It does not say the 'word of God' but 'the word was God. In any event it cannot be interpreted so easily as to state that Jesus was/is God.
In the beginning: also the first words of the Old Testament (
Gn 1:1). Was: this verb is used three times with different meanings in this verse: existence, relationship, and predication. The Word (Greek
logos): this term combines God’s dynamic, creative word (Genesis), personified preexistent Wisdom as the instrument of God’s creative activity (Proverbs), and the ultimate intelligibility of reality (Hellenistic philosophy). With God: the Greek preposition here connotes communication with another. Was God: lack of a definite article with “God” in Greek signifies predication rather than identification.
What came to be: while the oldest manuscripts have no punctuation here, the corrector of Bodmer Papyrus P75, some manuscripts, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers take this phrase with what follows, as staircase parallelism. Connection with
Jn 1:3 reflects fourth-century anti-Arianism.
Yes, I got a little ahead of myself since I’ve been disputing with Trinitarians about this verse for more years than should be for their understanding.
Yes, ‘In the beginning was the word’. I prefaced the point by noting that it was ‘GOD’s word as shown in Genesis.
I then showed that the term,‘God’, means all things superlative, such as mightiest, most glorious, all powerful, etc.
It then becomes clear that ‘
the utterance of the all powerful deity was itself
all powerful’ -which gives rise to the part of the verse that states:
‘
The word was
God’.
There then is no contradiction in John 1:1 concerning who created: ‘The almighty utterance (‘Let there be light’) of the almighty deity was what created all things. And nothing was created except by that glorious utterance’.
Everything uttered by the mighty, ruling deity was monumental and prophetic. He stated that a saviour, a messiah, was to come to rid mankind of the sin of Adam.., and do it was. This is set out as ‘In the fullness of time God sent his son born of a woman into the world’.
So saying, we have ‘the word [of God] was made flesh…. A promise fulfilled…!
Is it just an English saying, or is it universal, that a promise uttered by someone, when fulfilled, when brought to fruition, when enacted, is said to ‘Put on flesh’, ‘To put flesh on the bones of the promise’, ‘To come in the flesh’?
For that is exactly what occurred: God’s promise came to be. The Jews had sought the promise for over 400 years between the old and new testaments… and suddenly it was upon them: A star was seen in the east which signified the coming of a new king!!
But this was disappointedly to them not an earthly king - this king was greater than any other - a spiritual king - but they did not accept him since their minds were of earthly matters.