As you may know, the Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that in John 1:1 the word “God” is indefinite, and therefore we should translate it “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.” If this translation were correct, the theological implication would be some form of polytheism, perhaps suggesting that the Word was merely a secondary god in a pantheon of deities.
What the JWs may not realize is that if they applied this argument to the entire Gospel of John, they would end up with an array of strange phrases. For example, “the beginning” (1:1, 2) would actually become “a beginning.” “Life” would become “a life” (1:4). “From God” would be changed to “from a god” (1:6). “John” would be “a John” (1:6). “God” in 1:18 would also be “a god,” etc.
The New World Translation, the Bible distributed by Jehovah’s Witnesses, translates “God” as indefinite (“a god”) in John 1:1, but does not follow the same translation principle for other anarthrous nouns (e.g., “John” instead of “a John”).
It is clear that the NWT is operating out of a bias toward the deity of Jesus Christ.
Since the Gospel of John as a whole exalts Jesus Christ as God (cf. 5:23; 8:58; 10:30; 20:28), why place so much weight on a biased translation of John 1:1? Why ignore the clear passages that teach the exaltation of Jesus as God?
That should suffice for now, but if you’re up for a little bit of technical grammar, keep reading.
After a long and tedious look at the Greek NT, in 1798 a scholar named Granville Sharp came to the conclusion that when the construction article-substantive-kai-substantive (TSKS) involved personal nouns which were singular and not proper names, they always referred to the same person.
In other words, when you have an article-noun-conjunction-noun construction, the second noun refers to the same person mentioned with the first noun. This is precisely the case in John 1:1.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with (the) God, and the word was God.
The word order makes it tricky because, as you can see from the text in bold and underlined, the English order is different, placing a bit of separation between the final “God.”
Yet the TSKS construction is clearly seen in the bold, underlined Greek text. The first “God” has the definite article (“the”) and the second does not. But whenever this construction occurs, the second noun refers to the same person even though it doesn’t have the definite article.
Other examples of this construction are John 20:17; Eph. 6:21; Heb. 3:1; 1 Pet. 1:3; Rev. 1:9.
For more information, go to Google and look up anything from Daniel B. Wallace, who is the go-to Greek grammarian of our time. He has written extensively on these issues, and you’ll likely find access to some helpful info from him.