The James Moffatt translation renders John 1:1 as:
THE Logos existed in the very beginning, the Logos was with God, the Logos was divine.
Acknowledging that the original autographs of Scripture are lost to us, is there warrant within the extant manuscripts to render this as "the Logos was divine" rather than "was God"?
According Daniel B Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (GGBB), page 269 -
The most likely candidate for Θεός [in John 1:1c] is qualitative. This is true both grammatically (for the largest proportion of pre-verbal anarthrous predicate nominative nominative fall into this category) and theologically (both the theology of the Fourth Gospel and the NT as a whole) ...
That is, Wallace believes (quite correctly) that in John 1:1c, "the Word was God" is a category statement (such as saying, "my car is a Ford", or, "this animal is a monkey", etc). Wallace continues in the next paragraph -
Such an option does not impugn the deity of Christ. Rather, it stresses that, although the person of Christ is not the person of the Father, their essence is identical.
Interestingly, in David Bentley Hart's translation of the NT, he attempts to convey the same idea by translating John 1:1c as, "the Logos was god" (small "g").
I believe that the brilliant scholar, Moffatt (with whom I often disagree) attempts to convey the same idea by translating, "the Logos was divine".
Therefore, I agree (in this instance) with Moffatt. Perhaps, if one insists upon translating nouns with nouns (some do), then one might "improve" Moffatt's translation by suggesting, "The Word was divinity", but this is awkward.
What John did NOT write
John did write this - καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος (literally, the Word was God.)
It is well known that John chose his words very carefully under inspiration. Here is what John did NOT write:
Let's take a look at how it's rendered in the Greek (John 1:1 Greek New Testament):
"᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος."
How was the phrase "God was the Word" rendered in Greek? "Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος" (Theos ēn ho Logos). Notice that the word Theos is without the article ho.
What is the difference between Theos and ho Theos? (Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary of the Bible, by Ernst Haenchen, p. 109)
"In order to avoid misunderstanding, it may be asserted here that Theos and ho Theos ('god, divine' and 'the God') were not the same thing in this period. Philo has therefore written: 'The Logos means only Theos (‘divine’) and not ho Theos (‘God’) since the logos is not God in the strict sense.” Philo was not thinking of giving up Jewish monotheism. In a similar fashion, Origen, too, interprets: 'The Evangelist does not say that the logos is ‘God,’ but only that the logos is ‘divine.’' In fact, for the author of the hymn, as for the Evangelist, only the Father was 'God' (ho Theos; cf. 17:3); 'the Son' was subordinate to him (cf. 14:28)."
What does Theos without the article ho mean in this instance? "divine". Hence, the rendering "the Logos was divine" is correct.
The word in question here is the Greek word θεός (Theos), which is a noun. If "divine" is being used as a noun that is synonymous with "God", I don't see any issue here. On the other hand, if "divine" is being used as an adjective, that would be an incorrect rendering of the Greek. Theos is not an adjective describing god-like qualities, but a noun referring to God.
Theos is a very standard term for referring to God. Theos occurs 311 times in the New Testament and always refers to God or false gods. (see here). It also occurs more than 1,000 times in various forms.
If Theos doesn't mean God there are an awful lot of passages we would need to re-translate, including significant statements like:
I am the God of Abraham (Matthew 22:32)
Who can forgive sins but God alone? (Luke 5:21)
Should Theos be translated as "divine" in those passages? My two cents are that the translation "divine" artificially complicates the passage by hinting at an adjectival meaning not found in the Greek.
Translations have to pay attention to grammar, but they also have to pay attention to basic logic and cultural cues. Saying "the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God" makes no sense. It fails a basic logic test - something cannot be with something and also be that something on a normal understanding of these sorts of words. So something's gotta give. The question is what.
Moffatt's translation has the advantage of making sense. Something can be both with God and divine. The question "is it representative of the original" is vague. The question I have is, what was the intent with the original sentence? What was John trying to say? How would it typically be received? Was he trying to make a logically (seemingly) paradoxical sentence? Some trinitarians would say he was! Or was he trying to express something else?
Related to this are background beliefs about John's conception of the logos, John's conception of God, and John's conception of Jesus. It is basically impossible to translate this sentence without working beliefs about those respective concepts re John, IMHO.
If you think that logos here = Jesus = person of trinity, you might not have a problem with the typical translation, because 'God' is basically a category containing 3 persons - so the sentence makes sense (in a mysterian kind of way). It could be paraphrased as "God the Son was with God the Father, and God the Son was of the category 'God'".
Yet, is this how ancient Greek culture would have understood the term 'logos'? No. It was, indeed, something related to words - discourse, reason, God's unfolding principle - things like that. If that's your view, how do you translate the last part of John 1:1?
Consider REV commentary on John 1:1
"“the word.” “Word” is translated from the Greek word logos (#3056 λόγος ). It refers to God’s reason as played out in His plan and purpose. It is important that Christians have a basic understanding of logos, which is translated as “Word” in most versions of John 1:1. Most Trinitarians believe that logos refers directly to Jesus Christ, so in most Bibles logos is capitalized as “Word” (some versions even put “Jesus Christ” instead of “Word” in John 1:1). However, a study of the Greek word logos shows that it occurs more than 300 times in the New Testament, and in both the NIV and the KJV it is capitalized only 7 times (and even those versions disagree on exactly when to capitalize it). When a word that occurs more than 300 times is capitalized fewer than 10 times, it is obvious that when to capitalize and when not to capitalize is a translators’ decision based on their particular understanding of Scripture. Below are five points to consider. [...]"
I recommend the rest of the commentary at the link above.
As with many things in scripture, where you stand on a 'representative' translation of this line is going to depend on where you sit in terms of background beliefs about the word 'logos', the writer John's beliefs about that word, and so on. Because the REV translators understand 'logos' here as meaning roughly 'plan', they translate John 1:1 as
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and what God was the word was. (ibid.)
And what if we paraphrased it to more accurately convey the intended meaning?
Once we understand the logos in John 1:1 to be God’s purpose and plan, we can see that if John 1:1 was written in today’s English, we would likely say something like, “In the beginning was the plan, and God had that plan, and what God was the plan was.”
It is not representative of the original:
First, "divine" is an adjective, θεὸς is a noun. If the original writer had intended to make such a statement, they could have used the adjective, θεῖος, which means "divine." For example:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3-4 ESV)
Second, if the writer intended to represent the Word as having only a divine nature, that was done by the first two statements:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God...
There is no need to "muddy the waters" by adding καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
