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One so rarely hears, if ever, in mainline Christian churches about the "womb of God" that one would think such a thought is "unorthodox." And the very idea "womb of the Father" is so jarring that it appears totally ludicrous and beyond all reasonable conceptual possibility. Nevertheless, one of the canonical gospels was interpreted by renowned Greek Church leaders to teach this very thing.
John 1:18 ends the chiastic prologue to the Gospel according to John, thus paralleling John 1:1.1 Various translations abound trying to capture the meaning of 1:18. The New Revised Standard Version words it this way: "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom (kolpos) of the Father, he has made him known." The Greek term kolpos is "pregnant" with meaning. According to Liddell & Scott, the word means I.1) "bosom, lap"; 2) "womb"; II. "fold of a garment"; III. "any bosom-like hollow" (listing geographical examples); and IV. "enveloping force."2 Given the phrase "kolpos of the Father," numerous English translators shy away from the feminine imagery of womb. Nevertheless, a generative metaphor is plausible when one realizes that the Greek text has monogenës "only-begotten" and that the root verb gennao applies to either a father or a mother bringing forth a child.3 "Only-engendered" would be more gender-inclusive than "onlybegotten" since in the English language we speak only of fathers begetting.
The English word "bosom" itself is fraught with a variety of meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 1a) "the breast of a human being"; b) "the enclosure formed by the breast and the arms"; c) "wife of one 's bosom: orig. Hebraism"; d) "the womb"; 2) "applied to the surface of the sea, a lake, a river, or the ground"; 3) "the part of the dress which covers the breast; also the space included between the breast and its covering"; 4) "a curved recess; a cavity, hollow interior; a sinus." And the list goes on. Thus even the English word "bosom" can mean breast, or chest, or the enclosure between and below the breasts, as well as womb, though that meaning is noted as obsolete but attested to at least as late as 1535.
Regarding English translations of Jn. 1:18, the King James Version as...