Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 1:1b
The Word was with God. The preposition is not the one you would expect for with.
John 1:1, in every translation this tool compares.
I sat with my wife. I turned to my wife. Both put two people together. Only the second one tells you which way anyone was facing. English with is a flat word. Greek had a choice here and picked the turned-toward one.
Because most readers move straight past the preposition to the nouns on either side of it, and the preposition is where the relationship is. It is a small word doing structural work, which is the general lesson: in Greek, prepositions and articles carry weight English gives to word order.
and the Word was with God.
Every English version reads with. Some commentaries offer toward, or face to face with, and none of that reaches the text.
πρός pros · G4314
The preposition is pros with the accusative. Its ordinary sense is motion toward or orientation facing. Greek had meta and syn available for plain accompaniment, and John used neither. Pros with a person in the accusative carries a sense of being turned toward, in relationship with.
English with is flat. It covers standing next to someone and being in a relationship with them, and no English preposition carries orientation the way pros does.
When a writer picks an unusual preposition where a plain one was available, the preposition is part of the argument. Check which one was the obvious choice and ask why it was passed over.
With is not wrong and there is no better English. The question is only how much weight the preposition will carry, and commentators divide on whether pros here is genuinely relational or simply Koine usage drifting toward the accusative.
- Pros with the accusative of person in relational sense: Mark 6:3; 1 Corinthians 16:6-7; Galatians 1:18
- The alternatives John did not use: meta, syn, para
