"Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so." — Acts 17:11

Series: The Berean Examinations — Study B01 Tradition Examined: Jehovah's Witnesses (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society) Blueprint Dependencies: Studies 1, 5, 10, 13

Preface: The Berean Charter

This study opens a new series, and the series needs its charter stated once, plainly.

The twenty studies of the Theological Blueprint built a positive case: one God, the Father; one Lord, the human Messiah he begat, anointed, raised, and enthroned. The Berean Examinations now do what the Bereans of Acts 17 did — take specific teachings, held by specific traditions, and examine the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Three commitments govern every study. First, every doctrine examined will be stated from the tradition's own authoritative sources, so accurately that its members would sign the summary. Second, the examination targets teachings, never people — their sincerity, intelligence, and standing before God are not this series' jurisdiction. Third, the series critiques in both directions from the Blueprint's position: traditions that make Jesus God Almighty, and traditions that make him a created angel — because a framework that only ever aims one way is a tribe, not a method.

That third commitment is why this study comes first. The Blueprint spent its summit studies (10, 16, 17, 18) engaging the Trinitarian reading with full honors. Study B01 turns the same instruments the other way — toward the best-known alternative rendering of the Bible's most contested verse: the New World Translation's John 1:1.

I. The Claim

The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (2013 revision), the Bible produced and used by Jehovah's Witnesses, renders John 1:1:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god."

The rendering expresses a definite Christology, stated across the Watch Tower Society's standard references. Per Insight on the Scriptures (vol. 2, article "Jesus Christ") and the study book What Does the Bible Really Teach? (ch. 4 and Appendix, "Who Is Jesus Christ?"), the Word is Jehovah's first creation — "the firstborn of all creation" understood as first-created (Col 1:15), "the beginning of the creation by God" (their reading of Rev 3:14) — a mighty pre-human spirit being through whom Jehovah made all other things, identified in Watchtower teaching with Michael the archangel. "A god," in this theology, means a powerful divine one — godlike, mighty — but emphatically not Jehovah: not almighty, not eternal, created.

Two boundaries for this study. The Michael identification, and the Watchtower readings of Colossians 1:15 and Revelation 3:14, are substantial claims deserving their own examination — they are docketed as Study B03, where the Blueprint's firstborn and archē findings (Studies 3, 18) await them. B01 examines the foundational claim beneath them all: that John 1:1c teaches the Word is "a god" — a second, subordinate, created divine being.

II. The Case For

Per the Berean charter, the Watchtower's argument is presented here at full strength — and it is a more serious argument than its critics usually allow. Six pillars:

1. The missing article. In Greek, John 1:1c reads kai theos ēn ho logos — and theos ("god") stands without the definite article. Greek has no indefinite article ("a/an"); translators must supply it wherever context warrants, and every translation does so constantly ("a prophet," "a king," "a son"). The Watchtower argues the anarthrous (article-less) theos here signals indefiniteness: not "the God," but "a god."

2. The internal distinction. John 1:1b states the Word was "with God" — and there the Greek has the article: pros ton theon, "with the God." The Watchtower presses the contrast: if the Word was with the God, the Word cannot be the God — John's own grammar distinguishes them. So 1:1c must assert something lesser than identity: the Word was a divine one, a god.

3. The Colwell correction — where the Watchtower is right. For decades, Trinitarian apologists invoked "Colwell's Rule" (E. C. Colwell, 1933) as if it proved 1:1c definite ("the Word was [the] God"). Watchtower literature has long objected that this misstates the rule — Colwell described a tendency of already-definite predicate nouns to drop the article before the verb; the rule cannot establish that a given noun is definite. On this point, mainstream Greek scholarship agrees with the Watchtower: the popular apologetic use of Colwell was a misapplication, and honesty requires this series to say so plainly.

4. Parallel renderings. Comparable constructions are rendered indefinitely elsewhere without controversy: the Maltese islanders said Paul "was a god" (Acts 28:6); John 10:33 can be read "you, being a man, make yourself a god." And respected non-Witness translators have declined the traditional rendering of 1:1c: James Moffatt ("the Logos was divine") and Edgar Goodspeed ("the Word was divine") — cited in Watchtower publications as evidence that "the Word was God" is not the only scholarly option.

5. Scripture's own "gods." The Bible itself applies elohim/theos to beings other than Jehovah: the divine council of Psalm 82 (a passage this very series defended at length in Study 5), Moses made "God" to Pharaoh (Ex 7:1), even "the god of this age" (2 Cor 4:4). If Scripture's own usage permits "gods" in a subordinate sense, "a god" for the exalted Word is biblically thinkable.

6. The motive. Beneath the grammar stands an intention this series must honor: Jehovah's Witnesses believe the Trinity dishonors the Father by making the Son his co-equal, and their rendering is — in their understanding — an act of fidelity to the supremacy of the one God. Whatever the examination finds, it should be said clearly: the impulse to guard the Father's unrivaled Godhood is the impulse this entire series shares.

III. The Examination

Now the Berean work. Five findings.

