John 1:1
Interesting renderings of Biblia Sahidica
(coming are Luke 23:43 & Revelation 3:14)
John 1:1
The Greek text of this verse has been the subject of much controversy. A controversy that focuses on the QEOS of the third copulative clause. How in Greek should a Pre- Verbal Anathrous Predicate Nominative Singular Count Noun be rendered? Should it be seen as definite or indefinite? If as a third option it is seen to be primarily qualitative, does it still retain the nature of a substantive? There is much theologically guided debate. Many different translations have been offered. The translator's of the Sahidic Version knew Koine better than anyone today can claim to; they grew up immersed in it because it was an important international language in their day. How did they understand the Greek, as reflected in their translation?
1:1a Hn tehoueite nefshoop nci pshaje
1:1b Auw pshaje nefshoop nnahrm pnoute
1:1c Auw neunoute pe pshaje
In the third clause we have neunoute, which means "a god". There can be no question about whether this word is definite or not; it is clear, it has the indefinite article ou. This is something that the Greek language does not have. Greek has the definite article and employs zero article. In Greek when there is zero article (anathrous) a noun may be definite or indefinite. In Greek QEOS has no article so there is a question about whether it is definite or indefinite. The same question can not be asked about the Coptic. Coptic employs the definite, indefinite and zero articles and the translator's chose the indefinite article ou.
A literal translation would therefore be "and a god was the Word" or "and the Word was a divine being"
John 1:1
The Greek text of this verse has been the subject of much controversy. A controversy that focuses on the QEOS of the third copulative clause. How in Greek should a Pre- Verbal Anathrous Predicate Nominative Singular Count Noun be rendered? Should it be seen as definite or indefinite? If as a third option it is seen to be primarily qualitative, does it still retain the nature of a substantive? There is much theologically guided debate. Many different translations have been offered. The translator's of the Sahidic Version knew Koine better than anyone today can claim to; they grew up immersed in it because it was an important international language in their day. How did they understand the Greek, as reflected in their translation?
1:1a Hn tehoueite nefshoop nci pshaje
1:1b Auw pshaje nefshoop nnahrm pnoute
1:1c Auw neunoute pe pshaje
In the third clause we have neunoute, which means "a god". There can be no question about whether this word is definite or not; it is clear, it has the indefinite article ou. This is something that the Greek language does not have. Greek has the definite article and employs zero article. In Greek when there is zero article (anathrous) a noun may be definite or indefinite. In Greek QEOS has no article so there is a question about whether it is definite or indefinite. The same question can not be asked about the Coptic. Coptic employs the definite, indefinite and zero articles and the translator's chose the indefinite article ou.
A literal translation would therefore be "and a god was the Word" or "and the Word was a divine being"
Does such a translation convey the sense of the Coptic indefinite article?
In Coptic the indefinite article is sometimes used with abstract nouns and mass nouns so it does not precisely correspond to the English indefinite article.
So the Coptic oumoou (a water) = "some water" and oume (a truth) = (a particular) "truth" where as in contrast tme (the truth) = "truth" (in general).
The word noute here is neither an abstract noun or a mass noun, it is count noun.
Dr Leyton in his Coptic Grammar, writes concerning the use of the indefinite article with the word noute:
"The indef. article is part of the Coptic syntactic pattern. This pattern predicates either a quality (we'd omit the English article in English: "is divine") or an entity ("is a god"); the reader decides which reading to give it. The Coptic pattern does NOT predicate equivalence with the proper name "God"; in Coptic, God is always without exception supplied with the def. article. Occurrence of an anarthrous noun in this pattern would be odd."
So Dr Leyton says that the syntactic pattern that includes an indefinite noun can convey the sense of:
1) quality "is divine"
2) entity "is a god"
The reader decides.
He does not say that a noun can technically become an adjective when it has ou, but rather it can convey the sense of an adjective. The Coptic language elsewhere uses the prefix n with noute to technically make it an adjective, "divine". (Smith says for one use of n- "forms adjectives", see also Crum 231 a)
The English indefinite article conveys a similar sense to the Coptic as used here. It can simply categorize or it can convey various degrees of quality, so that in some cases an indefinite noun may approximate an adjective.
For exampe "you are a sinner" conveys quality and may be alternatively put "you are sinful"
When a subject is identified as a member of a class, to some degree the characteristics of the class are in view, and this remains true across languages.
ounoute is technically an indefinite noun, and the full sense of it is conveyed by means of the English indefinite article "the Word was a god". Still a translator may perceive that contextual emphasis is more on quality than entity, and choose to use an adjective "and the Word was divine" to convey the sense.
This translation is offered by Manal Gabr, in his thesis Philological studies of the Coptic versions of the Gospel of John. It is the convention of this thesis to offer the English rendering of the New King James Version when comparing passages in Coptic and Greek, but for the author to offer his own translation when he feels that the NKJV does not accurately reflect the Coptic. So the grammarian does not consider the NKJV's 'the Word was God' to accurately reflect the Coptic.
A third option, is to convey quality and entity with equal force
"and the Word was a divine being"
What is certain, and some might find it disturbing, is that the translation that has stood for centuries as the traditional English rendering, namely "the Word was God" can not be got from the Sahidic text. It just can not stretch to it.
It has been the tradition to include the capital letter with "God" at 1:1c. In English, capital letters are only used with proper nouns, such nouns are specific and can not be contrasted in number. As proper names in English are specific, "God" in the traditional translation reads as definite.
QEOS and noute are both count nouns, they should only be given an initial capital letter if they are contextually used as proper nouns. When in English one reads "the Word was with God and the Word was God", "God" in both cases must have the same referent. This is also the case if the Greek QEOS of 1:1c is considered definite like the QEOS in the previous clause. If "God" in 1:1b is the Father, then the traditional translation teaches that the Word is the Father. Such a teaching is called embryonic Sabellionism. Many Trinitarians now recognize this as an implication of viewing QEOS in 1:1 c as definite.
