123 A Grammatical Analysis of John 1,1 it could just as well have read: ὁ λόγος ἦν ὁ θεός”. But how can the word Θεός” be unique, when the word as such in the Greek language is used of many gods? And why should the articular predicate be καὶ ὁ Λόγος (subject) ἦν ὁ Θεός (predicacte) and not καὶ ὁ Θεός (predicate) ἦν ὁ Λόγος (subject)? Depending on the context and emphasis, in Greek either form could be correct. Most scholars, it would appear, settle for the “qualitative” use of the predicate. The problem with this explanation is that it opens the way to substituting the noun Θεός with the adjective θεῖος143. Since Greek does have an adjective to express qualitative significance, but does not use it here, it is obvious that John’s meaning cannot be expressed by θεῖος. Instead, we need to understand the anarthrous Θεός as was defined above, of that which distinguishes, demarcates, and defines God from the various categories of creatures. Thus, it is unnecessary to interpret Θεός qualitatively, i.e. “what God was the Word was”, which is rather inelegant, or use θεῖος i.e. “the Word was divine” and then try to produce safeguards for what we mean by ‘divine’. When John wrote καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος, he simply meant “and God was the Word”. This, expressed according to the English idiom, becomes: “and the Word was God”, although the emphasis of the original on Θεός is gone. This is the best we can do in English, which, as has already been hinted at, is not an adequate translation of the original. But the reason for this, as we have seen above, is due to the fact that the uses of the Greek article do not coincide with those of the English article. 3. Possibilities of the sentence grammar (Syntax) Jan v.d. Watt: The grammar of words was considered above. This should not be done in isolation. Words form sentences through interrelatedness to generate meaning. In this light we now move onto a consideration of the grammar of sentences (syntax) and their contribution to the semantic process. The first five verses of John 1 form a subsection of John 1,1-18. Our focus falls on the first verse, but since it is structurally linked to the rest it should be considered as such. Θεῖος is applied to humans as well, cf. e.g. the Homeric δῖος = (-Ζεῦς, ∆ιός) = “belong- 143 ing to Zeus”, i.e. “divine”. Further Pindaros, Pythian Odes, VI. 38: ὁ Θεῖος ἀνήρ “the divine man”, not to speak of ὁ θεῖος Πλάτων “the divine Platon”.