2 Young (and Barclay in the quotation following Young's in note #[1]) is perfectly aware that "a God" makes little sense. There was no capitalization in the original manuscript nor in the copies that followed for centuries thereafter. We, today, capitalize "god" when we wish to denote the only true creator of everything. Therefore "God" is not a "class" at all but a single individual, and, as we will see, was identified by using the definite article ('the') with 'god.' Therefore, there cannot be "a God," but, instead, the Bible writers using theos without the article would intend the indefinite meaning "a god.
The reason they are compelled to admit that it is the literal translation is that most often a nominative case noun (used as a subject or predicate noun), when it is without the article ('the') in the original language, and is a "non-prepositional" count noun ('man,' 'lamb,' 'house,' 'prophet,' 'sinner,' 'god,' etc.), will be translated properly into English with the indefinite article ('a,' or 'an').
For example, all the uses of the nominative "man" (anthropos) as found in John's Gospel which are used as described above:
John 1:6; 3:1; 3:4; 3:27; 5:5; 7:23 [UBS text (3rd ed.) and Received Text]; 7:46; 9:16; 10:33; 16:21 All are properly translated as "a man"!
Some other examples from the Gospel of John are: 2:1 ('a marriage'); 4:44 ('a prophet'); 5:2 ('a pool'); 6:9 ('a lad'); 6:70 ('a devil'); 8:44a ('a murderer'); 8:44b ('a liar'); 9:24 ('a sinner'); 10:1 ('a thief and a robber'); 11:38 ('a stone'); etc.
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