The truth is that QEOS in 1:1c is not definite as the Sahidic Version explicitly testifies.
The verse should be literally translated "and the Word was a divine being" or "and the Word was a god*".
*In the Holy Scriptures, both angels and men are at times called "gods"(Ex 4:16; 7:1; Ps 8:5; 82:1,6) this does not mean that there are many rightful objects of worship, a pantheon of deities. Rather those called gods, are called such because of characteristics they have or roles they play. The one called the Word is superior to those men and angels previously mentioned, how much more so then, can the Word be properly called a god(Joh 10:34-36), though he is not the supreme One, the Father, who we alone call God and who alone is given the respect and devotion for being such.
posted by ousboui at 3:38 PM
25 Comments:
Great blog! You have presented a wealth of interesting information already.
Much of the Coptic information now on the internet focuses on the Gnostic gospels of GThomas, GPhilip, or GJudas.
But of much more worth for the study of early Christianity and text transmission are the Coptic canonical Gospels.
It is excellent to see attention now directed to these true Gospels.
Thanks for your comment Memra, It is a shame that there is little interest in the canonical books of the Christian scriptures in Coptic. They are a valuable source for the study of the NT.
Thanks for the comment and reference to your blog.
Some questions:
You say "The Sahidic version was produced before about the third century CE." What date are our manuscripts of it, and what is the chance that the indefinite article was a later interpolation?
How did the Apostolic and Early Church Fathers understand John 1:1c? After all, Koinê Greek was their native language, and they had directly received the traditions from the Apostles and those appointed by them, and some had in fact been appointed or taught by John himself (assuming "John" was the author of the Gospel that bears his name).
How did liturgical worship in the centuries preceding the Sahidic treat Jesus: as God, or as "a god"?
What do scholars say about the indefinite article in Sahidic John 1:1c?
How would the Sahidic translate the verse if it did not want to equate Jesus with Theos=GodtheFather, but nevertheless wanted to equate him with "Theos" (i.e., of the same nature as Theos)? Would it use the definite article, the indefinite article, no article, or a different construction entirely?
Thanks for your comment.
Sahidic Mss go back to the third century CE, few Greek Mss are dated older than that. In the case of the book of 1 Peter the oldest extant Ms is a Sahidic one. Additionally some of the most valued Greek Mss are also written in Sahidic in another column. The Sahidic text faithfully preserves a highly accurate text of the NT. So much so that text critics consider it an important authority in establishing the Greek text. There are numerous Coptic Mss in various dialects that share this reading, and no indication of interpolation.
I find the writings of early church fathers to be highly philosophical and to depart sharply from strict exegesis of scripture. It is clear from the number of Christian demoninations that there is much deviation in teaching. It seems to me that such deviation began soon after the death of Jesus apostles. The writings of the early church document the varying and developing views of Christs nature that ultimately come to be expressed in the Creeds. I recently read 'Angelomorphic Christology and the Exegesis of Ps 8:5 in Tertullian's Adversus Praxean, which concludes "Tertullian's doctrine of Christ does not escape a certain subordination of essence. In Adversus Praxean, the accomplished rhetor presents Christ as a supernatural being, who only possesses a relative form of divinity." For quotations and illusions to Joh 1:1 in the early church writings please see http://tinyurl.com/zqezd
As for Coptic scholars, they agree with the "a god" translation. You can check some quotations here
http://nwtandcoptic.blogspot.com//
or why not find a Coptic grammarian to email yourself.
As for your last question,
hO QEOS = the Father, in Greek sometimes the artical is dropped but in Sahidic the definite atricle is always there when reference is to the Father. QEOS is a noun that can be properly applied to men and angels with out making them a part of the supreme being. In a similar way the Word is called a god without making him equal to hO QEOS. If the apostle wanted to describe the Word as having all the attributes and qualities of hO QEOS he would certainly have to have said something very different. If there is such a thing as an emthatically, fully qualitative noun, so that everything that hO QEOS is the LOGOS is to, it would have to be argued on the basis of the Sahidic zero article, not the indefinite. As it is for the apostle to give a singular count noun in this Greek construction, signifies what Eglish readers know as indefiniteness as the current thread on b-greek has shown.
Memra at
http://copticjohn.blogspot.com/2006/07/johannine-prologue-11-18.html
seems to argue that the Coptic means qualitative, however. This seems to suggest disagreement with you.
Memra writes:
"There are many interesting facets to the Sahidic Coptic translation of John's Koine Greek text at chapter 1, verses 1-18.
"In verse one, it has been noted that the anarthrous Greek text's KAI QEOS HN hO LOGOS is rendered with the Sahidic Coptic indefinite article. This is significant, because the Coptic could have left the text without any article, or could have used the definite article, if the translators had so understood the verse. While a noun without any article is infrequent in Sahidic Coptic, there are examples of this in the Nag Hamadi corpus of works. It is to be observed, therefore, that the Coptic translators found that verse one did not identify the Logos with the Person QEOS. Rather, the Logos is qualitatively QEOS." (my emphasis)
Thoughts/comments?
Hello, eytyxoc. In reference to my words about the anarthrous pre-verbal noun QEOS at John 1:1c, I think that the confusion may be between speaking about what the Greek means and what the likely English translations of the Greek may be.
As you know if you visit b-greek regularly, there is great debate among Greek grammarians about whether QEOS at John 1:1c is definite, indefinite, qualitative, qualitative-indefinite, or some other category. According to scholars like Daniel Wallace, the categories may overlap to some degree.
I think that the literal translation in both Greek and Coptic favors the indefinite reading. But since a god is also qualitatively "divine," or divine "by nature," I do not rule out a reading such as "the Word was divine" or "the Word was a divine being," or even the reading suggested by Coptic researcher J. Warren Wells: "the Word was like God," in English.
