Is Jesus God?

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

John 1:1

Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses both like argue that John 1:1 was not interpreted properly.  They will argue that when John said the word was God, he really meant that the Word was a God.  They argue that when John wrote chapter 1, he did not use the definite article before God at the end of verse 1.

The Definite Article Issue

About the best way to explain this is by looking at an interlinear Bible below.  In John 1:1, we have the original language (Koine Greek) with pronunciation on top and with interpretation on the bottom.

If you will notice, the definite article (the) is placed before Word and God in every situation except the last time God is mentioned.  This has led some to believe that the right way to interpret this verse is to say "The Word was a god."  The assumption is being made that if there is not a definite article (the) in front of God, then we are not talking about the God and Creator of all things.

Many Greek scholars who are much more qualified than I have disputed the legitimacy of the Jehovah Witness argument and claim that God is the better of translations in this case - and not a god.  But I am going to take this in another direction.

The book of John is 21 chapters long.  If you read the end of chapter 20 you would expect it to end there, but for some reason an epilogue was added on to the end of the book.  I hold that John originally intended to end his book after chapter 20, but added more material after second thought.

Chapter 20 wraps up by saying, "I wrote these things to you that you might believe...."  Chapter 20 also ends with the same confession with which the book of John began.  When Jesus came to Thomas and told him to touch him to see if in fact he was Jesus, Thomas said, "My Lord and my God (John 20:28)."

As is seen below, the definite article is left in this confession by Thomas.  John used Thomas' confession to tell us in two different ways that Jesus was God:
1.  If Jesus was not God, to call him God would be blasphemy. Thomas called Jesus his God.  Jesus commended him for his confession and called him blessed.
2.  John purposely began and ended his book with the one confession that Jesus is God.  John used the ultimate sandwich effect.  The sandwich effect is using the same idea at the beginning and at the end of a section of scripture.  It is used many times in the Bible.  In this case, he began and ended his book with the one confession and everything between was the meat in the sandwich.

1    1   En 1   Ἐν 1   In [the]

archē ἀρχῇ beginning

ēn ἦν was

ho ὁ the

Logos Λόγος  , Word

kai καὶ and

ho ὁ the

Logos Λόγος Word

ēn ἦν was

pros πρὸς with

ton τὸν  -

Theon Θεόν  , God

kai καὶ and

Theos Θεὸς God

ēn ἦν was

ho ὁ the

Logos Λόγος  . Word                  apekrithē 28   ἀπεκρίθη 28   answered 28    Thōmas Θωμᾶς Thomas kai καὶ and eipen εἶπεν said autō αὐτῷ  , to him HO Ὁ the Kyrios Κύριός Lord mou μου of me kai καὶ and ho ὁ the Theos Θεός God mou μου  ! of me

Stepping into the Shoes of Reuben

One of the more interesting ways of reading the Bible is to step into the shoes of people who are in the narratives.  By habit, I think most people do this to some degree; but in most cases people only step into the shoes of heroes such as the Apostles, David, Solomon, Abraham and Joseph.  By only stepping into heroes' shoes and by only seeing the world through their eyes, people often lose a significant amount of information, and a they don't get a large amount of the world in which the Bible characters lived.

One of the best overlooked stories is that of Reuben who was the first son of 12 boys born to Jacob in the book of Genesis.  Because we are so drawn to Joseph's journey, most of us overlook the other sons of Jacob and when it comes to Reuben, there are few other stories in the Bible that are as interesting as his.

Reuben was born into a family of wanderers - nomads.  As nomads, the family preferred to stay to themselves and made their best agreements (such as arranged marriages) with close relatives.  He lived in a world where politics began and ended within the family.  In his world, Reuben's father was a powerful and wealthy man who put fear and respect in the hearts of every city or town he visited or traded in.  Jacob had dozens of slaves, hired servants, cattle, goats, sheep, four wives, twelve sons and several daughters.  Reuben's father was a powerful man who built up his empire through brilliance, hard work, and deception.

Reuben was brought up to believe that he would inherit all that power and wealth in time.  He was already the head of the brothers and they looked up to and accepted his leadership among them.  But all that changed in one day when his father lined up family in order of importance, and for the first time in his life, Reuben realized that his father intended to give it all to the youngest brother (Benjamin was not yet born).  Maybe he sensed his father's excessive doting over Joseph before that day, but he took comfort knowing that he was still the oldest and therefore the one who would inherit leadership and preeminence over the brothers.

The day his father lined up the families, thus showing that Reuben was not the most important among the brother, Reuben's life changed. Genesis records this event like it was a small detail - just a story in the life of Jacob and his family.  But the next time Reuben was mentioned, he was having sex with his father's concubine - his step mother.

