KATA IΩANNHN ΜΕΡΟΣ 1/? (Gospel of John Part 1/?)

Εν αρχῇ ῆν ὁ λογος                                                                                

και ὁ λογος ῆν προς τον θεόν

και θεός ῆν ὁ λογος.

(from http://www.ancientgreekonline.com/JohnGospel/JohnChapter1.htm)

I have a couple advantages here: first, this is probably the most famous sentence in the entire Bible, and it’s also very simple Greek, so it’s difficult to mess up. But there are a few things here that are worth explaining if you’re unfamiliar with languages besides English. Let’s start with the first line:

Εν αρχῇ ῆν ὁ λογος

As you probably already know, this translates to “In the beginning was the Word.” Let’s take a deeper look though. We can see it doesn’t translate word for word, because the greek has 5 words and the English has six. This is due to how Latin and Greek handle articles. Simply put, sometimes it doesn’t use them. So we have the first two words, “Εν αρχῇ”, meaning “In the beginning”, but there is no “the” between “In” and “beginning”, whereas the end of the line “ῆν ὁ λογος” directly means “was the Word.”

Next, the noun for “the beginning” is actually “αρχη”, but this is in nominative form. All languages use cases, but some (like English) are very, very implicit, whereas languages like Greek, Latin, and German are more explicit. Here’s a simple table that attempts to illustrate the basic cases of Greek:

Nominative: this is the case of the subject
Genitive: this is the case “about” or “of” the subject.
Dative: “with” positionally or location-wise
Accusative: relating to the direct object

(Here’s a better and more in-depth explanation of the cases in Ancient Greek: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_nouns)

The word “Εν” makes the noun take the dative case, therefore “αρχῇ” is written instead of “αρχη.” I might do another post listing the cases for specific words, but I believe this is sufficient for now. The word “ῆν” is in the imperfect tense, and I believe the rest of the line should make sense.

I’m going to avoid addressing the word “λογος” here because it’s worthy of a full post if not a full book. I’ll suffice it to say that this word is very complicated, one of the most complex I’ve encountered, and it has a meaning similar to the idea meant by Platonic form. In a sense, I think John is suggesting that it means an archetype, and suggesting a rather important theological idea.

και ὁ λογος ῆν προς τον θεόν

This one gets complicated due to the word “προς”, which in most Bibles translates into “with”, but it has many definitions. For example, from Luschnig/Mitchel, it’s translated as “to/towards” when the object takes the accusative. I have to look more into this word to see the possibilities, and it’s especially tricky because Google Translate only works with modern Greek.

However, roughly speaking, this translates into “and the Word was with God.” It actually translates directly into “and the Word was with the God”, but this is simply another example of how the Greek language works, just like we saw with “beginning.” One thing worth noting here, because the word “προς” (with) takes the accusative, the word for God “θεόν” is in the accusative rather than the nominative form.

και θεός ῆν ὁ λογος.

Here “God” is back in the nominative. This is a little interesting because the direct translation is technically “and God was the Word”, but in Greek, like with Latin, the endings of the words change based on their case, and thus their role in the sentence. This means that the order of the words is actually irrelevant. 

So finally, our English translation:

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

This concludes our first look into the Gospel of John, stay tuned for line 2.