In other words, I can see John identifying the Word at John 1:1 as being "like God" (qualitative) while not being God (definite).
According to Coptic grammarian Bentley Layton, the Coptic sentence at John 1:1c can support either "the Word was a god" or "the Word was divine," but since it does not have the Coptic definite article, and has the Coptic indefinite article instead, it clearly does not say "the Word was God."
Actually, since God is identified throughout the NT as "the Father," for John to say "the Word was God" would be saying "the Word was the Father," (modalism or Sabellianism) which is not John's meaning at all.
In this way, the Coptic version rules out a reading that is not so obviously ruled out in the Greek, inasmuch as Greek has no indefinite article, but Coptic does.
memra wrote:
In this way, the Coptic version rules out a reading that is not so obviously ruled out in the Greek, inasmuch as Greek has no indefinite article, but Coptic does.
To clarify: What reading are you saying is ruled out by the Coptic:
a) The Logos was The Theos.
b) The Logos was Divine.
(You seem to say that the reading "The Logos was a divine being" or "The Logos was a god" is not ruled out by the Coptic, if I'm reading you correctly.)
How does the Coptic affect the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and other Creedal Trinitarian beliefs and formulations? While ousboui writes:
"I find the writings of early church fathers to be highly philosophical and to depart sharply from strict exegesis of scripture,"
even in your elucidation of the Coptic you seem to support the Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead - which would, IMO, argue against translating John 1:1c as "The Logos was a god," despite the presence of the indefinite article in the Coptic.
This is all new to me, and I know no Coptic, so please bear with my ignorance.
eytyxos, did you see the post about qualitative-indefinite-definite nouns on b-greek today by
Sean Kasabuske, titled "Definiteness"? That post highlights part of the problem.
Your interest in Coptic is commendable. Perhaps some of the other fine links posted by ousboui may be of assistance to you.
Specifically, the Coptic translation of John 1:1c rules out the reading QEOS as as if meaning "The LOGOS was hO QEOS."
It does not rule out an English translation as "LOGOS was Divine."
But what it literally says is ne.u.noute pe p.Saje: i.e., was-a-god (is) the Word, or "the Word was a god [i.e., divine being]."
It would appear then, that John is describing here what the Word was: divine, godlike, rather than equating him with the Person, hO QEOS.
If you are familiar with the writings of the pre-Nicene Fathers, you will see similar descriptions of the LOGOS there, where he called the "only-begotten God" in contrast to hO QEOS, whom some of the Fathers call hO QEOS AGENNHTOS, "the Unbegotten God."
But to put it simply, the Coptic version says "the Word was a god." It is possible to gloss this in English also as "the Word was Divine." But Coptic rules of grammar do not support translating it as "the Word was God."
P.S. As to your question, ?How does the Coptic affect the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and other Creedal Trinitarian beliefs and formulations," it is very likely that the Coptic Sahidic version was translated before Nicea, and does not reflect a preoccupation with those controversies.
It appears that the Coptic translators simply rendered the Greek text according to their best understanding of what that text said.
Hi Eytyxoc and Memra,
In my blog I wrote:
When a subject is identified as a member of a class, to some degree the characteristics of the class are in view, and this remains true across languages. With this in mind a translator may offer "and the Word was divine" to convey the sense.
In my view "the Word/Logos was divine" may well convey the sense. Technically we translating an indefinite substantive, lit "a god", with respect to the Greek text some grammarians are determined to assert that QEOS is not indefinite. Such can't be asserted about the Coptic. The coptic may be classified as categorical-indefinite or qualitive-indefinite, so that 'divine' is a good approximation, but we can't take away it's indefiniteness and so technically it remains a substantive.
To support my comment about the writings of the early church I'll offer another quote. Concerning the Trinity Dr Alvan Lamson states that it "had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; that it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers." - The Church of the First Three Centuries.
ousboui wrote:
To support my comment about the writings of the early church I'll offer another quote. Concerning the Trinity Dr Alvan Lamson states that it "had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; that it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers." - The Church of the First Three Centuries.
To which I would respond that the Church Fathers only made explicit what was implicit in the Scriptures when titles and things formerly attributed in the OT to YHWH were now ascribed to the Lord Jesus Christ. That, plus His being worshiped as God in the early Church by monotheistic Jews (see, e.g., Larry Hurtado, LORD JESUS CHRIST) substantiate to me that the Church was correct to call Jesus "God," and the understanding which the church gained of the Holy Spirit through His activity in the Church, as well as some of the passages in the New Testament, correctly, IMO, led to the Trinitarian understanding of God.
Anyway, thanks for sparking my interest in the Coptic. A friend is researching textual witnesses to Jesus's divinity, so I suggested he explore the Coptic/Sahidic witnesses, and not just the Greek.
Thank you Eytyxoc for sharing some comments here.
EYTYXOC asked...
"How did the Apostolic and Early Church Fathers understand John 1:1c? After all, Koinê Greek was their native language, and they had directly received the traditions from the Apostles and those appointed by them, and some had in fact been appointed or taught by John himself (assuming "John" was the author of the Gospel that bears his name)."
In touching upon your inquiry, this quote on a related subject may prove to be of interest:
"The formulation 'one God in three Persons' was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim to the title the Trinitarian dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective.…it is not directly and immediately the word of God."
From: "The New Catholic Encyclopedia." Prepared by an Editorial Staff at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. (New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967-c1989), vol. XIV [14], p. 299. BX841 .N44 1967 / 66-022292.
