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John 1.18
Theon oudeis heōraken pōpote monogenēs Theos ho ōn eis ton kolpon
Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε ; μονογενὴς Θεὸς , ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον
God no one has seen ever yet [the] unique God the [one] being in the bosom
tou Patros ekeinos exēgēsato
τοῦ Πατρὸς , ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο .
of the Father he has made [him] known
No-
John 1.18 throws up more questions that virtually any other verse in the gospel. Not only are there various ways of interpreting John’s words, but different sets of manuscripts offer conflicting versions of what he actually said. This becomes clearly apparent if we compare the version in the NEB with the one shown above:
No-
(similarly AV HCSB JB Knox LB LTB NJB NKJV REB RSV)
Here the NEB’s reading easily sounds the more natural, has the support of the vast majority of manuscripts, and has the added virtue that the Greek word monogenes (translated here as ‘only’) always occurs in John’s writings in association with the word huios (‘son’). In contrast, the version in the ESV sounds awkward and appears to contradict itself.
The difficulty for the NEB reading, however, is that the manuscript support for it, though widespread, is based on later and less reliable copies. By comparison, the version in the ESV has support from much earlier sources, being present in the Bodmer papyrus from around AD 200, in the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts, and in the writings of church fathers such as Irenaeus, Clement and Origen.<1> Significantly, it was also the one used by Arius himself, the most celebrated opponent of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Does not, however, the notion of ‘the only God’ existing ‘at the Father’s side’ (literally, ‘in the bosom of the Father’) present us with an impossible contradiction? In fact, it is only raising the same issue that John has already raised in verse 1 of his Gospel. Since John 1.18 completes the prologue to the Gospel that John 1.1 introduces, it simply reaffirms the same core truth that the Son is both distinct from God and yet part of him. The link between these two verses is reinforced by the way in which John, rather than using static prepositions, employs active prepositions of motion in both of them: para (‘the Word was towards God’) in verse 1, and eis (‘into the bosom of the Father’) in verse 18, perhaps hinting at dynamic relationships within God’s being.
Further background for this double use of the word ‘God’ can be gained from the apparent references elsewhere in the passage to chapters 33 and 34 of Exodus, where Moses asks to see the glory of God. For instance, when John writes that ‘no-
What is striking in this verse, however, is the unimaginable intimacy that is portrayed between Father and Son. As we note in the book, the description of the Son resting in the bosom of the Father suggests a picture of a baby nursing at its mother’s breast, like the one we find in Ruth 4.16. Far from suggesting two very different individuals, the image is rather of Father and Son intimately bound together by a shared identity.
It is perhaps significant in this context that John chooses to describe the Son’s relationship to the Father here with the Greek word monogenēs (sometimes translated ‘only-
It seems probable, therefore, that in 1.18 John does refer to the Son as ‘God’,<2> though the precise reading of the verse depends on how one translates the Greek word monogenes, which can variously be expressed as ‘unique’, ‘only’, or, by extension, ‘only-