Now, instead of speculating about how a contemporary
reader may or may not have understood John 1:1c, let us consider what may be
viewed as actual evidence of early reader response to the Gospel of John. The
second-century philosopher Justin Martyr had a Gentile background and became a
Christian, as he tells us in Dial. 3–7. In 1 Apol. 63.15
he speaks in words reminiscent of John 1:1 and Col 1:15 about the Father and
about the Son:
ὃς Λόγος καὶ πρωτότοκος ὢν τοῦ θεοῦ, καὶ θεὸς ὑπάρχει.
who, being the Word and firstborn of the God, is
also theos.
Within the participle construction the
predicates Λόγος and πρωτότοκος are without a doubt
definite: the Son is not “a Word” and “a firstborn” of “the God”. The only
reason these predicate nouns miss their articles is that they precede the
copular participle ὤν. In the clause itself the
predicate θεός also precedes its own copular verb (ὑπάρχει = ἐστίν),
which makes the use of the anarthrous θεός similar to the instance in
John 1:1c. However, different from Λόγος and πρωτότοκος, the
pre-verbal predicate θεός cannot be interpreted as definite (“the
God”), as Justin has previously argued that those who say that the Son is the
Father do not know the Father. So within this context θεός must be
qualitative, but is it an abstract or material noun (“God-ness”, “Deity”) or is
it a generic noun (“a god”, “a deity”)? We can infer the answer to this
question from passages elsewhere. In Dial. 56.4 Justin argues:
ὅτι ἐστὶ καὶ λέγεται θεὸς καὶ κύριος ἕτερος ὑπὸ τὸν ποιητὴν
τῶν ὅλων.
that there is and is said to be another god and lord
under the maker of the universe.
Similarly, in Dial. 61.3 Justin refers
to the Word:
αὐτὸς ὢν οὗτος ὁ θεὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων γεννηθείς.
this god himself being begotten of the Father of the
universe.
It is evident that Justin treats θεός in both
cases as a generic noun, so that we may conclude that his use of the anarthrous
predicate θεός in reference to the Word in 1 Apol. 63.15
and other instances is no different from classical Greek. It must here too
be translated as “a god”, as it is clear that Justin views the Word as another
god. (Cf. Dial. 56.11; 75.4; 128.1) However, this does not change
the fact that Justin was a monotheist. “One must worship only God”, he writes
in 1 Apol. 16.6 (τὸν θεὸν µόνον δεῖ προσκυνεῖν), and at the same
time he does not regard “this god begotten of the Father” as competing in
worship with God the Father. Rather, in 2 Apol. 13.4 he
states:
τὸν γὰρ ἀπὸ ἀγεννήτου καὶ ἀρρήτου θεοῦ Λόγον µετὰ τὸν θεὸν
προσκυνοῦµεν καὶ ἀγαπῶµεν.
for we worship and love the Word, sprung from the unborn
and unspoken God, after the God.
Justin’s reception of John’s prologue can of course
not be used to prove or disprove how John meant 1:1c to be read, but it is
valid to say that in his reading of John’s prologue, or at least in his
phrasing similar to John’s, the second-century Christian philosopher evidently
understood θεός in reference to the Word as the generic noun it
naturally is. So, if a monotheistic intellectual saw the Word as “a god” just
decades after John’s Gospel was written, the question that deserves further
consideration is whether the Gospel writer himself would find this
interpretation an infringement of his own monotheism. (Alexander Smarius, “Another God
in the Gospel of John? A Linguistic Analysis of John 1:1 and 1:18,” Horizons
in Biblical Theology 44 [2022]: 155-56)
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