The import of this statement becomes all the more significant when we appreciate the fact that “the Apostolic Fathers” are those who were said to have lived during or close to the same time period as the Apostles themselves; perhaps, even some of them having been taught by them as well. Therefore, if among the writings of “the Apostolic Fathers” “there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective,” and, especially, for this teaching to not have ever been a part of the Christian “profession of faith,” that is, as expressed within any Christian ‘declaration of belief’ until the end of the 4th century, then, surely, this would unequivocally substantiate the fact that neither the Apostles nor any of the earliest of Christians had ever believed and/or been taught any such radically new concept about God. Therefore, it is very unlikely that these had ever thought that John 1:1c was in any way a statement made to identify "the Word," Jesus, as God.
Agape, Alan.
john1one@earthlink.net
http://www.goodcompanionbooks.com
Thank you first off, for this information, I feel now I have a good place to ask these harder questions... but for this time what I am wondering is, -can we get a word for word translation of this Coptic to see fist hand!! Am I greedy! Like in the B'rit haChadashah color coded interlinear!! Can this word for word scripture analysis also include verse 14 and 18? Or just the English directly under the Coptic would be fine, please. Please give us these three scriptures: 1:1,1:14, 1:18. Please teach us a new word or two! (how to pronounce God and only begotten for starters,) Oh I almost forgot I would like to add, why has no one mentioned the a god was sired? In the context begot. What is the Coptic for that word ? I believe mono-gene's is the Greek word. It seems to show in 14 and 18 that the siring of - or fathering of the god, shows him not to be "Almighty God" but the "only" "-one-produced". so different then God "Everlasting to Everlasting," the son had a beginning and was sired. Even if we can't get a word for word translation of all this Coptic!
Can I still get this word from you, the word for "only-begotten". (found also in J 3:16, Luke 7:11-12,8:41-42,9:38, (does Coptic have the manuscripts of Luke?) ) Thank you ahead of time. Trish
Saludos, me podrían proporcionar la obra "Pilological Studies on the Coptic Versions of the Gospel of John' al correo electrónico apuntesjw@gmail.com.
The Sahidic Coptic version reads: “ⲁⲩⲱ ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲡⲉ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ” — "and the Word was ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ." The indefinite article “ⲟⲩ-” is indeed present before “God.” However, to equate this mechanically with the English indefinite article “a” misses the nuance of how the Coptic article functions in context. Scholars such as Bentley Layton (author of A Coptic Grammar) and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (a foremost authority on Sahidic syntax) note that the Coptic indefinite article can express qualitative predication, not merely indefiniteness. That is, it does not always indicate “a separate, countable god,” but often reflects what kind of thing the subject is — much like “the Word was divine.” Layton writes (p. 138):
• “The indefinite article does not imply individuation in the predicate nominative construction. Rather, it expresses quality or categorical inclusion.”
This qualitative force is crucial. In English, saying "you are a genius" identifies you not just as one genius among many, but as having the nature or quality of genius. Similarly, “the Word was a god” (in Coptic) would be more idiomatically rendered “the Word was divine.”
Hence, to argue that the Coptic “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ” must mean “a god” in a polytheistic or ontologically inferior sense ignores the semantic range of the Coptic indefinite predicate nominative and oversimplifies the grammar.
The Coptic translators were Christians of the Alexandrian tradition, steeped in the Logos theology of figures like Clement and Origen. Even if the translation predates Nicea, these early Christians already affirmed the pre-existence, divine nature, and uniqueness of the Logos. To interpret “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ” as “a god” in a pluralistic, lesser-god sense is anachronistic and would have alarmed the same Alexandrian Christians who fought Arianism. The early Fathers — even before Nicene dogma — saw the Logos as truly divine, sharing in the Father’s nature (cf. Origen, De Principiis 1.2.6). The Copts were never Arians and did not treat Christ as a created being. Thus, translating John 1:1c as “a god” in English conveys a theological implication foreign to the translators’ beliefs, even if their grammatical construction might appear ambiguous to us today.
The blog post asserts that because the Coptic version doesn’t say “the God” (ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ), it must refer to a different god. But Greek also omits the article (“θεός”) in 1:1c. Scholars such as Harner, Wallace, and Harris have demonstrated that this absence is for grammatical reasons — specifically, the pre-verbal predicate nominative in Greek often lacks the article even when it is definite or qualitative. Wallace concludes:
• “The most likely candidate for the grammatical category of θεός is qualitative.” (Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 269)
The same principle applies to Coptic. The indefinite article functions idiomatically to convey nature or essence, not numerical separateness. Thus, “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ” is not parallel to saying “a god” in the Jehovah’s Witness sense (i.e., an ontologically subordinate being), but “God-like” or “of divine nature.”
The claim that Sahidic “always” uses the definite article with “God” when referring to the Father is overstated. The Coptic “ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ” is used for the Father, yes, but the use of “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ” does not necessarily indicate a separate or lesser being. Consider the usage in Ephesians 4:6, where “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ” refers to the one God and Father — showing that even when referring to YHWH, the indefinite form may appear due to syntax or focus, not polytheistic implications. Furthermore, Coptic translations of John 1:18 render the anarthrous Greek “θεὸς μονογενὴς” (“only-begotten god”) with a definite article: “ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲙⲟⲛⲟⲅⲉⲛⲏⲥ” — showing again that article usage in Coptic is influenced by stylistic and contextual factors and should not be over-interpreted.
The blog repeatedly suggests that grammatical choices in the Sahidic text disprove Trinitarian theology. But grammar does not dictate theology. Coptic “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩϯ” is a grammatical construction that must be interpreted in light of context, genre, and the translator’s worldview — not isolated as a prooftext. Moreover, the assertion that "the Word was God" leads to modalism (confusing the Son with the Father) is a misunderstanding of Trinitarian theology, which affirms one divine essence in three Persons. The Logos is God by nature, but not the Father. The distinction is maintained in the syntax: “the Word was with God [the Father]” and “the Word was [theos]” — divine in nature, not numerically identical.
