Did the First Christians pray to Jesus?

Sections from the book, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? by J.D.G. Dunn

In the synoptic Gospels Jesus speaks on several occasions about praying (proseuchesthai), with the assumption that prayer is made to God [i.e., Mat 6.5-13/Luke 11.1-4]...

The less prominent term deesthai, ‘ask, request’, can be used both of requests to other individuals and of requests to God. In the narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke we find both usages, with requests made to Jesus[1] and Jesus talking of making requests to God.[2]

Another word with a similar range of usage is aitein, ‘to ask for’ [Mar 6.22-25; Matt. 27.20; Mar 15.43 pars.]...Presumably the request of James and John for the top seats in his glory falls into the same category (Mark 10.35-38). But Jesus also uses it of requests in prayer to God.[3]

John’s Gospel uses none of the common words for prayer (proseuchesthai, proseuche, deesthai, deesis)…[Yet, Jesus] repeatedly promises that whatever his disciples ask (aitein) in his name the Father will give them (15.16; 16.23-24), even promising that he (himself) will do whatever his disciples ask (aitein) in his name, ‘so that the Father may be glorified’ (14.13) and he adds, ‘if you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it’ (14.14). Requests to the Father in Jesus’ name are of a piece with requests to Jesus himself; the common factor is ‘in his name’. ‘In that day you will ask (erotan) the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you’ (16.26-27). If the disciples abide in him and his words abide in them they may ask (aitein) whatever they want and it will be done for them (15.7).

Elsewhere in the NT writings, ‘prayer’ as such (proseuchesthai, proseuche), explicitly or implicitly, is always made to God…in Acts 8.22, 24, where Simon is urged to ‘pray (deesthai) to the Lord’ that he might be forgiven, the reference to ‘the Lord’ is ambiguous.[4] But deesis is used in the Epistles always for prayer; that is, prayer to God.

...in the Epistles aitein is used almost exclusively in prayer contexts. For example, ‘I pray (aitoumai) that you may not lose heart over my sufferings’ (Eph, 3.13); God ‘is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask (aitoumetha) or imagine’ (3.20); ‘we have not ceased praying (proseuchomenoi) for you and asking (aitoumenoi) that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will’ (Col 1.9[Jam 1.5-6; similarly 4.2-3; 1 John 5.14-16])...

In Acts and the Epistles [parakalein] regularly appears in the everyday sense of ‘urge, exhort [2Cor 1.3-7; 7.4-7, 13]…The only obvious case [of it] being used in a prayer context is 2Cor 12…parakalein here is used in the sense of an appeal in prayer…to the Lord Jesus Christ. This can safely be concluded not only because ‘the Lord’ in Paul is almost always the Lord Jesus (apart from its occurrence in scriptural quotations[5]) but also because the grace and power that the one appealed to promises Paul in answer to his appeal is specifically identified as ‘the power of Christ’…Paul understood the exalted Christ as one who could be appealed to for help, a request or petition that can readily be understood as prayer.[6]

Another passage that calls for attention is [1Cor 16.22; cf. Rev. 22.20]. The fact that it appears in Aramaic strongly suggests that it had become a regular feature in early liturgies—rather like the continued use of the Aramaic ‘Abba, Father’ in the prayers of the Greek-speaking churches (Rom 8.15; Gal 4.6)...Yet perhaps we should recall that according to the Gospels, when Jesus cried out on the cross, some of the bystanders thought he was calling on (phonei) Elijah; that is calling for him to come and help him (Mark 15.35-36). Elijah, it should be remembered, had been taken to heaven…and there was a widespread expectation that he would return from heaven before the day of the Lord [Mal. 4.5; cf. Mark 6.15; 8.28; John 1.217]. However, we have no examples of appeals to Elijah being made in Second Temple Judaism for him to return or to help someone[8], though we should also recall Alan Segal’s observation that in Jewish mystical texts all kinds of angelic beings are invoked.[9]...[Yet, Jesus’ crucifixion] may provide evidence that the contemporaries of Jesus could well conceive of an appeal being made to one who had been transferred to heaven that he come (again) to earth.

