Confusion at family devotions
Not long ago, a friend of mine was reading the Bible with his family. His kids had picked out some new Bibles – New Living Translations – so he brought home another copy he had at the office so they could all be on the same page. He started reading from John 1, but he didn’t get far before red flags began to fly. In verse 3 he read, “He [the Word] created everything there is.” Wait a minute, he thought. That goes against what I believe about creation and the distinctive roles of the members of the Trinity! The confusion only grew as his kids chimed in, “Daddy, that’s not what mine says!” (Their NLT said, “God created all things through him.”) My friend decided to check his Greek New Testament, and discovered that the word θεὸς did not even occur in this verse. What was going on here? Why were these two NLT versions so different from one another and from the other English versions he knew? And most importantly, do these differences reflect arbitrary translation choices, or are they theologically significant?
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