The citations of Lamson and others to deny early Trinitarian belief are outdated and selective. The New Catholic Encyclopedia quote about Trinitarian formulation being "late" refers to doctrinal precision, not belief. The Trinity is implicit in New Testament worship of Christ (see Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ) and the pre-Nicene Fathers. Even Justin Martyr and Tertullian spoke of the Logos as God from God — divine, not created. Furthermore, using heterodox sources like Angelomorphic Christology to claim subordination confuses metaphor with ontology. The Fathers may have used language of "angel" or "messenger" for Christ's role, but they never meant He was ontologically an angel.
In conclusion, the Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1c, far from undermining Trinitarian doctrine, actually affirms a qualitative understanding of the Logos — that He is divine in essence. The use of the indefinite article “ⲟⲩ-” reflects grammar, not a denial of deity or affirmation of a subordinate god. To read “a god” in the polytheistic or Arian sense is both linguistically imprecise and theologically irresponsible. The Fathers, Greek syntax, Coptic grammar, and the witness of Christian worship all converge on the same truth:
“The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Not the same Person, but the same essence — fully divine.
Your argument contains several observations that I would not dispute. The Sahidic text of John 1:1c does contain the indefinite article ⲟⲩ- before ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ; ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is a gendered common noun rather than an abstract or mass noun; “a god” is one grammatically possible interpretation of an indefinite divine predicate; and the antiquity of the Sahidic version makes it an important witness to the history of the New Testament text and its early reception. The problem arises not in those observations but in the sequence of inferences you draw from them. You repeatedly move from morphological indefiniteness to semantic indefiniteness, from semantic indefiniteness to denotative class membership, and from denotative class membership to an ontologically inferior divine being. None of those transitions is licensed merely by the presence of ⲟⲩ-. The published Coptic grammars you cite actually provide unusually direct evidence against precisely that inference.
I would begin with Bentley Layton because your argument assigns great importance to him. Layton's treatment is not ambiguous on the relevant grammatical point. In his full reference grammar he distinguishes two semantic functions of common-noun predicates: denotation and description. A denotative predicate identifies an entity as an instance of a class; a descriptive predicate predicates the quality expressed by the lexical class. He then chooses the very noun at issue here, ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ, to demonstrate the distinction. The indefinite predicate ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ is explicitly susceptible to both “he is a god” and “he is divine.” Layton further says that descriptive predicates can themselves be indefinite article phrases and are ordinarily introduced by ⲟⲩ- or its plural counterpart.
That observation is fatal to the central grammatical syllogism in your argument. You are correct that ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is morphologically indefinite. What does not follow is that it must therefore be semantically denotative in the sense “one god belonging to a class of gods.” Layton treats those as separate levels of analysis. The morphological article is ⲟⲩ- in either case; what differs is the semantic function of the predicate. The same surface expression can denote an instance of a class or describe its subject by the quality associated with that class.
This is not some exceptional rule devised to rescue John 1:1. Layton's wider analysis of gendered common nouns gives ordinary examples such as a noun meaning “person,” which can yield either “a person” or “human,” a noun meaning “light,” which can yield either “a light” or “luminous,” and a noun meaning “king,” which can yield either “a king” or “royal.” The distinction is not normally morphologically marked; it is resolved from the sentence pattern, the lexical semantics of the predicate, and the larger discourse. In other words, the reader does indeed “decide,” as you put it, but not arbitrarily. The decision is an act of semantic interpretation constrained by context. “The reader decides” does not mean “the indefinite article means class membership unless theology intervenes.”
Layton makes the matter even harder to evade in his elementary ‘Coptic in 20 Lessons.’ He explicitly calls these constructions “adjectival” predicates. He says that such predicates are normally formulated with the indefinite article and that the article is not reproduced in English when the meaning is adjectival. He then turns specifically to ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ and gives ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ both as “he is divine” and as “he is a god.” He does the same with “light/luminous” and “person/human.”
That is why I cannot accept your distinction between a noun that merely “conveys the sense of an adjective” and a supposedly more genuinely adjectival construction employing ⲛ-. It confuses morphological category with syntactic-semantic function. Nobody needs to claim that the dictionary lexeme ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ magically ceases to be a noun. The point is that a noun phrase can function as a descriptive predicate. English does this too, though not with precisely the same morphosyntax. Translation routinely changes formal grammatical category in order to preserve semantic function. A French noun phrase, a Hebrew construct, a Greek participle, or a Coptic article phrase need not be reproduced by the same morphological category in idiomatic English.
Indeed, Layton explicitly teaches that Coptic possesses several ways of expressing adjectival meaning. The existence of an attributive construction such as ⲛ-ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ, “divine,” therefore does not imply that a nominal predicate ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ cannot be descriptive. That would be like arguing that because English possesses the adjective ‘human,’ the noun ‘man’ cannot participate in a predication emphasizing humanity. Languages routinely possess overlapping morphosyntactic strategies for predicating qualities. Layton tells us explicitly what Sahidic does in this particular construction, and the indefinite construction itself is one of those strategies.
There is an even more direct problem for the claim that “the Word was God” simply “cannot be got from the Sahidic text.” Layton himself gives John 1:1 in Coptic in 20 Lessons. At the morpheme-gloss level he analyzes the clause with “a-god,” exactly as one would expect from the presence of ⲟⲩ-. Yet immediately below that interlinear analysis his sentence-level translation is:
“And the Word was God.”
That juxtaposition is printed in the same grammatical presentation.
One therefore cannot cite Layton's interlinear “a-god” as though it settled the English sentence translation while dismissing Layton's own sentence translation as inconsistent with his grammar. The distinction he is teaching is precisely the distinction your argument collapses. A morphemic gloss identifies the formal constituents of the source language. It is not necessarily an idiomatic semantic translation of the resulting construction. ⲟⲩ- can be glossed a- while ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ in predicate function is rendered divine or God, depending on the semantic construal. The same author who supplies the interlinear “a-god” explicitly defines the exact predicate as capable of meaning “he is divine.” There is no contradiction in Layton; the contradiction arises only if one assumes in advance that morpheme gloss and clause translation must be identical.
