Raymond Brown on John 1:1c

Vs. 1c has been the subject of prolonged discussion, for it is a crucial text pertaining to Jesus’ divinity. There is no article before theos as there was in 1b. Some explain this with the simple grammatical rule that predicate nouns are generally anathrous (BDF, § 273). However, while theos is most probably the predicate, such a rule does not necessarily hold for a statement of identity as, for instance, in the “I am . . .” formulate (John xi 25, xiv6—with the article). To preserve in English the different nuance of theos with and without the article, some (Moffatt) would translate, “The Word was divine.” But this seems too weak; and, after all, there is in Greek an adjective for “divine” (theios), which the author did not choose to use. Haenchen, p. 313³⁸, objects to this latter point because he thinks that such an adjective smacks of literary Greek not in the Johannine vocabulary. The NED paraphrases the line: “What God was, the Word was”; and this is certainly better than “divine.” Yet for a modern Christian reader whose trinitarian background has accustomed him to thinking of “God” as a larger concept than “God the Father,” the translation “The Word was God” is quite correct. The reading is reinforced when one remembers that in the Gospels as it now stands, the affirmation of I 1 is almost certainly meant to form an inclusion with xx 28, where at the end of the Gospel Thomas confesses Jesus as “My God” (ho theos mou). These statements represents the Johannine affirmative answer to the charge made against Jesus in the Gospel that he was wrongly making himself God (x 33, v 18). Nevertheless, we should recognize that between the Prologue’s “The Word was God” and the later Church’s confession that Jesus Christ was “true God of true God” (Nicaea), there was marked development in terms of philosophical thought and a different problematic. (Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII [AB 29A; Garden City, N.Y.: Double Day, 1966], 5)