Passage

John 1.1-14

Book: John · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Verse

ASV:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. 4. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not. 6. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. 7. The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. 8. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light. 9. There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. 10. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. 11. He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. 12. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13. who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-14, ASV)

WEB:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made. 4. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it. 6. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. 7. The same came as a witness, that he might testify about the light, that all might believe through him. 8. He was not the light, but was sent that he might testify about the light. 9. The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world. 10. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world didn’t recognize him. 11. He came to his own, and those who were his own didn’t receive him. 12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name: 13. who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-14, WEB)

KJV:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. 8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-14, KJV)

YLT:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; 2. this one was in the beginning with God; 3. all things through him did happen, and without him happened not even one thing that hath happened. 4. In him was life, and the life was the light of men, 5. and the light in the darkness did shine, and the darkness did not perceive it. 6. There came a man, having been sent from God, whose name [is] John, 7. this one came for testimony, that he might testify about the Light, that all might believe through him; 8. that one was not the Light, but, that he might testify about the Light. 9. He was the true Light, which doth enlighten every man, coming to the world; 10. in the world he was, and the world through him was made, and the world did not know him: 11. to his own things he came, and his own people did not receive him; 12. but as many as did receive him to them he gave authority to become sons of God, to those believing in his name, 13. who, not of blood nor of a will of flesh, nor of a will of man but, of God were begotten. 14. And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-14, YLT)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. [...] 13. who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth. 15. John beareth witness of him, and crieth, saying, This was he of whom I said, He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me. 16. For of his fulness we all received, and grace for grace." (John 1:1-16, ASV)

WEB:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. [...] 13. who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. 15. John testified about him. He cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me, for he was before me.’” 16. From his fullness we all received grace upon grace." (John 1:1-16, WEB)

KJV:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. [...] 13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 15. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. 16. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." (John 1:1-16, KJV)

YLT:

"1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; 2. this one was in the beginning with God; [...] 13. who, not of blood nor of a will of flesh, nor of a will of man but, of God were begotten. 14. And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth. 15. John doth testify concerning him, and hath cried, saying, 'This was he of whom I said, He who after me is coming, hath come before me, for he was before me;' 16. and out of his fulness did we all receive, and grace over-against grace;" (John 1:1-16, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: John the Apostle (Johannine authorship, the traditional view) / narrator
Audience: the early church of the late first century, facing the early Gnostic / Docetic heresies and the lingering question of Jesus's relationship to the OT Yahweh
Location: Ephesus (traditional place of Johannine composition)
Time period: composed c. AD 85-95, the latest of the four Gospels, written after Synoptic Christology had been internalized
Narrative context: the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, arguably the densest theological paragraph in the NT. John does not begin his Gospel with genealogy (Matthew), a journalistic introduction (Mark), or a historian's preface (Luke). He begins with cosmic prehistory: "In the beginning was the Word." The prologue's structure: (a) the eternal pre-existence and deity of the Logos (vv. 1-2); (b) the Logos as creation-agent (v. 3); (c) the Logos as life and light (vv. 4-5); (d) John the Baptist's witness-role (vv. 6-8); (e) the world's reception-and-rejection (vv. 9-13); (f) the climactic incarnation: "the Word became flesh" (v. 14). The prologue sets the Christological frame for the entire Gospel, every subsequent narrative episode is read through this opening.

Theological reading

John 1:1-14 is the most concentrated Christological-incarnational passage in the NT. The prologue compresses creation, pre-existence, incarnation, soteriology, and ecclesiology into fourteen verses. The Christological claims are:

The Logos is eternal (en archē, in the beginning, echoing Gen 1:1)
The Logos is distinct from God the Father (ho logos ēn pros ton theon, was with God)
The Logos is fully God (kai theos ēn ho logos, the Word was God)
The Logos is the agent of creation (panta di' autou egeneto, all things came into being through him)
The Logos is the source of life and light (vv. 4-5)
The Logos became flesh and dwelt (eskēnōsen, tabernacled) among us (v. 14)

The prologue therefore covers all four of the Christological tenses: pre-existent eternal Word → creator-agent → incarnate Christ → continuing-glory-revealing presence among His own.

The Greek grammar of John 1:1, the JW objection answered

The Jehovah's Witness New World Translation renders John 1:1c as "the Word was a god", with an indefinite article. The Greek does not have an article: theos ēn ho logos (literally "God was the Word" with reversed Greek word order). The JW argument: because theos lacks the article (ho), the noun is indefinite, therefore "a god" is grammatically warranted.

