St. John's Gospel Explanation of the opening verse of St. John's gospel. In the beginning was The Word and The Word was with God and The Word was God The Greek text reads: The verse begins with (pronounced En) which literally means In. However can also be short for (pronounced Ena) which means the number 1. There is no doubt that John intended to start the gospel with but the number 1 is significant as in Greek 1 is the start of everything. Before 1 there is nothing and 1 therefore represents the starting point.

The next word (pronounced Ark Hee) is where we get the words Archaeology and Archaic from. In English translations of the Bible we literally translate as 'In the beginning'. However means so much more. The first syllable is 'Alpha' significant as it is the very first utterance a baby makes when it is born, it's the sound of the breath of life. John uses this in 'The Revelation of John' when he describes God as the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. The Omega being the final 'O' sound a person makes as he exhales for the final time at the point of death. The second syllable is significant as it is a common noun for 'land'. Greek's would have immediately understood what John was saying here as in Greek Mythology the Earth Goddess Gaia was born from Chaos, the great void of emptiness. So, although in English we say 'In the beginning' you can see the original Greek text is very rich in meaning.

The next word (pronounced In) simply means 'was'.

The next word (pronounced O Logos) is translated in English as The Word. The 'O' being the article, or 'The'. The article is spelt and pronounced differently depending on the characteristics of the noun that follows.

The word Logos is complicated and entire books have been written attempting to explain it. I am not going to even attempt it here except to say that 'The Logos' is the term used to represent the nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ before he was born human. He is the Word of God through which all things were created. John describes him in Chapter 1 Verse 14 ' And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth'.

The next word simply translates as 'And'.

The next significant phrase (pronounced O Logos In Pros Ton Theon) is translated into English as 'The Word was With The God'. The interesting word here is . It literally means 'Towards' and is still used today in modern Greek especially on road signs like, Pros Athena (towards Athens). Think of the word 'Towards' and how you would describe its meaning to a child. You would probably say 'The Way To'. This is interesting as John uses the same word in his Gospel when he records the words of Jesus saying, 'I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me'. So you could translate it as 'The Word was the Way To God' as well as 'The Word was With God'.

Finally we get the last phrase (pronounced 'Ke Theos In O Logos) which is the most important phrase as it describes the relationship between God and The Logos (Jesus prior to being born a human). It literally translates in to English as 'And God was The Word'. However in English we would more properly say, 'And The Word Was God'.

To come back now to the deliberate mistranslation by the Watchtower and Bible Tract Society (Jehovah's Witnesses) who translate the last phrase as 'and The Word was a god'. They claim this translation is correct because of the lack of the article before Theos in . This is an incorrect argument as there are two nouns in the last phrase Theos and Logos. In Greek the subject of a sentence is always prefixed with the article to avoid any misunderstanding. In English we would place the subject at the beginning of a sentence to avoid any misunderstanding therefore correctly reading 'and The Word was God'.