To call upon Jesus (in prayer[10]) was evidently a defining and distinguishing feature of earliest Christian worship.

The most explicit prayer language is used exclusively of prayer to God. Jesus himself is remembered as regularly praying to God and giving instruction on prayer to God. With the less explicitly prayer language of ‘asking, requesting and appealing to’ the picture is somewhat different. Again, where it appears in prayer, the request is normally addressed to God. But in John’s Gospel repeated emphasis is placed by Jesus on his disciples’ future praying to God ‘in his [Jesus’] name’. Paul both appeals directly to Jesus for help from heaven and reflects a commonly used appeal for the Lord Christ to come (again) from heaven. And the earliest Christians are known as ‘those who call upon or invoke the name of Jesus’. If, speaking with tightly focused precision, ‘prayer’ as such was not usually made to Jesus in the worship of the first Christian congregations, at least he was regarded as one, sitting at God’s right hand, who could be and was called upon, and to whom appeal could be made.

Looking back over the first centuries of the Christian era, we may come to this conclusion: to judge from all that survives in documents and accounts of the Church’s life in this period, liturgical prayer, in regard to its form of address, keeps with considerable unanimity to the rule of turning to God (repeatedly described as the Father of Jesus Christ) through Christ the High Priest...It was not until the end of the fourth century that we meet by way of exception prayers to Christ the Lord, and these are not within the Eucharistic celebration proper, but in the pre-Mass and in Baptism. On the other hand we know that in private prayers, both in apostolic times and later, the prayer to Christ was well known and customary. J.S. Jungmann, The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer (London: Chapman, 1965, pgs. 164-6).

This [quote] also reminds us that a more prominent theme in the NT is Jesus as the one who prays for his followers rather than the one prayed to…Hurtado notes that in the NT ‘any direct prayer or appeal to Christ is always to be framed by the sovereignty of the one God, and is in fact very limited in scope and frequency’ (Origins 104)...

[Another] important side to the question of whether Jesus was prayed to [is] the thought of Jesus as the heavenly intercessor [and his functioning as High Priest, Heb 7.24-25]…intermediary between God and humans [1Tim 2.5]…Christ can emphasize with and help those who come to God through him…Equally, indeed more, important for many of these Christians was the assurance that Jesus was praying for them. Here again we find ourselves with the two-sidedness of the first Christians’ esteem for Christ, both as the mediator between God and man, the one through whom they would come confidently to God, and as the one who was also conjoint with God in the worship [and prayers] they brought to God.



FOOTNOTES:
[1]Luke 5.12; 8.28, 38; 9.38 (the same request made to the disciples—9.40).

[2]Matt. 9.38/Luke 10.2; 21.36; 22.32 (Jesus makes a request on behalf of Simon Peter). The noun deesis is used exclusively of requests made to God (Luke 1.13; 2.37; 5.33).

[3]Mark 11.24; Matt. 7.7-11/Luke 11.9-13; Matt. 6.8; 18.19.

[4]...as in the other ‘Lord’ = God references in Acts, the influence of the OT usage suggests that Luke was thinking of worship [and prayer] to God.

[5]19 times in the Pauline corpus…However…the OT eschatological expectations of ‘the day of the Lord’ seems to have become the Christian hope for ‘the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1Cor 1.8; 2Cor 1.14)…in several instances Paul quotes an OT reference to the Lord (Yahweh) and refers it to the Lord Jesus Christ [Rom 10.9-13]…[this means] for Paul either that Jesus is Yahweh, or, more likely, that Ywahweh has bestowed His own unique saving power on the Lord [Jesus] who sits on His right side, or that the exalted Jesus is himself the embodiment as well as the executive of that saving power...

