Bad grammar
Apparently, there are some verses of the Bible upon which most translators agree. Take for example John 1:1.
New International Version
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
English Standard Version
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Berean Study Bible
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Berean Literal Bible
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
King James Bible
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
New King James Version
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
New American Standard Bible
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
NASB 1995
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
NASB 1977
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I appreciate that both the King James Bible and the New King James Bible agree and that the Literal Berean feels that the word the deserves special emphasis. We are not just talking about any beginning but the beginning (but not the Beginning).
The lack of a comma after the beginning, the unwillingness to pause before the Word, signals the Word was everything from the get-go—there was no beginning before the Word, the beginning was not the Word’s opening act—the Word began the beginning.
And then there are these rebels.
New Living Translation
In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Honestly, I like the active verb update of the New Living Translation, and it does kind of question the idea of time in a way that Berean’s Literal italics tried to cheat its way into—it gets ahead of (or perhaps behind) time and understands it (time) as a condition of being (timeless) rather than a finite continuum of start (in order) to finish.
Amplified Bible
In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.
But Amplified, you ruined everything.
I don’t know the source of or audience for the Amplified Bible, but I am going to guess that both are groups that desire a bible that is louder and bigger than other translations; an audience that needs layers of brackets, parenthesis, and repetitions to clarify what it already knows.
Amplified’s volume drowns out subtlety with surety, limits the infinity of divine time by attempting to define it, and, ironically, diminishes the echo [heart-felt reverberation] of the verse with barriers (breaks) that take the reader away from the Word Itself.
Am I over-reading?
I don’t think there is such a thing as over-reading—the word is everything and always; punctuation aerates the word with energy and rest, with intimacy and familiarity.
Grammar is an attempt to both limit and harness a word’s power. Grammar’s root is in the Greek/Latin grammatike which means “the art of letters.” This root is related to both grammar (rules of a language to which speakers and writers must conform) and grimoire (a book for conjuring and magic).
You have to know the rules to break the rules and breaking rules is making rules. But when you [Amplified] try to yell over all of the words (rules and magic), you drain the words of their Every Thing.