On one other occasion in the Bible a son slept with his father's concubines.  When King David ran from Jerusalem, while his son Absalom led a rebellion against his father, Absalom took 10 of David's concubines and had sex with each one of them publicly to shame David and to let the world know that he was breaking all ties to his father.

Reuben likewise was making a statement when he slept with his father's concubine/wife; but unlike Absalom  he didn't want to make his statement public.  He wanted to keep everything under the covers, but his father did find out and would bring it up only one time shortly before he died.  Until his death bed, nothing else was said, and when Reuben's father did finally break the silence, it was not good.  Jacob had never forgotten what Reuben did; and Reuben lost any possibility of future leadership in his family.

Step into Reuben's shoes as he tried to make things up to his dad throughout his life.  In other words, look at what he did through the rest of his story and ask yourself if what he did looks like someone who was trying to make up for a heinous crime.

Step into his shoes as he tried to regain his father's trust when the other brothers wanted to kill Joseph.  Step into his shoes when all of his plans to restore Joseph to his father failed.  Step into his shoes as he lost all leadership among the brothers and as Judah took over during famine and a time of family crisis.

His was a sad but real story of someone who acted in a moment of anger only to regret what he did the rest of his life.  All of this is there in Genesis but can only be discovered by stepping into his shoes and following his journey.

Context and Episodes

One of the best ways of discovering meaning in Biblical Narrative is by breaking down the entire book into episodes and then looking for connections between the episodes in close proximity.

The Tower of Babylon and The Call of Abraham (Genesis 11 and 12)

Here are the facts:
1.  Babylon wanted to make a name for themselves (fame) in chapter 11
2.  Babylon wanted to reach heaven.
3.  Babylon wanted to gather together to avoid spreading out into the world.

1.  God made a name for Abraham in Genesis 12.
2.  God in heaven reached down to Abraham.
3.  God called Abraham to go out from his own land.

Check out also how in previous episodes in Genesis, God told people to go out and fill the world.  This was a constant theme in the early chapters of Genesis.  The builders of the tower wanted to do the opposite - to gather together.  When God called Abraham, he told him to go out from among his land and his people and he obeyed.

Conclusions

To best understand Bible narrative, it is necessary to ask yourself these questions:
1.  What episode went before and what went after? 
2.  Are there themes, phrases, names, or words that connect the episodes?
3.  Is there anything in these episodes that are common?

1 Corinthians 16 - Timothy's Authority Questioned

So, I was reading the Bible last night, and I read 1 Corinthians 16:10-11 where it told the church to be nice to Timothy.

When Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you, for he is carrying on the work of the Lord, just as I am.  No one, then, should treat him with contempt. Send him on his way in peace so that he may return to me. I am expecting him along with the brothers.

Now I've read this verse hundreds of times before but I never before saw it.  I mean, there's only so much information you can take in at one time. Right?  Nevertheless, for some reason, this time, when I read it, something about it was different.  It seemed to say something it never did before, at least, I somehow missed what it said.

But as I read last night, I wondered if Paul was really telling his church to be nice to Timothy, and if so then: Why? 

IMMEDIATE CONTEXT

Maybe I never paid much attention to this verse in the past because of it's immediate context.  This verse is wedged between a lot of what I kind of considered traditional good byes in the end of Paul's letter to the Corinthian church.  Paul was just wrapping up his letter by updating the Corinthians about what was going on with people he was with.  He did this in many of his letters.  He would write things like, "So and so got sick, so I had to leave him in such and such a city."  And you know, "So and so says 'hi.'"  And "Don't forget to do this or that."  

Those types of updates were something Paul frequently did at the end of his letters.  So maybe for years I just overlooked 1 Corinthians 16:10-11, because I didn't expect to see anything important or interesting in his personal good-byes.

WHAT I READ INTO A PASSAGE

I suppose one of the other reasons I didn't see this verse before is that, I assumed Timothy held high esteem in any Christian Church he went to.  After all, Paul wrote letters to him and worked so much with him in his ministry.  So I naturally assumed that he would be held in certain honor in the churches.  And if I assumed already that Timothy would hold a certain amount of clout in Corinth, I would not quickly see that the opposite could have been true.

THE BACKGROUND

I wondered if the background of 1 Corinthians would help me to understand more of these verses.  So I went to BLB.org and typed "1 Cor" in the "Search" space.  Then when I was in 1 Corinthians, I went to the bottom of the page and chose "Introductions to the Bible" where I found and chose "The Epistles to the Corinthians."  Clicking on that title, I found the background to the Corinthians and read that Timothy was sent to Corinth (a very troubled church) and probably went with the letter of 1 Corinthians, as a representative of Paul.  As a representative of Paul, he went to check up on the Corinthian church and then to go back with a report to Paul.

