as metaphor. It expresses the idea that Israel is preeminent among the nations.

But I have just now encountered a passage from Philo that sheds some very important light on an infamous question about the first verse of John’s prologue. I will transliterate John 1:1 below, and follow that with a rigid literal translation:

(1) en archē ēn ho logos
(2) kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon
(3) kai theos ēn ho logos

(1) in beginning was the word
(2) and the word was with the god
(3) and god was the word

Now the notorious translation issue here is with the second occurrence of “god” on line three. In Greek, the order of the words in a sentence does not matter, because the presence of suffixes or definite articles tell us what role the word is playing in the sentence. So line 3 literally reads: “and god was the word,” but we are probably meant to read it as, “and the word was god” because “word” takes a definite article (“the”), indicating that it is the subject of the clause, “god” being the predicate nominative. But note that in line two, “god” takes a definite article (“the god”), whereas in line 3, it does not (“god”). Jehovah’s Witnesses have famously capitalized on this fact and have argued that “god” in line three is not “the god” of line two, but “a god.” In other words, according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it should be translated:

(1) in the beginning was the Word
(2) and the Word was with God
(3) and the Word was a god

Now this translation is normally laughed out of court by mainstream Christian commentators. And they are right to point out that “god” does not need to take a definite article if it is the predicate nominative. However, “and the Word was a god” is a perfectly legitimate translation of the Greek here. The primary reason this translation has been summarily rejected by Christian commentators is because of the assumption that Jewish and Christian monotheism would not allow for the possibility of more than one “God.”

Well, it should be clear by now (especially in light of post #07) that this is not the case. But just in case you aren’t yet convinced, I present to you my recent discovery from Philo. Read carefully:

But it is not right for the man who anchors on the hope of the alliance of God to crouch and tremble, to whom God says, “I am the God who was seen by thee in the place of God.” . . . And do not pass by what is here said, but examine it accurately, and see whether there are really two Gods. For it is said: “I am the God who was seen by thee;” not in my place, but in the place of God, as if he meant of some other God. What then ought we to say? There is one true God only; but they who are called Gods, by improper language, are numerous; on which account of the holy scripture on the present occasion indicates that it is the true God that is meant by the use of the article, the expression being, “I am the God (ho Theos);” but when the word is used incorrectly, it is put without the article, the expression being, “He who was seen by thee in the place,” not of the God (tou Theou), but simply “of God” (Theou); and what he here calls God is his most ancient Word. (Philo, On Dreams, 1:227-230)

In case you missed what just happened, let me spell it out for you. Philo quotes a passage in which the word “God” appears twice, once with the article “the” and once without. It is clear to Philo that the two Gods in the passage are not the same God. So what does he say? The God who is marked by use of the definite article (“the”) is the one true God, and the so-called God, who is not really God, is known by the absence of the definite article. Then what does he say? He says that the “God” who is not the one true God is to be identified as the ancient Word (Logos).

Bearing this in mind, let’s say that Philo came back from the grave to read the fine piece of poetry that is John’s prologue. How would Philo read it?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the one true God, and the Word was a god.

Yet Philo, as is obvious, was an ardent monotheist. For Philo, the absence of the article in the second occurrence of God is in fact an indicator of a monotheistic distinction between the true God, and the lesser being who is merely assigned a title (”god”) that is not properly his. As Dunn notes, “Philo demonstrates that a distinction between ho theos and theos such as we find in John 1:1b-c, would be deliberate by the author and significant for the Greek reader. Not only so, Philo shows that he could happily call the Logos ‘God/god’ without infringing his monotheism.”¹

Thus, the most natural reading according to Greek grammar, and the reading that accords best with everything we now know about second temple Jewish monotheism and second temple Logos and Wisdom traditions, would be the reading that distinguishes the one true God, with whom was the Word, from the Word itself who was the lesser god.

That said, the Logos is still most likely a metaphorical personification of a characteristic of God, and so my earlier argument remains unchanged. Nevertheless, if we must insist upon a pedantically literal reading of the prologue, then it is clear that the reading of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is the reading that best accords with the dialect of monotheism prevalent in that period. Contrary to the claims of centuries of apologists, what would have been shocking in John’s monotheistic world is emphatically not the notion of God and a lesser god. What would have been incongruous and unintelligible is the idea that God and God’s subordinate mediatorial agent (the Logos) are both to be identified as the one true God.

1. James D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 241. [BACK]