Finding 1: The grammar's best account is neither "the God" nor "a god" — but a third thing

The construction in 1:1c — an anarthrous predicate noun standing before the verb — was studied definitively by Philip Harner ("Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns," Journal of Biblical Literature, 1973). Harner examined this construction across John and Mark and found it overwhelmingly qualitative: it describes the nature, character, quality of the subject — not its identity (definite) and not its membership in a class (indefinite). Applied to 1:1c: John is telling us what the Word was like in nature — everything God is, the Word was. The New English Bible captured it exactly: "what God was, the Word was."

Readers of the Blueprint's tenth study will recognize this as the reading that series adopted — and will recall that it declines both traditional options at once: not "the Word was [the] God" (which John's own article-bearing ton theon in 1:1b was crafted to avoid — the Watchtower's second pillar is correct as far as it goes), and not "the Word was a god" (a second divine individual). And here a striking fact deserves the light: the Watchtower's own cited witnesses testify for this third option. Moffatt's and Goodspeed's "the Word was divine" are qualitative renderings — statements about nature, not indefinite articles about class membership. The scholars the Trinity brochure enlists against "was God" were not voting for "a god"; they were voting for Harner's category. The Watchtower's best translation witnesses support the Blueprint's reading, not the NWT's.

Finding 2: The NWT's own page refutes its own principle

Here is the examination's central test, and any reader with an NWT can run it in ninety seconds. If the absence of the Greek article requires the rendering "a god," the principle must hold wherever anarthrous theos appears. Now read the rest of John chapter 1 in the NWT itself:

  • 1:6 — "There came a man who was sent as a representative of God (para theou — no article)." Not "a god."
  • 1:12 — "he gave authority to become God's children (tekna theou — no article)." Not "a god's children."
  • 1:13 — "born... from God (ek theou — no article)." Not "from a god."
  • 1:18 — "No man has seen God at any time (theon — no article)." Not "no man has seen a god."

Four anarthrous occurrences of theos in the same chapter — the NWT renders every one of them "God." The indefinite principle is applied exactly once in John 1: at verse 1c, the verse where the doctrine requires it. Let the finding be stated with precision and without heat: by the New World Translation's own practice on the same page, the rendering "a god" is doctrine-driven, not grammar-driven. A translation principle that operates only where the theology needs it is not a translation principle; it is the theology, translated.

Finding 3: "A god" collides with Jehovah's own testimony

Set the grammar aside entirely and grant the rendering for argument's sake. What would 1:1c then assert? That alongside the God there exists a second, created, genuinely divine being — "a god," formed by Jehovah before all other things. Now open the prophetic corpus the Watchtower most treasures — the book from which the name Jehovah's Witnesses is drawn (Isa 43:10) — and read the sentence that stands in that very verse:

"'You are my witnesses,' declares Yahweh, '...that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.'" (Isa 43:10)

No god was formed — before or after. A created "god" is, by definition, a god formed after Jehovah — the precise thing Jehovah's own witness-commissioning verse declares impossible. The surrounding chapters close every exit: "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god" (44:6); "Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any" (44:8); "I am Yahweh, and there is no other, besides me there is no God" (45:5 — readers of Study 1 have walked this ground). The NWT's rendering does not escape the Trinity's difficulties; it exchanges them for a collision with the Shema from the opposite side — a two-tier theism (one almighty God above one created god) that Isaiah 40–48 was written, line by line, to demolish. The Watchtower's motive is to protect Jehovah's supremacy; the rendering undermines it at the exact point Jehovah staked his witnesses' name.

Finding 4: The elohim flexibility is real — and it does not reach this verse

The Watchtower's fifth pillar deserves an honest answer, because this series is bound by its own record: Study 5 argued at length that elohim marks realm, not rank — Scripture does apply the word to council beings, and the Blueprint will not retreat from that. But watch how Scripture deploys the flexibility. The council elohim are creatures under a death sentence (Ps 82:7); the nations' gods are shedim, demons (Deut 32:17); Moses is elohim "to Pharaoh" — a functional analogy inside one sentence (Ex 7:1). Nowhere does a faithful writer instruct believers to confess a second god as an article of faith. And no writer guards the boundary more tightly than John — the evangelist of "the glory that comes from the only God" (5:44) and of the Messiah's own creed: "you, the only true God" (17:3 — Blueprint Study 13). The Gospel that closes with the monos alēthinos theos on Jesus' praying lips did not open by enrolling deity number two in its first sentence. Whatever elohim can stretch to describe in Israel's cosmology, John 1:1 is a confessional text — and the confession of a second god is precisely what John's Gospel exists to exclude.

Finding 5: The shared premise — where Watchtower and Nicaea agree, and both should be examined

Now the finding that shows why this study opens the series. Step back and observe what the Watchtower reading and the Trinitarian reading have in common: both take the logos of John 1:1 to be a second personal being existing alongside God before creation. They then fight over that being's résumé — uncreated and co-equal (Nicaea) or created and subordinate (Arius, whose ancient reading the Watchtower substantially revives, as its own literature acknowledges with approval of Arius' subordinationism). Sixteen centuries of debate have been conducted almost entirely inside that shared premise.

