Introduction

Jehovah's Witness have their own version of the Bible (the New World Translation or NWT) that contains several key changes to the English text to support their heretical doctrines.

"God" or "a god"?

At issue here is the Watchtower Society's New World Translation (NWT) of the New Testament, particularly their treatment of John 1:1. While modern translations have "the Word was God," the Watchtower sees fit to translate "theos" as "a god," thus describing Jesus (the Word) as "godlike" rather than God Himself as the text plainly states.  [Note: I am using English transliteration of Greek letters here so that different browsers can read them.] The Jehovah's Witnesses' argument for translating "theos" (God) as "a god" centers on the use of the definite article (Greek "ton" or "the" in English) with the first occurrence of God in the verse and its absence in the second. From this they assert that "ton theon" must refer to the God (Jehovah), while "theos" by itself is only a description of the godlike characteristics of the Word. Below is presented the NWT's own Interlinear showing the Greek text (highlighted in orange) in question. Two points will show that this is not a matter of correct translation but of reading one's preconceived theology into the text rather than letting it speak for itself:

1. There is no indefinite article in Greek (in English - "a" or "an"). So any use of an indefinite article in the English translation must be added in by the translator. This is grammatically acceptable in English, so long as it does not change the meaning of the text.

2. There are over 20 uses of the definite article in Greek - some have equivalent usage in English (such as identifying one particular among many, i.e.  "the man" rather than just any "man"). However, some usages do not have an English equivalent. Therefore the absence of a definite article may or may not have anything to do with what that absence would mean in English.

Correct Translation

There is a perfectly good explanation for why "theos" has no definite article in this passage that does not result in the Watchtower's conclusion. There are three general rules we need to understand to see why:

 1. In Greek, word order does not determine word usage like it does in English. We are used to the Subject - Verb - Predicate style sentence and we learn to recognize these parts of speech by their position in the sentence. Thus, "Harry called the dog." is not equivalent to, "The dog called Harry." But in Greek, a word's function is determined by the case ending found attached to the word's root. In this verse, we see two case endings for the root "theo" . . . one is "s" (theos), the other is "n" (theon). The "s" ending normally identifies a noun as being the subject of a sentence, while the "n" ending identifies a noun as the direct object. So far, so good.

 2. When a noun is functioning as a predicate nominative (in English a noun that follows a "being" verb such as "is") its case ending must match the noun's case that it modifies so that the translator will know which noun it is describing. Therefore, "theo" must take the "s" ending because it is modifying "logos" (the subject, as "logo" has the "s" ending). Therefore the sentence transliterates to: "kai theos en ho logos" See the problem here? Is "theos" the subject or is "logos"? Both have the "s" ending. The answer is found in the next rule.

 3. In cases where two nouns appear, and both take the same case endings, the author will often add the definite article to the word that is the subject in order to avoid confusion. John put the definite article on "logos" (the Word) instead of "theos." So "logos" is the subject, and "theos" is the predicate nominative. In English we would read this verse as: "and the Word was God" (instead of "and God was the word"). 

No indefinite article, no theological heresy.

NWT Inconsistency

The most revealing evidence of the Watchtower's bias is their inconsistent translation technique - just 3 verses down they translate another case of "theos" without the indefinite article as "God". (Note that case endings such as "ou", "on", or "os" have to do with case usage in the sentence not whether or not "God" should be capitalized).

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures pg. 417.

And this is not the only example of translating other cases of "theos" without the indefinite article as "God." In Jn. 1:18 they translate the same term as both "God" and "god" in the very same sentence (see below).

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures pg. 418-19.

The Watchtower, therefore, has no hard textual grounds for their translation - only their own theological bias.

Conclusion

While Watchtower defenders might succeed in showing that John 1:1 can be translated as they have done, they cannot show that it is the proper translation nor can they explain the fact that that they do not translate the exact same Greek phrases in the very same book in like manner. It is only their pre-conceived heretical belief that forces them to inconsistently translate the Greek text into their own particular English version thus allowing their error to gain some semblance of legitimacy to those ignorant of the facts.