...if Ps 110.1 allows the concept of two Lords, the second given his plenipotentiary status by the first, then there is presumably no reason (why such passages) should not be referred to the second Lord…That God was understood to pass divine authority to others is indicated by the various individuals who were thought to play the role of heavenly judges—Adam & Abel(T. Abr. 11,13), Melchizedech (11QMelch 13-14), Enoch and Elijah (1 Enoch 90.31; Apoc. Elij. 24.11-15)—including the saints themselves (Matt. 19.28/Luke 22.30; 1Cor 6.2-3). Cf. Hurtado’s careful formulation: ‘Early Christians saw Jesus as the uniquely significant agent of the one God, and in their piety they extended the exclusivity of the one God to take in God’s uniquely important representative, while stoutly refusing to extend this exclusivity to any other figure’ (Lord Jesus Christ 204.)].

[6]‘Paul’s easy recounting of his actions suggests that he expects his readers to be familiar with prayer-appeals to Jesus as a communally accepted feature of Christian devotional practice [1Cor 1.2] (Hurtado, Origins 75).

[7]…we should stress that there is no thought of Elijah being worshiped [or prayed to] in any of these accounts. But again the precedence for the belief that Jesus had been exalted to share in heavenly glory should not be ignored.

[8]Hurtado, Origins 77.

[9]In common Greek epikaleisthai is regularly used of calling upon a deity [BDAG, 373. Alan Segal, ‘Paul’s “SOMA PNEUMATIKON” and the Worship of Jesus’, in Newman, et al.(eds.), Jewish Roots 258-76, notes that the terminology is characteristic both of pagan magic and of Jewish mystical texts: ‘In the Hekhaloth texts, all kinds of angelic beings are invoked with the terminology’ (274)…the motif of angelic intercessors was already familiar within Second Temple Judaism [e.g., Job 33.23-26; Tobit 12.15; 1 Enoch 9.3; 15.2; 99.3; 104.1; T. Levi 3.5; 5.6-7; T. Dan 6.2].

[10]Cf. “call upon”, Acts 7.59; 9.14,21; 22.16; Rom 10.12,14; 1Cor 1.2; 2Tim 2.22. This defining feature of these early Christians…marked them out from others who ‘called upon (the name of)’ some other deity or heavenly being...’Jesus’ cultic presence and power clearly operate here in the manner we otherwise associate with a god’ (Hurtado, Origins 80).

The Personhood that is "the word of God"

By Dustin Smith.

Having spent some time recently reading Aramaic Targums, I have found what seems to be a breakthrough in ways which we can effectively teach others about what John 1 means in regards to the Word (logos).

A targum is an Aramaic translation of a particular passage or book of the Hebrew Bible. Yet these translations served as ketib (oral) commentaries as early as the first century BCE (such as those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls). Therefore, I suggest that the evidence below is necessary background and context which served as the matrix of thought out of which the author of the fourth Gospel produced his prologue.

I’ll post the translation from the NASB as well as the Aramaic Targum below it. The Aramaic memra and dibbera are the original phrases translated as “word” (cf. the Greek logos).

• Gen. 1:3 – “Let there be light, and there was light”
“...there was light according to the decree of the Word” Targum Neofiti

• Gen. 1:7, 9, 11, 15, 24, 30 – “...and it was so.”
“...and it was so according to his Word.” Targum Neofiti

• Gen 3:1 – “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.”
“....which the Word of the LORD had made.” Targum Neofiti margin

• Gen. 3:8 – “They heard the sound of the LORD God...”
“....sound of the Word of the LORD” Palestinian Targum

• Gen. 3:10 – “He said, I heard the sound of You....”
“...the sound of the Word” Targum Neofiti

• Gen. 14:19 – “...Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.”
“...who by his Word created the heaven and earth.” Targum Neofiti

• Gen 15:6 – “Then he believed in the LORD and it was reckoned...”
“He believed in the Word of the LORD” Targum Onqelos

“He had faith in the Word of the LORD” Tagrum Pseudo Jonathan
“Abram believed in the name of the Word of the LORD” Targum Neofiti

• Exo. 6:7 – “Then I will take you for My people and I will be your God...”
“...I will be to them my Word, a redeemer God...” Targum Neofiti

• Exo. 19:17 – “And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God...”
“...to meet the Word of God.” Targum Onqelos

