William Barclay (died 1978 in Glasgow, Scotland) was a Scottish author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister, and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow. He wrote a popular set of Bible commentaries on the New Testament that have sold over 1.5 million copies.
Categories: Islam
man you are a joke since what he says decimates your very point.
Ah Sam. How are you doing..
The Prologue of John differs radically in lexical structure, content and philosophical theme from the entirety of the Gospel of John, leading many veteran biblical scholars to conclude that this portion was not part of the original gospel.
If this prologue of John was part of the original gospel, we would expect it to be consistent in theme, structure, orientation, style with the rest of the text. Since, theologically motivated corruption has been proven to have occurred with many NT passages including the famous 1 John 5:7, it is not impossible or improbable that the Prologue of John is another such example.
Finally, this video seems to bring some much needed light on this issue:
Sam, I hope you respond to the video:
Sam is right here; Barclays comes close, but Dan Wallace is better.
As ii is, Barclay decimates Islamic arguments.
Dan Wallace’s Greek grammar & the early church & creeds refute the liberal William Barclay – the lack of article refutes Modalism / Sabellianism. It does not refute Deity of Christ or Trinitarian theology.
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/john-11-and-the-word-was-god/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
One holy book but has different interpretation about God.
Should we follow it?
I don’t think so!
“Jesus was not identical with God”
This is exactly what Dr. William Barclay says concerning John 1:1 which is the very point of this post!
The ordained Anglican priest and Cambridge theologian, Professor Don Cupitt writes:
“One point of detail is significant. Unlike English, Greek makes a distinction between ‘God” without an article in front of it, and “the God,” with an article. Without an article, the word “God” is being used predicatively, and has rather the same meaning as the English adjective “divine”. Thus in John 1:1, “the Word was God” means roughly, “the Word was divine.” With the article, “the God” means God the Father, the God of Israel, Yahweh, God the unique individual as known by His proper name. So in the same verse, “the Word was with ( the) God” means “the Word was with God the Father.” The distinction between the two ways of using the word God is important, but unfortunately the English language does not mark it clearly. As a result, our English translations of John 1:1 read, very confusingly: “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” It would be less misleading to translate: “The Word was with the Father, and the Word was divine.”
“However, even this will not quite do as a translation because it could suggest that there is a class of beings, of whom the Father is one and the Word is another; whereas for all Jews, including the early Christians, there is only one God. To avoid this difficulty the line ought to be retranslated, “the Word was with God the Father and THE WORD WAS THE FATHER’S OWN WORD” to stress that the Word is not an independent divine being, but is only God’s own self-expression.
If all this is correct then even John’s language about Jesus still falls within the scope of the King-Ambasssador model, though the model is here coming under some strain.”
(Cupitt, Don. “The Debate About Christ.”, 1995, SCM Press – https://www.amazon.com/Debate-About-Christ-Cupitt-1979-06-01/dp/B01FJ0SWDM)