NT Greek Syntax vs. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses
John 10:30-33 has an interesting slice of dialogue between Jesus and certain adversarial Jews:
30 I and my Father are one.” 31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “Many good works have I shown you from my Father; for which of those works do you stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, saying, “For a good work we would not stone you; but for blasphemy; and because that you, being a man, make yourself God.”
The end of verse 33 is typically taken by both Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses (for different reasons) as better translated, “. . . you, being a man, make yourself a god,” thereby muting this passage as a testimony to the deity of Jesus. They argue that the absence of the definite article before θεόν in verse 33 justifies the translation, “a god.”
This claim can be easily and quickly tested with a syntax search. The search query below asks for all clauses where the predicator of the clause can be any finite verbs except εἰμί where the subject complement is the lexeme θεός with no definite article present. Any clause component can intervene between these two elements.
This search yields the following results:
It should be clear that several of these examples do not lend themselves contextually to an indefinite translation (”a god”), and so this argument cannot be sustained. If you don’t read Greek, you can look up the results in English: Acts 5:29; Gal. 4:8, 9; 1 Thess. 1:9; 4:1; 2 Thess. 1:8; Titus 3:8; Heb. 9:14. If you have Libronix, you can download the syntax search and put it in My Documents/Libronix DLS/SyntaxQueries.
MSH @ May 8, 2008
Michael,
Great post.
I just stumbled onto your blog and this kind of stuff is really facinating!
thanks again.
bob (fellow Logos user)
[…] Uncategorized — true54blue @ 10:04 Today’s Logos’ blog post refers to a post by Michael Heiser in which he looks at John 10:30-33 using Logos’ syntax search. He is seeking to undermine the […]
Where do the Mormons make this claim?
[…] Another Mike is bringing Greek Syntax into the 21st Century and challenging the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Is he right? Well, go do the search yourself! […]
For nitsav: Mormons want the Ps82 quotation to refer to the Jews (and people) because they seek to cast elohim as having bodies–as being deified former humans–and because they believe God was formerly a man and by nature embodied. You should check out the exchange between myself and D. Bokovy in the recent Mormon journal (FARMS) where this becomes evident. You’d have to read my article first, then Daniel’s, then my rejoinder. The issue is at:
http://www.farms.byu.edu/publications/reviewvolume.php?volume=19&number=1
Thanks to all for the links and comments!
“If you have Libronix, you can download the syntax search and put it in My Documents/Libronix DLS/SyntaxQueries.”
How do you do this?
Thanks!
To Japannet: If you have the 3.0 version of the Libronix (Logos) software, it comes with the syntax databases. You’d just have to donwload the search at the link I provided and put it in the folder I specified. One caveat–the “SyntaxQueries” folder is only created in your My Documents menu AFTER you first save a syntax search of your own. If you have the software and haven’t used it, just go to Search>Syntax search>create ANYTHING as a search, then save it and give it a name. The folder will then be created (you can always delete the dummy search you made just to create the folder). If you don’t have the software, the link is: http://www.logos.com/products
just stumbled in here while checking for any late news from Sir Heiser. I’m a longtime reader/follower of Michael’s work so I’ll be hanging here