• Exo. 20:11 – “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth...”
“the Word of the LORD perfected” Targum Neofiti marginal gloss, similar comment found in Exo. 31:17

• Exo. 25:22 – “There I will meet with you...”
“There I will appoint my Word...” Targum Neofiti, Pseudo Jonathan, and Onqelos

• Exo. 29:45 – “I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God.”
“...and I will be to them, in my Word, a redeemer God.” Targum Neofiti

• Exo. 33:22 – “...and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.”
“...I will shield you with my Word...” Targum Onqelos

• Lev. 1:1 – “Then the LORD called to Moses and spoke to him...”
“The Word of the LORD called to Moses and the Word of the LORD spoke to him...” Targum Pseudo Jonathan

• Lev. 11:45 – “...from the land of Egypt to be your God...”
“to be, in my Word, your redeemer God.” Targum Neofiti margin

• Lev. 22:33 – “...from the land of Egypt to be your God...”
“to be, in my Word, your redeemer God.” Targum Neofiti

• Lev. 25:38 – “I am the LORD your God...”
“I am, in my Word, the LORD your God” Targum Neofiti

• Lev. 26:12 - “I will also walk among you and be your God...”
“...and be, in my Word, your God.” Targum Neofiti

• Lev. 26:45 – “...in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God.”
“I might be, in my Word, their God.” Targum Neofiti

• Num. 6:27 – “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel...”
“So they shall put my name, my Word, upon the sons of Israel.” Targum Neofiti

• Num. 7:89 – “...between the two cherubim, so He spoke to him.”
“...the Word spoke to him.” Targum Neofiti and Pseudo Jonathan

• Num. 14:22 – “...and have not listened to My voice,”
“and have not received my Word.” Targum Onqelos and Pseudo Jonathan

• Num. 15:41 – “I am the LORD your God...”
“I am, in my Word, the LORD your God.” Targum Neofiti margin

• Num. 17:4 – “...in front of the testimony, where I meet with you.”
“The Word meets you.” Targum Neofiti, Pseudo Jonathan, and Onqelos

• Deut. 4:24 – “the LORD your God is a consuming fire...”
“the LORD your God, his Word, is a consuming fire.” Targum Onqelos

• Deut. 26:17 – “You have today declared the LORD to be your God...”
“...declared the LORD to be, in my Word, your God.” Targum Neofiti

• Deut. 32:15 – “But Jeshrun grew fat and kicked, You are grown fat, thick and sleek, Then he forsook God who made him...”
“...forsook the Word of God who/which made him” Targum Neofiti

• Deut. 32:18 – “...and forgot the God who gave you birth.”
“and forgot the Word of God who/which made them.” Targum Neofiti

• Psalm 106:25 – “...they did not listen to the voice of the LORD.”
“they did not receive the Word of the LORD.” Targum on the Psalms

• Isa. 44:24 – “...I, the LORD, am maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself...”
“I stretched out the heavens through my Word” Targum on Isaiah

• Isa. 45:12 – “It is I who made the earth...”
“I, by my Word, made the earth” Targum on Isaiah

• Isa. 48:13 – “Surely My hand founded the earth...”
“By my Word I founded the earth.” Targum on Isaiah

• Isa. 63:5 – “...So My own arm brought salvation to Me, and My wrath upheld Me.”
“...by the Word of my pleasure I helped them.” Targum on Isaiah

• Jer. 27:5 – “I have made the earth...”
“I, by my Word, made the earth” Targum on Jeremiah

Hopefully this helps explain how John 1:1 can say, “...and the Word was God.” It seems rather apparent that Jews freely spoke of God and his Word in interchangeable ways.

“Palabra” or “Verbo”: Truth or Tradition?