Plumley supplies an independent illustration of precisely the same phenomenon. In his discussion of predicate-first nominal sentences he gives ⲟⲩⲛⲟϭ ⲡⲉ, morphologically something like “a great one, he,” but translates it idiomatically as “He is great.” The lesson is elementary but important: overt Sahidic indefinite morphology need not appear as English “a/an” when an article phrase performs descriptive predication.
Your count-noun objection consequently does not solve the problem. I agree that examples involving water, blood, truth, or other mass and abstract nouns cannot by themselves prove how ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ functions. They show only that there is no universal one-to-one equation between Sahidic ⲟⲩ- and English “a/an.” If that were the whole case, your objection would have force. But it is not the whole case. Layton uses ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ itself, a gendered common noun, as the example of a predicate that can be either denotative or descriptive. The count-noun qualification has therefore already been controlled for. The question is not whether “god” can count entities. It plainly can. The question is whether a noun of that lexical class, when used as a nominal predicate, can characterize the subject by the quality of deity. Layton answers yes.
This also shows why the analogy with “you are a sinner” does not accomplish what you want it to accomplish. “You are a sinner” certainly combines classification with attribution of a property, but from that truism it does not follow that every formally indefinite predicate must have class-membership as its primary semantic function. That is precisely the distinction Layton labels denotation versus description. When I say “this substance is poison,” I am not necessarily introducing a second countable specimen called “a poison”; when I say “he is royalty,” predication differs from reference; languages differ substantially in how such distinctions are grammaticalized. The question must be answered from Coptic grammar, not from what the English indefinite article ordinarily does.
The argument from the Coptic zero article fares no better. You suggest that if John or his Sahidic translator intended an “emphatically, fully qualitative” meaning, one should expect bare ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ, not ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ. But this assumes that zero determination is the normal Coptic marker of qualitative predication in precisely the nominal-sentence construction under discussion. Layton says otherwise. In some nominal sentence patterns zero-article predicates are “strikingly absent.” In closely related patterns consisting of a predicate followed by ⲡⲉ/ⲧⲉ/ⲛⲉ, he says zero-article phrases are perhaps excluded. At the same time, his §292 positively states that descriptive predicates are commonly formed with ⲟⲩ-.
So your proposed scale—
bare noun = genuinely qualitative,
ⲟⲩ- + noun = necessarily indefinite entity—
does not describe Sahidic nominal predication. Zero determination certainly exists elsewhere in Coptic, but its distribution is construction-sensitive. One cannot invent a counterfactual bare ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ and then fault the translator for not using a form that the relevant nominal construction may not readily license. The attested ⲟⲩ- construction is itself one of the ordinary means of descriptive predication.
This is also where the supposed contrast between “the Word was divine” and “the Word was a divine being” becomes important. The latter wording is not a neutral way of preserving the former. By adding BEING, one pushes the English reader toward denotative class membership: one divine being among other divine beings. Coptic ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ does not itself supply the additional English noun BEING. If the construction is descriptive, “the Word was divine” is substantially closer to its function. And if “divine” is then interpreted merely as “godlike” or “superhuman,” one has introduced another semantic attenuation that ⲟⲩ- does not encode.
That distinction is crucial when moving back to Greek. The modern grammatical discussion of John 1:1c is not exhausted by “definite or indefinite.” Philip Harner's classic study was devoted precisely to qualitative anarthrous predicate nouns and included John 1:1 among its central examples. Daniel Wallace likewise construes θεός in John 1:1c as qualitative and has explicitly clarified what he means by that terminology: not “godlike,” not an angelic or semidivine status, but true deity, while the syntax distinguishes the person of the Logos from the person of the Father.
I would therefore reject the framing that asks whether a qualitative θεός “still retains the nature of a substantive” as though that settled its theological force. Of course θεός remains morphologically a noun. The issue is the semantic function of that noun in predicate position. A qualitative predicate noun predicates the nature or character associated with the noun rather than identifying the subject with another referential noun phrase or merely counting the subject as one member of a class. Morphological nounhood is not the same thing as denotative class-membership semantics.
The Sahidic translation is striking precisely because it can accommodate that distinction. Its indefinite morphology is explicit, whereas Greek lacks an indefinite article. But more overt determination does not mean less semantic polysemy. The Sahidic translator has chosen a grammatical form that Layton says can be read either denotatively or descriptively. Coptic therefore makes a formal choice without eliminating the semantic question.
That is why the statement “the Sahidic explicitly testifies that Greek θεός was not definite” needs considerable qualification. The Sahidic certainly testifies that the Coptic translator did not render 1:1c with the ordinary definite divine expression ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ. That is useful evidence. But “not rendered with the Coptic definite article” is not equivalent to “understood as one lesser god among others.” A qualitative Greek predicate does not require a definite Coptic article, and a descriptive Coptic predicate can use the indefinite article. The translation therefore fits a qualitative construal extremely well.
The absence of the definite article also makes excellent sense from a Nicene perspective. John 1:1b has already established personal distinction: the Logos was πρὸς τὸν θεόν, “with God.” If the referential expression “God” there designates the Father, John cannot simply identify the Logos as that same person without destroying the distinction he has just asserted. In 1:1c he predicates θεός of the Logos while preserving the distinction between ὁ λόγος and the personally identified referent of τὸν θεόν. That is not Sabellianism. It is almost a miniature statement of the problem that later Nicene terminology was designed to articulate: distinction of persons without division of deity.
Your capitalization argument does not change this. English capitalization is an orthographic convention, not a formal theorem of reference. The sentence “the Word was God” does not grammatically entail “the Word was the Father,” any more than predicating a nature necessarily equates two personal subjects. The Greek itself distinguishes subject and predicate: ὁ λόγος is articular and therefore identifiable as the subject, while θεός is the anarthrous preverbal predicate. A truly convertible identity proposition, “the Word was the God” in the sense “the Word was the same personal referent just mentioned,” would be a different claim. Trinitarian exegesis does not read John that way.
