The whole difference of why the true God is called HoTheos=The God--and plain Theos is in both passages. If Jesus were being called THE GOD Ho Theos would be in the last line but it is not. A god is correct.
I told you a Greek scholar( A.Kneeland) translated from Greek lexicons( 1822)( trinity translating) and proved to the world a god was correct by showing the Greek and English side by side. Of course rejected by trinity clergys it exposes them as false religion. 18 other translations had it correct-rejected by trinity clergys.
Thomas called Jesus THE GOD in John 20:28
ἀπεκρίθη Θωμᾶς, καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ
ὁ θεός μου.-John 20:28, Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, Produced by the New World Translation Committee, 1969 (Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1969 )
As for apostate Abner Kneeland he also denied the virgin birth and tailored his translations to fit that belief. He became a pantheist, which is close to the polytheism of the Jehovah's Witnesses, with their belief in THE GOD and "a god" side by side in John 1:1.
As Jehovah's Witnesses also refer to demons as "a gods" one could make the case JW's believe in a panthenon of gods like ancient pagan Greeks. They have a huge Jehovah God in a big spirit body on top and lesser gods in smaller spirit bodies below him.
Their idea is similar to modern day Spiritualists and other pagan religions that believe in a Chief god among a pantheon of lesser gods or angels.
"While there are physical bodies visible and palpable, there are also spiritual bodies, invisible to human eyes and entirely beyond human senses. (1 Cor. 15:44) The bodies of spiritual persons (God, Christ, the angels) are glorious...The true God is not omnipresent."--Aid To Bible Understanding, p. 247, 665 (Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, 1971)
Abner Kneeland, Forgotten American Translator (and Apostate)
...
Who was
Abner Kneeland? He was the last man convicted of
blasphemy in the United States of America. As a Unitarian preacher (ordained in 1805), Kneeland received some instruction from Hosea Ballou. Kneeland demonstrated a visionary attitude regarding the rights of woman, and the equality of all ethnic groups. He led congregations in New Hampshire, Massaachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia,
before breaking away from Christianity altogether in 1829. By 1830 he was openly advocating pantheism.
In 1833, Kneeland published an essay in which he stated, among other things, “Universalists believe in Christ, which I do not; but believe that the whole story concerning him is as much a fable and fiction as that of the god Prometheus.” As a result, he was arrested in 1834 on the charge of blasphemy, and was found guilty; he appealed the decision, but it was affirmed by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1838, and, despite calls for clemency from individuals such as
William Ellery Channing, Kneeland served 60 days in jail.
In 1839, Kneeland moved to Iowa, intending to start a sort of colony with some of his followers, called Salubria. (One of Kneeland’s earlier associates,
Frances Wright, had attempted something similar in Tennessee, the short-lived Nashoba Commune). After Kneeland’s death there in 1844, the Salubria colony dissolved.
And that is that. But before all the controversy about Kneeland’s departure from Unitarianism, he made an English translation in 1823, based on the text compiled by Johann Jakob Griesbach. Kneeland used as his model the “Improved Version” made by
Thomas Belsham in 1808, which was largely dependent on the 1796 work of Anglican Archbishop William Newcome,
An Attempt Toward Revising Our English Translation of the Greek Scriptures.
In this translation, Kneeland demonstrated how the adoption of specific variants, combined with his own translational preferences, could yield a New Testament with doctrinal content significantly different from the King James Version, so as to fit his denial of the virgin birth, his denial of the existence of demons and hell, and so forth. In a brief preface, Kneeland relegated the books of Hebrews, James, Second Peter, Second John, Third John, Jude, and Revelation to a secondary status, calling them “Disputed Books” which are “not to be alleged as affording along sufficient proof of any doctrine.”
...
Likewise, some criticisms made against the Watchtower Society’s New World Translation also apply to some of Kneeland’s renderings; most notably in John 1:1, which Kneeland rendered, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God,” and in Hebrews 1:8a, which Kneeland rendered, “But to the Son he saith, “God is thy throne.” When we look at Kneeland’s systematic avoidance of the term “hell” in his translation, we see in the New World Translation (and in the NIV to a large extent) the same avoidance.
As a simple point of history, deviations from the
Textus Receptus and deviations from orthodoxy have gone hand in hand; let anyone who says otherwise take a close look at the Unitarian
texts, and Unitarian
teachings, of the early 1800s in New England, as exemplified by Abner Kneeland’s translation, and his subsequent total apostasy.
www.thetextofthegospels.com