The Blueprint's tenth study examined the premise itself — and found it foreign to the verse's Hebrew inheritance. In Israel's Scriptures, God's word is not a second being: "by the word of Yahweh the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host" (Ps 33:6) — his own self-expression, his wisdom beside him (Prov 8), personified as Jewish literature masterfully personifies, and never counted as a second god by any Jewish reader. Read with those ears, John 1:1 needs neither an eternal second person nor a created archangel: in the beginning was God's own word; the word was with God — his own, as a plan is with its planner; and what God was, the word was — his very self-expression. Then the hinge of history: "the word became flesh" (1:14) — embodied at last in the man Jesus the Messiah, begotten in Mary (Study 6), anointed at the Jordan (Study 11). The grammar is satisfied (qualitative, per Harner and per the Watchtower's own cited translators); the Shema is untouched (no second god — created or uncreated); and the Word's career lands where John lands it: in a human being full of grace and truth, the Father's self-expression with a face.

One verse; three readings. Two of them install a second divine person and then dispute his origin. The third finds in the verse what a first-century Jewish reader would have found — and it is the only one of the three that Isaiah 43:10 does not touch.

IV. The Restoration

The Blueprint's positive teaching, applied (Study 10 in summary; Studies 1, 5, 13 supporting):

In the beginning was the word — God's own creative self-expression, the davar that made the heavens (Ps 33:6), the wisdom beside him delighting in the children of men (Prov 8:30–31). And the word was with God — his own, intimate as speech to a speaker, a plan with its planner (Job 23:14). And what God was, the word was — fully divine in quality because fully his: not a second god of any rank, but the one God in self-expression. And the word became flesh — the plan became a person: Jesus of Nazareth, the human Messiah, in whom the Father's self-expression lives, breathes, heals, dies, and rises. He is not Jehovah. He is not an archangel. He is what the word became — the only-begotten Son, the image of the invisible God, the man in whom the fullness was pleased to dwell — and his own creed remains the measure of every reading: "this is everlasting life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent" (John 17:3; Blueprint Study 13).

V. Speaking With, Not About

The people who hold the doctrine examined above will, in many readers' lives, knock on an actual door. This section is for that moment.

Begin with genuine affirmation — there is much to affirm. Jehovah's Witnesses hold, at real social cost, several convictions this series shares against the broader tradition: that the Trinity is not a biblical doctrine; that the Father alone is the Most High; that the divine name matters; that the immortal-soul doctrine is foreign to Scripture; that God's purpose ends not in an ethereal heaven but in paradise on earth (their earthly hope and Study 20's descended city are, whatever their differences, neighbors). A Biblical Unitarian is the rarest visitor a Witness ever meets: one who agrees the Trinity is unbiblical — and that agreement, offered early and honestly, dissolves the scripted defenses their training anticipates and makes a real conversation possible.

Ask Berean questions, never gotchas. The difference is intent and tone: a gotcha wants to win; a Berean question wants to read together. Three that open doors: "Could we read John 1:6, 12, 13, and 18 together in the NWT? I'm trying to understand why 1:1 alone gets 'a god' when the Greek is article-less in all five places." — "How would you fit Isaiah 43:10 — 'before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me' — with a Word who was formed and is a god?" — "Have you seen the third option scholars discuss — not 'the God,' not 'a god,' but 'what God was, the Word was'? Moffatt and Goodspeed, whom the Society quotes, actually held that view. Could we look at it?" Then — this is the discipline — listen to the answer.

Avoid what closes doors. The word "cult" (it ends every conversation it enters; "the organization," their own term, keeps doors open). Mockery of the name Jehovah. Leading with 1914, blood, or shunning — real issues, but peripheral to the person's faith-center, and experienced as attack. Triumphalism of any kind: the person at your door has absorbed more doorstep hostility than most Christians will face in a lifetime, and one more opponent teaches them nothing new — while one honest, warm, scripturally serious conversation may be the first of its kind they have ever had.

Carry the pastoral center. Many Witnesses privately carry the Isaiah 43:10 tension already; some carry the John 1 inconsistency too. The goal of a doorstep, a lunch break, or a family holiday is never to win it. It is to leave one honest question glowing — and to be the kind of person they could bring the question back to. "The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone... correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim 2:24–25) — God may grant: the outcome was never ours to force.

VI. The Berean Standard, Turned Homeward

One closing word, and it is the series' safeguard. The Bereans were called noble not for agreeing with Paul but for examining him — and the standard that examined an apostle's preaching certainly examines ours. Every finding in this study is checkable: open a Greek text and an NWT to John 1; open Isaiah 43; read Harner. Do it. And when this series examines the next tradition, and the next, apply the same eagerness to the Blueprint itself — "examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things are so." A framework that fears that examination deserves to fail it. This one invites it — at every door, in both directions, with all eagerness.

Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one — not two, not three; not one supreme and one created; one — and the word by which he made the heavens has become flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth: Jesus the Messiah, the Son of the only true God.

Next in the Berean Examinations: B02 — The Exclusive Use of the Divine Name: the claim that the pronunciation "Jehovah" is a requirement of true worship, examined alongside the intimacy the Messiah introduced — "Our Father."