This is why calling the traditional translation “embryonic Sabellianism” misfires. Sabellianism collapses the personal distinction between Father and Son. John 1:1b expressly excludes that collapse before 1:1c predicates deity of the Logos. The two clauses must be read together. The Logos is with God and the Logos IS God: distinction in personal relation, deity in predication. The grammar does not require the fourth-century word homoousios, but it creates precisely the exegetical pressure that the Nicene distinction between WHO and WHAT later formalized.
Tertullian is particularly inconvenient for the historical argument you append, because Adversus Praxean demonstrates that this distinction did not originate at Nicaea. Whatever terminological tensions one finds in Tertullian, he expressly argues against identifying Father and Son as the same person while maintaining unity of substance. In his exposition of John 1 he says that Father and Son are distinct in “personality, not substance,” and insists on “one only substance” while distinguishing the persons. Earlier in the treatise he describes Father, Son, and Spirit as three persons while denying division of substance and affirming one God.
Therefore a modern monograph's description of a “certain subordination of essence” in Tertullian cannot simply be elevated over Tertullian's own explicit statements. Edgar Foster's study certainly exists and advances a particular thesis concerning Tertullian's Christology. The publisher itself describes it as a fresh theory concerning Tertullian's reluctance to attribute angelic properties to Christ. That makes it a contribution to scholarly debate, not an agreed verdict that Tertullian regarded Christ as a created semidivine being. Tertullian undeniably employs hierarchical and derivational language that later Nicene theology would formulate more carefully. Pre-Nicene terminology was not yet standardized. But relational, economic, or causal priority of the Father is not automatically the Arian proposition that the Son belongs to the created order. In the same work Tertullian appeals to John 1:1, calls the Word God, denies division of substance, and distinguishes Father and Son personally rather than substantially. Any historical account must accommodate all of that evidence rather than extracting only the subordinationist-sounding phrases.
The same methodological problem attends the quotation from Alvan Lamson. Lamson's ‘The Church of the First Three Centuries’ is a nineteenth-century work whose very extended title announces its thesis: it aims to illustrate the Trinity's “late origin and gradual formation.” Citing it proves that a nineteenth-century anti-Trinitarian historian argued that Platonizing Fathers produced the doctrine. It does not establish that conclusion. There is a legitimate historical question concerning the influence of Greek philosophical vocabulary upon patristic theology. But the use of Greek conceptual language to articulate a doctrine is not evidence that the doctrine's exegetical content was imported from Greek philosophy. Ousia, hypostasis, and prosopon are conceptual instruments; the problems they address arise from texts such as John 1:1, John 1:3, John 5:23, John 20:28, Philippians 2:6–11, Hebrews 1, and the baptismal and liturgical patterns of early Christianity. One must distinguish development of terminology from invention of the underlying claims.
Returning to Sahidic, your appeal to Manal Gabr also proves less than you suppose. Her Liverpool doctoral thesis is real and dates to 1990. If her rendering at John 1:1c is indeed “divine,” that is evidence for precisely the descriptive reading you are attempting to subordinate to “a god.” It does not establish that the Coptic means “a subordinate divine being.” Nor does a translator's departure from an English base text automatically constitute a judgment that the base translation is grammatically impossible. To establish the stronger claim you would need Gabr's own methodological statement tied specifically to that verse. The publicly accessible repository metadata confirms the thesis, but I would not infer an entire theory of John 1:1c from a secondary quotation without examining the relevant page in context.
More broadly, the statement that “Coptic scholars agree with the ‘a god’ translation” is simply unsustainable. Layton alone disproves the claim of consensus: his reference grammar explicitly gives both “he is a god” and “he is divine” for the same construction, and his pedagogical grammar actually renders Sahidic John 1:1c “the Word was God.” Wright and Ricchuiti devoted a peer-reviewed Journal of Theological Studies article to the Sahidic treatment of anarthrous θεός, precisely because the evidence requires analysis rather than the simplistic equation ⲟⲩ- = English “a.” A denominational or apologetic blog collecting selected quotations cannot establish a scholarly consensus in the face of published grammatical evidence to the contrary.
I am likewise happy to concede your point about the antiquity and textual-critical importance of Coptic. Sahidic is an early and valuable version. That gives it considerable significance for reconstructing Greek readings and studying early interpretation. But antiquity does not make every receptor-language grammatical distinction a one-to-one semantic photograph of Greek. Textual criticism asks, among other things, what Greek reading probably stood behind a version. Translation semantics asks what a Coptic construction could mean. Those are related but distinct questions.
This distinction is especially important when you say that the Sahidic translators “knew Koine better than anyone today can claim to.” That is rhetoric rather than demonstrable linguistic method. Many Egyptian Christians lived in bilingual environments and some translators plainly possessed considerable Greek competence. But ancient bilingual competence does not abolish structural differences between Greek and Coptic, nor does it mean that every translation choice uniquely resolves an ambiguity of the source language. Modern historical linguistics has analytical tools, comparative corpora, manuscript evidence, and formal descriptions unavailable to ancient speakers themselves. Native or near-native competence deserves great evidentiary weight; it is not an infallibility charism.
Nor does the early date of a Sahidic manuscript prove a particular Christology. A manuscript's date is not necessarily the date of the underlying translation, and a translation tradition is not a named theologian confessing a creed. Even multiple Coptic dialects exhibiting indefinite morphology at John 1:1c prove, first of all, a versional fact about determination. They do not become independent ballots for the semantic proposition “the Logos is one lesser god among many.” Related translation traditions can share material, and even genuinely independent translators can choose formally comparable constructions that remain semantically descriptive.
