I N D E X
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A - I hardly know how to answer you, but I have the warrant of great Bible Students for my translation.
B - Do you ever use a concordance?
A - Why, man, am I not continually urging the `concordant method'? And is not this new translation vouched
for by those who advocate the concordant method?
The Concordant Method
B - I am afraid I am not greatly moved for all the `urging' and `advocating' of the concordant method. What I
ask you is, Have you tested this matter out for yourself?
A - Well, I must confess that I have not.
B - Let us do so, and we will start with John 1. Here is a Greek concordance; find the word Theos, and tell me
whether it occurs in John 1 without the article, and where the article is absent repeat the translation you have already
suggested.
`The Word was A God' (verse 1).
`There was a man sent from A God' (verse 6).
`Power to become children of A God' (verse 12).
`Which were born of A God' (verse 13).
`No one hath seen A God at any time' (verse 18).
B - Thank you, that will suffice. Is it necessary to emphasize how utterly false and untenable your interpretation
becomes when tested? Did God in a subordinate sense send John the Baptist? Is the Father God in a subordinate
sense? Then look at verse 18. The invisible God must be THE God.
A - Yes, I agree.
B - Yet, with the first verse hardly dry, the inspired penman (according to your teaching) makes the most
atrocious blunder. Do you not agree that he forgot to write the article here in verse 18?
A - I can hardly do that, for I believe that all Scripture is inspired.
B - Then I see no alternative for you but to agree that the concordance disproves the theory of your teachers?
A - I am afraid it is so, yet how is it that men who evidently have a knowledge of the original can have missed so
obvious a refutation?
B - My dear friend, believe me, it is not the office of you or me to sit in judgment upon the motives of others.
We are simply dealing with facts. Their teaching when weighed in the balances is found wanting. We therefore, as
simple followers of Christ, unhesitatingly reject it; we do no more, but we can do no less.
A Parallel Usage
A - I should like to know what I am to believe regarding this Greek article; I understood that its presence or
absence is of great importance.
B - You are quite right; It is the false deductions that you have to guard against.
A - Could you give me some usage parallel with John 1:1?
B - We find one in this very chapter, viz. verse 14, `the Word was made flesh'. It is manifestly absurd to
translate, `the Word was made A flesh', yet the case is parallel. `The Word was Theos'; `the Word became sarx'.
There is something more than the question of the article in John 1:1; there is also the order of the words. In the
original the sentence reads, `and God was the Word'. This alteration of the order draws attention to the statement