The standard scholarly response (Daniel Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics; Bruce Metzger; Murray Harris):

Anarthrous nouns are not automatically indefinite in Greek. They can be definite, indefinite, or qualitative depending on context. The theos of John 1:1c is qualitative, describing the nature of the Logos, not making Him "a [generic] god."
Word order matters. In Greek, the predicate nominative typically appears WITHOUT the article when distinguished from the subject. The grammatical structure of theos ēn ho logos (predicate-then-subject) is exactly the construction Greek uses for "the Word was [in nature] God", emphasizing identity-of-essence with the Father while preserving distinction-of-person from Him.
John's own narrative refutes the JW reading. If the Logos were a god (lesser created being), the rest of John would contradict it, John 5:18 (equality with God), John 8:58 (I AM), John 10:30 (I and the Father are one), John 20:28 (Thomas's confession). The Logos-prologue Christology is consistent with the Gospel's broader Christology.
The early Church Fathers read it this way universally. No patristic source reads John 1:1c as "a god." The Council of Nicaea (325) anchored on this verse for the homoousios (same-substance) doctrine against Arius's homoiousios (similar-substance) reading.

The three claims of v. 1, the Trinitarian / Oneness intersection

The three clauses of v. 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", are theologically dense:

"In the beginning was the Word" establishes the Logos's eternity. The verb ēn (was) is imperfect, denoting continuous past existence with no beginning-point. Compare egeneto (came into being, used of creation in v. 3) and egennēthēsan (were begotten, used of new birth in v. 13), Greek deliberately distinguishes the Logos's unbegun-being from creation's coming-into-being.
"The Word was with God" establishes the Logos's distinction from the Father. The preposition pros (with) connotes face-to-face fellowship and relational orientation, not bare co-location. The eternal Father-Word relation is one of personal communion.
"The Word was God" establishes the Logos's full deity. Not "like God," not "with godly qualities," not "a god", but theos, God in the absolute sense.

The Trinitarian reading takes the three clauses as: the eternal Son is fully divine, eternally generated from the Father, and personally distinct from the Father. The Oneness reading takes the three clauses as: the eternal one God speaks His own Word (logos = self-expression), who is fully God yet not a separate Person, the Father-source and the Logos-expression as two relational modes of the one God. Both readings affirm the eternal deity of the Logos; they differ on the metaphysical analysis of the with-God relation. See Trinity vs Oneness vs Modalism vs Arianism.

The Logos background, Jewish, Greek, Christian

The term logos carried multi-tradition resonance for John's first-century audience:

Hebrew background: the davar YHWH (word of the LORD) by which God creates (Gen 1; Ps 33:6, "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made") and reveals (the prophetic thus saith the LORD). The personified Wisdom of Proverbs 8:22-31 (present at creation, beside God as a master-workman) is another Jewish-tradition antecedent. The targumic memra (Aramaic for "word") was used by post-biblical Jewish translators as a circumlocution for God's active presence (e.g., the memra of YHWH walking in the garden, Genesis 3:8 Targum).
Greek philosophical background: Heraclitus (c. 500 BC) used logos for the cosmic rational principle. Stoicism developed logos as the divine reason permeating the cosmos. Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC - AD 50), Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, used logos as the intermediary divine principle between God and creation.
John's distinctive Christian claim: John takes all this background and asserts the concrete personal historical identification: the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, a specific historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. The cosmic rational principle is identified with a Jew from Galilee. This is the Christian apologetic move that synthesizes Jewish wisdom-tradition with Greek philosophical tradition while transcending both.

Eskēnōsen, the tabernacling Logos

The verb in v. 14, eskēnōsen (KJV "dwelt"; YLT preserves the etymology with "tabernacled"), comes from skēnē (tent, tabernacle). The Logos "pitched His tent" among us. The Greek deliberately echoes the OT tabernacle (Ex 25-40) and the shekinah glory dwelling in it (Ex 40:34-38; 1 Kings 8:10-11). The incarnation IS the new tabernacling: God's glory now dwells in the Person of Jesus, not in a tent in the wilderness. The companion claim, "we beheld his glory", uses theaomai (to behold, contemplate), echoing the eye-witness experience of the apostolic generation.

Monogenēs, only-begotten

The Greek monogenēs (μονογενής, Strong's G3439), translated "only begotten" (KJV) or "one and only" (WEB), is a key Johannine vocabulary item appearing five times in the NT, four in John (1:14, 1:18, 3:16, 3:18) and once in Hebrews (11:17 of Isaac). The etymology has been debated:

The older reading derives monogenēs from monos (only) + gennaō (to beget) → "only-begotten"
The newer scholarly consensus derives it from monos + genos (kind, class) → "unique, one-of-a-kind"

Either reading preserves the unique relation Jesus has to the Father, distinct from the adopted sonship believers receive. See John 20.17 (rich hub) for the my-Father / your-Father distinction.

Patristic and Reformed reading

Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.11, c. AD 180): the prologue is the touchstone against Gnostic readings that placed Jesus on a continuum of demiurgic emanations. All things were made by Him and the Word became flesh together refute the Gnostic separation of high-divinity from material-creation.

Athanasius (Discourses Against the Arians, c. AD 358): the prologue is the foundational text for the homoousios doctrine. The Word was God in the same sense the Father is God; the Word was with God preserving the distinction.

Augustine (Tractates on John 1-3, c. AD 416): the prologue is read theologically across the entire Gospel, every later episode is a temporal expression of the eternal Logos-truths the prologue states.

