Jesus was just "a god" (John 1:1-3; 10:31-35)
Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 9:41 pm
< This snippet was taken from correspondence generated by our online Bible correspondence course. >
... I did a little research on the scriptures you mentioned. I really enjoy digging into the deeper things-it seems to feed and incite my curiosity for additional info. ...
John 10:31-35. Very interesting verse. Some translations render verse 33 as god (lowercase) while others renders as God (uppercase). Curious..i pursued this. it turns out that the reason some translations render as 'god' or "a god" (The Emphatic Diaglott) is found principally in Jesus' own answer, in which he quoted Psalm 82:1-7. Here the text did not refer to persons as being called "God," but "gods" and "sons of the Most High". These "sons of the Most High" were Israelite judges who had been practicing injustice, requiring that God himself now judge 'in the middle of such gods. This is particularly interesting at this point - since God applied these terms to those men, Jesus was certainly not guilty of blasphemy in saying "I am God's Son". The problem those clerics had was that they forgot the simple fact that Jesus stated that he could not do a single thing without the authority of his Father. The clerics claimed he was God...Jesus did not.
To tell the truth, I was born, raised and taught to be a strict Trinitarian but the more research that I did the more difficult to accept the teachings of my Luthern upbringing. Even now, when researching your questions it enhances the accuracy of my thinking with the Bible. For example John 1:1-3. Once again i have found that many, many translations render this greek reading as "a god".I had the opportunity to talk with a Christian woman from Greece regarding this understanding and she stated that in Greece there is no issue with this verse like in the United States. The reason? because they obviously read Greek and have no difficulty in putting the article 'a' in front of the word 'god'. The concept of a Trinity is not as dominant as in this country. I found that very interesting.
Did the writer of John..(John himself) understand that Jesus and God were the same person? Nope. Toward the end of his Gospel John summarized matters, saying "these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (Modern Language)
It is because of this thinking and other points of differences in the upbringing that influenced my answering your questions as I did.
... I did a little research on the scriptures you mentioned. I really enjoy digging into the deeper things-it seems to feed and incite my curiosity for additional info. ...
John 10:31-35. Very interesting verse. Some translations render verse 33 as god (lowercase) while others renders as God (uppercase). Curious..i pursued this. it turns out that the reason some translations render as 'god' or "a god" (The Emphatic Diaglott) is found principally in Jesus' own answer, in which he quoted Psalm 82:1-7. Here the text did not refer to persons as being called "God," but "gods" and "sons of the Most High". These "sons of the Most High" were Israelite judges who had been practicing injustice, requiring that God himself now judge 'in the middle of such gods. This is particularly interesting at this point - since God applied these terms to those men, Jesus was certainly not guilty of blasphemy in saying "I am God's Son". The problem those clerics had was that they forgot the simple fact that Jesus stated that he could not do a single thing without the authority of his Father. The clerics claimed he was God...Jesus did not.
To tell the truth, I was born, raised and taught to be a strict Trinitarian but the more research that I did the more difficult to accept the teachings of my Luthern upbringing. Even now, when researching your questions it enhances the accuracy of my thinking with the Bible. For example John 1:1-3. Once again i have found that many, many translations render this greek reading as "a god".I had the opportunity to talk with a Christian woman from Greece regarding this understanding and she stated that in Greece there is no issue with this verse like in the United States. The reason? because they obviously read Greek and have no difficulty in putting the article 'a' in front of the word 'god'. The concept of a Trinity is not as dominant as in this country. I found that very interesting.
Did the writer of John..(John himself) understand that Jesus and God were the same person? Nope. Toward the end of his Gospel John summarized matters, saying "these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (Modern Language)
It is because of this thinking and other points of differences in the upbringing that influenced my answering your questions as I did.