The True Story Behind the Spanish Translation

Most new Christians are told to read the Gospel of John as a sort of initiation rite. I personally was told to read John when I asked the universal question, “Where do I start?” It was only much later, after further study and research on my part, that I realized why this is common among all Christian denominations. The Gospel of John has been popularly coined “the spiritual Gospel,” as any encyclopedia or dictionary will tell you:

Because of its special theological character the Gospel According to John was considered in ancient times to be the ‘spiritual Gospel’ [wielding] a profound and lasting influence on the development of early Christian doctrine.[1]

This “special theological character” has led some to identify John’s Christological teaching as “higher” than that of the other Gospels. However, all the Gospel accounts relate the same story of Jesus of Nazareth and proclaim him as the prophesied Jewish Messiah, “the Son of the Living God.”[2]

As a result of this “profound and lasting influence” from ancient times, the novice believer is immediately confronted by “a kind of mystic symbolism and repeated emphasis on the incarnation.”[3] In other words, most Christians come away with an erroneous picture of how the one eternal, invisible God somehow literally became a human being. This often-used word “Incarnation” needs further explanation, since it has in many ways been obscured due to the way the early Church Fathers of the nascent Catholic Church reinterpreted it from its original Hebraic meaning.

The noted scholar Raymond E. Brown best defines the term under the heading “Precreational Preexistence” in his An Introduction to New Testament Christology [p 34-35]:

Incarnation means that at his human conception the Son of God did not come into existence;[4] rather he was a previously existing agent in the divine sphere who took on flesh in the womb of Mary. Technically incarnation does not tell us whether this agent was created (as were the angels who exist in the divine sphere) or existed with God before any creation. A fortiori, it does not tell us whether the agent was God or equal to God…Many scholars, influenced by the Prologue to John’s Gospel where the Word who becomes flesh does exist before creation, join the two ideas.

This modern Christological consensus goes back to the early church fathers who, while not Trinitarian in the later sense of the word, nevertheless identified the human Jesus as the preexistent Person of “the Word who [became] flesh.”

There is one God, who has manifested Himself by Jesus Christ His Son, who is His eternal Word, not proceeding forth from silence, and who in all things pleased Him that sent Him.[5]

The Sad History Behind the First Spanish Bible Translations

[It is illegal for anyone to translate the] Bible in Castilian romance [Spanish] or in any other vulgar tongue, the Spanish New Testament of Francisco de Enzinas…and any other books of Holy Scripture in Castilian romance, French or Flemish or any other tongue which have prefaces, notes or glosses that reveal erroneous doctrines repugnant or contrary to our holy Catholic faith or to the sacraments of Holy Mother Church” (Index of the Spanish Inquisition, 1551).

It was in this environment of intimidation and persecution that the Spanish reformer Francisco de Enzinas published the first known translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into Castilian in 1543. He was also one of the first to convert to the cause of the Spanish Protestant Reformation. The translation was done directly from the Greek, using as basis the Greek text of Erasmus of Rotterdam (for which he himself was arrested in Brussels, leading to his work being prohibited by the Inquisition). Enzinas dedicated his edition to Emperor Charles V, mentioning the three reasons that led to his work: the assurance that such a translation would serve both God and the Christian world, the honor this would bring to the Spanish nation, and the fact that the author considered the work as not violating any law.[6]

From 1556 to 1560, Dr. Juan Perez de Pineda published a number of works in Geneva designed to introduce these ideas throughout the rest of Spain. Among these was his translation of the New Testament, only the second complete translation into Castilian. Perez was helped by Enzinas’ translation. However, quick opposition in their native country led both of them into exile. But thanks primarily to the efforts of one Julian Hernandez, copies were spread by smuggling them into Catholic churches and monasteries. Like Enzinas and Perez, Julian was persecuted by the Catholics but, unlike them, he did not escape the hands of the Spanish Inquisitors.

Unfortunately, Julian was betrayed by a supposed friend and imprisoned for his ‘crime’ of Bible smuggling. He was brutally tortured by the Catholic Inquisitors. After three years of remaining firm in the faith despite the persecution, refusing to denounce his convictions, Julian was burned alive at the stake.[7]

Casiodoro de Reina was a Catholic monk in the monastery of San Isidoro del Campo in the city of Sevilla where he obtained one of Julian’s contraband New Testaments by Enzinas-Pineda. He immediately set to work on what would become the most famous of the early Spanish Bible translations, La Biblia del Oso, published in 1569.