John Calvin (Commentary on John ad loc.): the prologue establishes the entire Reformed Christology, eternal Sonship, creation-mediation, incarnation, soteriology. "This is a remarkable passage which proves the eternal Deity of Christ."

Apologetic deployment

The prologue is the most-cited single Christological passage in apologetic-evangelistic conversations. It defeats:

Arian / JW / Muslim / unitarian Christology, the Word IS God (full divinity) AND is with God (distinct Person/Mode) AND was eternally pre-existent AND created all things. No reading of these claims is compatible with Jesus being a created being.
Mormon Christology, the Word created all things (v. 3); Mormonism teaches Jesus is one of many gods produced by procreation in pre-existence. John 1:3's all things made through him forecloses this.
Liberal-Protestant "later-doctrinal-development" reading, John was written c. AD 85-95, within a generation of Jesus's earthly ministry, and explicitly identifies Jesus as the eternal Creator-God. The high Christology is not a late accretion; it is first-century apostolic teaching.
Docetic / Gnostic non-incarnational readings, v. 14's the Word became flesh (sarx, physical body, not subtle spiritual matter) explicitly affirms genuine bodily incarnation against all phantasm-Christ readings.

Oneness Pentecostal reading

The Oneness reader takes John 1:1-14 as one of the strongest texts for the Oneness reading of God's identity. The Word is the one God's eternal self-expression; the with God clause expresses the Father-Word relational dynamic within the one God; the Word became flesh identifies the one God's self-expression with the historical Jesus. The eternal-pre-existence of the Logos is affirmed; the Christological claim is exactly what the Oneness framework requires.

See Trinity vs Oneness vs Modalism vs Arianism for the multi-position discussion. Both Trinitarian and Oneness readers find John 1:1-14 foundational; they differ on the metaphysical analysis of the with-God relation.

Canonical-theological connections

Genesis 1:1-3, "In the beginning... and God said", the OT background for John's In the beginning was the Word
Proverbs 8:22-31, Wisdom-personified-as-pre-existent-master-workman
Psalm 33:6, "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made"
Colossians 1:15-20, the Christological hymn (image of invisible God; firstborn over creation; all things created through Him)
Hebrews 1:1-3, the parallel divine-self-revelation-through-Son
1 John 1:1-3, "That which... we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life"
John 20:28, Thomas's "My Lord and my God" (rich hub: John 20.27-28)
John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (rich hub)
Revelation 19:13, "his name is called The Word of God" (the closing of the canon echoing the prologue)

Key words

G0225 - aletheia, aletheia (Strong's G225). Also appears in: Mark 12, Luke 22.54-62, John 1.14.
G0746 - arche, arche (Strong's G746). Also appears in: Matthew 19, Matthew 19.8, Luke 1.1-4.
G1096 - ginomai, ginomai (Strong's G1096). Also appears in: Matthew 1, Matthew 5.17-18, Matthew 8.16.
G1097 - ginosko, ginosko (Strong's G1097). Also appears in: Matthew 1, Mark 4.11-12, Mark 6.
G1391 - doxa, doxa (Strong's G1391). Also appears in: Matthew 6.25-34, Matthew 16.27, Matthew 19.
G1520 - heis, heis (Strong's G1520). Also appears in: Matthew 5.17-18, Matthew 6.24, Matthew 6.25-34.
G2222 - zoe, zoe (Strong's G2222). Also appears in: Matthew 7.13-14, Matthew 19, Matthew 25.46.
G2316 - theos, theos (Strong's G2316). Also appears in: Matthew 1.23, Matthew 3.16, Matthew 5.9.
G2889 - kosmos, kosmos (Strong's G2889). Also appears in: Mark 14, John 1.10, John 1.29.
G3056 - logos, logos (Strong's G3056). Also appears in: Matthew 7.24-27, Matthew 8.5-12, Matthew 8.16.
G3439 - monogenes, monogenes (Strong's G3439). Also appears in: John 1.14, John 1.18, John 3.16.
G3686 - onoma, onoma (Strong's G3686). Also appears in: Matthew 1.21, Matthew 1.23, Matthew 1.
G3956 - pas, pas (Strong's G3956). Also appears in: Matthew 1, Matthew 2.1-6, Matthew 2.16.
G3962 - pater, pater (Strong's G3962). Also appears in: Matthew 5.48, Matthew 6.25-26, Matthew 6.25-34.
G4100 - pisteuo, pisteuo (Strong's G4100). Also appears in: Matthew 18.6, Mark 15, Mark 16.16-18.
G4314 - pros, pros (Strong's G4314). Also appears in: Matthew 3.13, Matthew 5.28, Matthew 11.28.
G4561 - sarx, sarx (Strong's G4561). Also appears in: Matthew 19, Matthew 26.41, Mark 14.
G4637 - skenoo, skenoo (Strong's G4637). Also appears in: John 1.14, Revelation 21.3.
G5485 - charis, charis (Strong's G5485). Also appears in: Luke 1.29-38, Luke 2.40, Luke 2.52.