While it is true that the great majority of versions produced since 1611 were translated by Trinitarians, it was the King James Version which set the tone by mistranslating John 1:3,4. The rendering of the Greek pronoun autou by ‘him’ is incorrect because, although logos (word) is a masculine noun in Greek, it is a neuter noun in English, and therefore the English pronoun should be neuter, that is, ‘it’, rather than the masculine ‘him’.
[William] Tyndale translated John 1:3,4 correctly: “All things were made by it, and without it, was made nothing, that was made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men”. The Great Bible, Geneva Bible and Bishops’ Bible all followed Tyndale, but the Authorized Version (a revision of the Bishops’ Bible) perversely altered Tyndale. Such is the influence of the Authorized Version that very few later translators have had the courage to revert to Tyndale, exceptions being Benjamin Wilson’s Emphatic Diaglott and its offshoot, The New World Translation, and also Samuel Sharpe’s nineteenth-century Revision of the Authorised Version. Sharpe was accused of “Unitarian sentiments”. Any translator following Tyndale would suffer the same stigma.
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Author: Alan Fowler
Keywords: Logos, In the beginning, It versus him, Him versus it, Him vs. it, It vs. him, Jesus was the word, Trinity, God the Son, Three in one, Word made flesh, Jesus the word
Bible reference(s): John 1:1-4
Source: “Correspondence,” The Testimony, Vol. 60, No. 710, February 1990, pg. 64.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.