Like Enzinas and Pineda before him, Reina made extensive use of various sources for his translation, some of which are mentioned in his introduction. The work also shows other sources used, which were not mentioned for fear of the Inquisition. The basic texts used were the Hebrew and Greek texts available at the time: the Masoretic Hebrew text and the Greek texts compiled and used by Erasmus. In addition Reina also used the Latin version made in Lyon in 1528 by Sancte Pagnini, the Bible of Ferrara, the Latin Bible of Zurich and the Latin Bible of Sebastian Castellón. But most of all, Reina extensively used the Spanish translations of Francisco de Enzinas, Juan Perez and Juan de Valdés. All of these books were banned by the Catholic compendium known as the Index of Forbidden Books.

Like Enzinas before him, Reina sought the acceptance of the Catholic Church and the Spanish government. Unfortunately, these not only rejected his translation but made it illegal, persecuting anyone involved in its distribution.

He was constantly pursued by the Catholic Inquisitors and a price was placed on his head. He was labeled a heretic, a criminal, and was even accused of being a Sodomite by the Catholic Church. [His translation] was labeled [as] "a most dangerous edition of the Bible."[8]

In his dedication to his 1543 edition, Enzinas “fiercely postulated the convenience and necessity to translate biblical texts in their native language and in particular to Spanish.” Years before he died of a plague that was raging in Europe, Enzinas wrote to a friend saying:

I'm working with good conscience, God is my witness. If the people of this time do not thank me, I hope others in the future come with a better judgment, who will be better served by our studies.[9]

More prophetic words could not have been written but, unfortunately, the effort and hard work of these first Spanish Reformers are yet to be fully appreciated by modern biblical translators. They until this day continue to ignore the simplicity and truth brought by these scholars, attained through their rigorous study and knowledge of the original biblical text. The best example of this is the way they translated John’s prologue.


Logos: Word or Verb?

In the beginning was the word [la palabra] and the word was with God and God was the word…All things were created by her and without her nothing that that is made was made. In her was life…She was the true light that illuminates all men who come into the world.[10]

The fidelity of the first Spanish Reformers in translating logos as “palabra” (“word”) instead of “verbo” (verb), followed by feminine pronouns (“she, her”) instead of masculine (“he”), has survived in a few modern translations. But unfortunately they have been overshadowed by the overwhelmingly popular Spanish version known as the Reina-Valera, itself influenced by the (in)famous King James Bible of 1611. This version has been proven time and time again, by Catholic and Protestant scholars alike, to be one of the worst — not only for its antiquated style but, more importantly, because of its many errors.[11] An example of this is the persistent addition since the 1500s of the only verse which explicitly teaches a Trinitarian doctrine, 1 John 5.7-8, also known as the Johannine Comma.[12]

The first Reina-Valera edition of 1569 was subsequently revised by a number of editors and biblical groups through the centuries. Indeed, they changed the all-important meaning that was first faithfully translated from the original languages by the first Catholic converts to Protestantism: Enzinas (1543), Pineda (1556), Reina (1569) and Valera (1602).

The first to introduce this fatal interpretation into the text of John’s prologue, changing the feminine noun “palabra” to the masculine “verbo,” was the Spanish scholar Pedrosa Lorenzo Lucena in 1862. Lucena was a Catholic bishop who later joined the Protestant Episcopal flock. His task was not only to change the antiquated spelling, but also to revise forms and meaningless expressions into the modern Castilian. In the process, he changed the significance of logos.

Unfortunately, Lucena’s translation was adopted not only by the Catholic Church but by all the Protestant Bible societies. Therefore, from 1869, Lucena’s text appears in Bibles published in London, Madrid and Barcelona. Nowadays the Reina-Valera Bible, thanks in large part to Lucena’s revision, remains the most popular version in Spanish, reaching an annual distribution of some two million copies.

So why the change of the word “palabra” to “verbo”? The answer should be self-evident.


