The Word

There are so many different ways people have tried to translate John 1:1b, "the Word was God"(NIV). The problem is that in the Greek the word order is different. In the Greek it literally reads "God was the Word". Why, or how do translators end up with "the Word was God"? The answer is found in the Greek language. In the Greek language word order is used differently than in English. In English there is no way to tell which noun, God or Word, is the subject and which is the predicate nominative except by word order. In Greek it is different. The Greeks have several ways of separating the subject from the direct object, indirect object or in this case the predicate nominative. They did so by inflection. The words, nouns and articles had different forms for different parts of speech. So even though both God and Word are in the nominative, since they both are nominative, only the subject would have a nominative article in front of it. The word of God is the correct order because only "the word" has an article in front of it showing that it is the subject. But why did the Greeks put God before "the Word"? The Greeks did use word order. But they used it to express what was the most important thing in a sentence the author might be emphasizing. So back to our verse, God is first and the Word is second, but it has the article so the Word is the subject. But the author has God first so we know the author was putting equal emphasis on it. Both God and His son, the Word, are equal but separate. This according to Daniel Wallace is an expression of the Trinity. Jesus Christ is God and has all the attributes that the Father has. But Jesus is not the first person of the Trinity, God is (Wallace, 266-269).