Your observation that ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is the normal referential designation of the biblical God in Sahidic is more important, but it still does not yield your conclusion. Referential nouns and predicates do different semantic work. If I refer to a uniquely identified entity, definiteness is natural. If I characterize another subject by a property, repeating the same definite referring expression can create an unintended identity relation. Thus the contrast between ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ in 1:1b and ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ in 1:1c is entirely compatible with the Nicene distinction: the Father is the personal referent with whom the Logos exists, while deity is predicated of the Logos. It is precisely the sort of context in which a descriptive rather than co-referential predicate is required.
Your appeal to human beings and angels being called “gods” also cannot determine the sense of John 1:1c. Words are polysemous. That θεός can be employed representatively or metaphorically of Moses, judges, celestial beings, or false gods does not entail that every nondefinite θεός denotes a member of that subordinate category. Context selects senses. John 1 does not introduce the Logos as another commissioned representative alongside Moses or angelic ministers. The Logos already “was” in the beginning, exists in personal relation with God, and then functions as the exhaustive mediator of creation: “all things” came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. The natural force of John 1:3 places the Logos on the causal side of the Creator-creature distinction. To put the Logos among the things that “came into being,” one must introduce an exception into the exhaustive formulation that John does not state.
That contextual fact is especially damaging to the move from “a god” to “not the supreme One.” Even if I granted the denotative English gloss a god as a legitimate rendering of the Coptic considered in abstraction, Coptic ⲟⲩ- carries no lexical features meaning “created,” “inferior,” “not Almighty,” “angelic,” or “unworthy of divine honor.” Those theological predicates must be supplied from elsewhere. The article cannot bear them.
The same is true if you prefer “divine.” There is an enormous difference between “divine” meaning “possessing deity” and “divine” meaning “godlike, but ontologically inferior to God.” Sahidic does not encode that downgrade. Wallace's clarification concerning the Greek is helpful precisely here: by qualitative θεός he means true deity, not the category of angels or other superhuman creatures, and he understands the construction as simultaneously distinguishing Father and Son personally while affirming the same divine essence. One need not accept Wallace merely on authority; the point is that the adjective ‘divine’ is itself semantically underspecified in English. It cannot be treated as though it automatically means the Watchtower's “a divine being but not Almighty God.”
The prologue's own syntax gives a more coherent reading. In 1:1b John safeguards personal distinction. In 1:1c he predicates deity. In 1:3 he places the Logos outside the totality of things that came into being and makes him their mediating cause. In 1:14 the same Logos becomes flesh rather than coming into existence as Logos. Later the Gospel can culminate in Thomas addressing the risen Jesus as ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου, “my Lord and my God.” The Nicene reading does not depend upon importing the fourth-century adjective homoousios into the Sahidic article. It rests on the cumulative explanatory fit of John's predications.
For that reason I would also distinguish two propositions that your argument repeatedly merges. It is one thing to say:
Sahidic John 1:1c is morphologically indefinite.
That is correct.
It is another to say:
therefore the Logos is denoted as one nonsupreme god belonging to a larger class of divine beings.
That is not a grammatical observation. It is a theological interpretation of one of the possible semantic construals, augmented by additional assumptions about the nature of the class.
The first proposition is visible in the text. The second is not.
I would therefore render the evidential situation differently. At the level of interlinear morphology, one can certainly gloss the clause approximately “and a-god was the Word.” At the level of Coptic predicate semantics, however, ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is expressly capable of descriptive force: “the Word was divine.” At the level of idiomatic theological English, “the Word was God” can legitimately convey that the predicate attributes deity to the Logos without identifying him as the same person as the Father. Layton himself moves through precisely those levels when he prints “a-god” in his morphological analysis and “the Word was God” as his sentence translation.
So I do not need to deny a single letter of the Sahidic text to defend the traditional translation. I accept the ⲟⲩ-. I accept that “a god” is grammatically possible. I accept that the Sahidic translator made a determination choice that Greek itself does not morphologically mark with an indefinite article. What I reject is the assertion that this choice settles the semantics in favor of a subordinate deity. The best published grammar of Sahidic explicitly says that it does not.
Nor do I claim that Coptic by itself proves Nicaea. ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ does not mean homoousios, and grammatical qualitative predication alone does not contain the whole Nicene Creed. That would be the mirror-image error of the argument I am criticizing. What Coptic does establish is that the Watchtower inference is not encoded in the article. The positive Nicene case arises when the legitimate descriptive reading is combined with the Johannine context: the Logos is personally distinct from the Father, possesses what θεός predicates, mediates the coming-to-be of everything that came to be, becomes flesh, and is ultimately addressed as God within the Gospel.
That is why I find the traditional translation not only linguistically defensible but contextually superior. “The Word was a god” invites an English class-membership reading that the Sahidic does not require and the Johannine creation context makes difficult. “The Word was a divine being” introduces the noun BEING and easily suggests a secondary ontological species that neither Greek nor Coptic supplies. “The Word was divine” captures the qualitative function but in contemporary English can sound weaker than the intended predication of genuine deity. “The Word was God,” properly explained as predication rather than personal identification, preserves both the strength of θεός and the personal distinction already established by “the Word was with God.”
In short, your most secure observation is also much narrower than your conclusion: Sahidic has an indefinite article. From there the argument does not run automatically to “one god,” still less to “a created subordinate god.” Layton expressly blocks the first inference, John 1:3 severely complicates the second, and Tertullian's own anti-modal language shows that distinguishing Father and Son while affirming one divine substance was already conceptually available long before Nicaea. The Sahidic version is therefore significant evidence in the discussion, but it is not the ancient anti-Trinitarian verdict you present it as being. Its grammar leaves open a descriptive reading of ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ, and the larger Johannine discourse gives strong reasons to understand that description as a predication of genuine deity rather than membership in a hierarchy of lesser gods.
Post a Comment
<< Home