Christological Prejudice

As a matter of solid fact…such a rendering is a frightful mistranslation. It overlooks entirely an established rule of Greek grammar. Bruce Metzger on John 1.1.[13]

The reader of John 1 can come to a Trinitarian interpretation only with an already developed Christology. That is why many Spanish readers find it hard to read logos in John 1.1 as “palabra,” since the translation of logos into a feminine noun necessitates the use of feminine pronouns in the rest of the prologue. That is why translators chose the masculine noun "verbo" which in turn was probably taken from the “verbum” of the Latin Vulgate by Jerome, a version made famous since the 19th century.

Furthermore, any Greek lexicon confirms that logos means "word" and never "verb." Logos can also mean: story, cause, communication, doctrine, purpose, preaching, thought, mind, plan, activity, statement, expression. As we can see, logos can never be translated as “verb”! However many Spanish dictionaries today have added a new meaning to “verbo”: "The Second Person of the Holy Trinity."

In personal correspondence Professor Lynette Dyer Vuong, Instructor of Latin at the University of Houston, wrote:

If the translator who used 'verbo' instead of 'palabra' did so on the basis of gender and rejected 'palabra' because it's feminine, he was wrong...I would side with the majority and vote for ‘palabra’, which obviously means ‘word’, while ‘verbo’ generally means ‘verb’…It looks to me as if the Reina-Valera translator may have had some bias against females that made him unwilling to translate a word used to refer to the deity, who was 'with God' and 'was God,' with a word of the feminine gender.

[Apparently, he either didn't know or chose to ignore the fact that the word for 'spirit' as in Holy Spirit is feminine in Hebrew. (It's neuter in Greek and masculine in Latin.)]

Translators should give as nearly as possible the meaning of the words and keep their own biases and agenda out of it.

I think you are right on in your assessment. I agree with you.”

FOOTNOTES:
[1] John, Gospel According to, The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 6, 15th ed., p 587-588.

[2] Mar 8.26-29; Lu 9.17-20; Mat 16.12-16; John 20.31.

[3] Ibid.

[4] We do not know how Matthew and Luke understood the conception of Jesus through the Holy Spirit without a human father. For them was that the becoming of God’s Son? The “therefore” in Luke 1:35 (“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the one to be born will be called holy, Son of God”) could be interpreted to point in that direction. One may not simply assume that Matthew or Luke thought in a Johannine incarnation pattern. Although some scholars think Luke knew John’s Gospel that is far from certain; and John never mentions the conception of Jesus. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 110) is the first one known to have put together conception and incarnation Christology, for he refers to both Jesus as God’s Word and the birth from a virgin (Magnesians 8:2; Smyrnaeans 1:1).

[5] Ignatius, Ep.to Mag. 8, c. 110 AD.

[6] P.W. Comfort, R.A. Serrano, The Origin of the Bible, p. 347, 2008.

[7] Rodriguez, God’s Bible, p. 39.

[8] Ibid., p. 40.

[9] Boehmer, Eduard, Bibliotheca Wiffeniana: Spanish Reformers of Two Centuries, (Strasbourg 1874), vol. 1, p 155.

[10] El Testamento Nuevo de Nuestro Senor y Salvador Jesu Christo. Nueva y fielmente traducido del original Griego (por J. Pérez) en romance Castellano. Venecia, 1556.

[11] “So superstitious has been the reverence accorded the Textus Receptus that in some cases attempts to criticize or emend it have been regarded as akin to sacrilege. Yet its textual basis is essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts, and in a dozen passages its reading is supported by no known Greek witness” (The Text of the New Testament, p. 106). “The King James Version has serious defects…These defects were so many as to call for revision” (NRSV to the Reader, Metzger).

[12] “The Roman Catholic Church was slower to reject the comma…On 13 January 1897…the Holy Office decreed that Catholic theologians could not ‘with safety’ deny or call into doubt the Comma's authenticity. Pope Leo XIII approved this decision two days later, though his approval was not in forma specifica [full papal authority]…On 2 June 1927, the more liberal Pope Pius XI decreed that the Comma Johanneum was open to dispute” (Comma Johanneum, Wikipedia).

[13]Bruce M. Metzger, Theology Today, 10.1 (April 1953), p.75.