I found this background interesting and I began to wonder if this was like a corporate thing where the absent boss's representative comes into the group of workers and is automatically shut out from the acceptance and inclusion of the represented. If this was the case, I could see why Paul needed to tell the church to be nice to Timothy.  I could picture Timothy coming to the Corinthians and feeling out of place and a bit shunned from the group.

That would be awkward.

WORD STUDIES

My next thought was this: "Maybe I am just reading this verse wrong."  Perhaps the original meanings of the words were different than what is portrayed in the English.  If I knew the original meanings, then I would see that Paul was not telling the church to be nice to him, but something else.  So I went to BLB.org and began looking at the most important words in the verses as they related to my curiosity - the words I thought would best help me to understand the passage - fear and contempt. 

Fear

I typed in 1 Corinthians 16 and when the screen went to my passage, (I scrolled down to verse 10, and clicked on "Tools" and then "Interlinear."  Once in "Interlinear" I went to "without fear" and chose Strong's number G870).

I saw right away that it was "aphobos" which reminded me of the English word "phobia" with an "a" in front of it.  I knew from a semester in Greek that an "a" in front of a word meant "without."  So in English this would be "without phobia."  But this is not English.  So I looked further down the page and found the meaning: "Without fear or boldly."

So I thought about that.  Was Paul trying to say that Timothy should be in the church boldly or without fear, or both?  The definitions seemed similar, but made a difference.  One meaning suggested that Timothy had reason to be afraid, but the other suggested that Timothy had no fear per se, but rather, he just needed room to be able to use his talents more.

I went to see how it was used in other areas of the Bible and especially in Paul's other writings.  I found that the NT used the word "without fear" 4 times.  In those verses, there is a wide range of meaning within the "boldly" sphere.

There are barriers to boldness.  Those barriers may be evil enemies or friendly people holding back those who should be kept silent. All of these verses share the same concept of finding space in an area constraints built by some group.  The space created by someone might not be good, such as the a person who fearlessly moved in among Christians with wild teachings or habits and created problems for the group of Christians.  But creating space for someone might have been good, such as times those who needed more space to preach the gospel in a hostile environment found space to do so.

From the study of the word "aphobos" I can now assume that Timothy was being held back in some way among the Corinthians.

Contempt

Timothy was held back because of the "contempt" of the Corinthians.  So I looked up this second word "contempt" to see if I could find anything there.  I found the Greek word was "exoutheneo."  Dr. Strong recorded that the word "exoutheneo" means, "to make no account of" or "to despise utterly."

To better and more clearly understand the word, I looked to how it was used in the NT and found that it was used 15 times in the NT.  I found that this word likewise had a range of meaning from "looking down on or overlooking someone or something,  to utterly despising someone or something.

TIMOTHY

The final area of study that I felt compelled to pursue was learning about Timothy himself.  So I went back to the Homepage of BLB.org and typed in Tim* with an asterix.  The asterix tells the website to include everything that has "tim" in it.  So Timothy was included with tim*.  Unfortunately, tim* occurs 777 times and too many unnecessary words were included such as "time" and "Timnah," so I retyped, "Timothy," and came up with 7 times used in the NT.

In most of these verses, Timothy was just one of Paul's coworkers.  But in a couple of verses, it was clear that Timothy needed direction from Paul.  This leads me to conclude that Timothy was more of a minion than an equal to Paul.

And with all of this information, I am beginning to come to a conclusion; but before I make all my conclusions, I need to check out one last lead.

THE BOOKS OF TIMOTHY

I remembered something about Timothy in one of the books Paul wrote to Timothy, so I reread through those books.  In those books I realized even more that Timothy needed direction from Paul.  And one of the directives was very telling: Years after he wrote 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to Timothy:

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity (1 Timothy 4:12).

CONCLUSION

After I put all the pieces together, I conclude that Timothy was not taken seriously by the Corinthians.  He was too young to be taken seriously.  Added to that, as a young man, he represented Paul's authority.  Comparing that to today, I imagine myself at work with a new boss half my age for whom I have no respect because he has no experience.

IS THAT A LESSON FOR ME?

We do have these situations from time to time at work or at church.  So I ask myself: will I "despise" such a person and the people responsible for putting him/her in that position?  Or will I acknowledge their authority and the people who put him/her in that position?

How different from the Corinthians am I?