Monday, February 8, 2010
Coptic John 1:1, Assumptions vs. Facts
ϨΝ ΤЄϨΟΥЄΙΤЄ ΝЄϤϢΟΟΠ ΝϬΙ ΠϢΑϪЄ
ΑΥШ ΠϢΑϪЄ ΝЄϤϢΟΟΠ ΝΝΑϨΡΜ ΠΝΟΥΤЄ
ΑΥШ ΝЄΥΝΟΥΤΕ ΠЄ ΠϢΑϪЄ -- John 1:1, Sahidic Coptic text
It has been postulated that the Egyptian Coptic translators of the 2nd-3rd centuries would not have meant to say that "the Word was a god" -- even though that is precisely what they wrote -- ΝЄΥΝΟΥΤΕ ΠЄ ΠϢΑϪЄ -- because their translation would have been informed by the theology of the great Egyptian theologians like Clement of Alexandria. As translated into English by (Trinitarian) scholars, the writings of Clement appear to promote the concept that "the Word was God."
But it is only an assumption, not fact, to suppose that the Coptic translators would have been influenced by Clement of Alexandria, who had left Egypt for Jerusalem and Antioch, Syria, by 202 AD. (Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2, p. 167) Besides, Clement was a "pagan philosopher," a disciple of Socrates and Plato before adopting Christianity, and his works show his continued interest in such philosophy to the point where he has been accused of "corrupting the gospel with Greek philosophy." (Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2, pp. 165, 166; Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, p. 216)
According to its own tradition, the Coptic Church was founded by the evangelist Mark. We need only read Mark's Gospel to see what he preached, and what the earliest Egyptian Christians would have believed. Mark's Gospel has the simplest of Christologies and there is no doctrine of the Trinitiy in the Gospel of Mark.
The Coptic translation of John 1:1c lacks the 'corruption of Greek philosophy' that found its way into the church after the death of the apostles of the Lord. And that is still another reason why the Coptic translation matters.
Coptic John 1:1c is a prime example. The Coptic translation says ne.u.noute pe p.Saje: "the Word was a god (or, divine)," not "the Word was God." That is documented evidence, a fact, not an assumption. The Coptic language has both indefinite and definite articles in its grammatical structure. If the Sahidic Coptic translators held the doctrine that "the Word was God," or if the Coptic translators understood the Greek text to say "the Word was God," the Coptic language had the grammatical tools to say so.
But they manifestly did not write "the Word was God." They wrote "the Word was a god." Unlike the assumptions, that is a fact. It is a fact that can be verified by reading the extant Coptic texts as evidence.
Facts are always better than assumptions.
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Hi Memra.
ReplyDeleteYou might or might not be interested in this link:
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=7240
Online Coptic texts in PDF format.
Thanks very much for this information!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for this information!
ReplyDeleteThe contrast you frame as “assumptions vs. facts” turns on a category mistake. It treats the Sahidic sequence ⲛⲉ ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ as if Coptic articles mapped mechanically onto English ones, so that “ⲟⲩ- + noute” must mean nothing more or less than the English count phrase “a god.” But in Coptic nominal sentences the initial, indefinite predicate before a definite subject is the ordinary way to characterize the subject’s nature without identifying it as the very same person previously named. That is precisely the point of John 1:1c. In 1:1b the translator has just told us the Word was “with the God” (ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ), marking the Father personally and definitively. Repeating the definite form in 1:1c would risk a modalistic identification, while a bare, article-less predicate is normally excluded in this copular frame. The idiomatic solution in Sahidic is to place an indefinite predicate in front of the definite subject. In that position ⲟⲩ– often has qualitative force, the way Coptic predicates “is wisdom,” “is true,” or “is spirit” are rendered idiomatically in English without the article “a.” The translator’s choice therefore reflects grammar, not a shrinking from confessing Christ’s deity.
ReplyDeletePointing to Acts 28:6 as “proof” that ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ means “a god” actually demonstrates the opposite of what is claimed. In a polytheistic verdict by Maltese onlookers, “he is a god” is exactly the right sense, and the Coptic uses the same morphological tool to match that context. But John’s Prologue is not that context. It is rigorously monotheistic and, two lines later, ascribes creation itself to the Logos. The same morpheme can signal a count-indefinite in one setting, a numeric “one” in another (“one God, the Father,” where the indefinite base underlies the numeral), and a qualitative category in a third. Coptic itself forces that conclusion; it is not something imported from later dogma.
Nor does a Trinitarian reading depend on conjectured influence from Clement of Alexandria. Even if the Sahidic translators never read Clement, the issue is linguistic: how to reproduce in Coptic the Greek writer’s strategy of using an anarthrous predicate θεός to say what the Word is without equating him with “the God” he is with. The Sahidic does that elegantly. The claim that the translation preserves a purer, pre-philosophical Christianity therefore misses the central point. John’s high Christology does not arise from Platonism; it arises from Israel’s monotheism applied to the Logos who was “with God” and yet is what God is. Far from “corrupting the gospel,” the Greek of John and the Sahidic that mirrors it are both pressing a Jewish scriptural claim: God’s own Word, through whom all things came to be, has now become flesh.
Appealing to Mark’s “simple Christology” does not unsettle this. Mark never recites fourth-century formulas, but he does ascribe to Jesus what belongs to God alone: he forgives sins, commands the elements, receives homage, declares lordship over the Sabbath, and identifies himself with the Danielic Son of Man enthroned at God’s right hand. Early Egyptian Christians reading Mark could confess one God and still recognize the Son’s divine identity; nothing in Mark obliges them to deny what John says. The Coptic translators did not need Nicene slogans to understand an anarthrous predicate used qualitatively, and they did not need to avoid it to remain monotheists.
DeleteThe assertion that “Coptic had the tools to say ‘the Word was God’ but did not” presumes that the only way to express full deity is to put the definite article on “God” in 1:1c. In Coptic, however, doing so in this clause would most naturally read as personal identity with the Father just mentioned. The translators chose the construction their language offers to say, with clarity, that the Word truly is what God is while remaining personally distinct from the God he is with. That is why later Coptic writers could both preserve John 1:1c in this form and confess in worship and creed that the Son is “True God of True God.” Their use of the ⲟⲩ-form there shows beyond dispute that in Coptic the indefinite morphology is fully compatible with absolute deity when the predicate is qualitative or categorial. In other words, the “fact” that ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ appears in 1:1c is not evidence that the translators taught a second, lesser god; it is evidence that they rendered the Greek’s qualitative predicate with the normal Sahidic equative pattern.
What is left, then, is not an opposition between “assumptions” and “facts,” but between a wooden interlinear gloss and the way Coptic actually communicates meaning. Read as Coptic, John 1:1c does exactly what the Greek does: it predicates of the Word the very quality of deity, without collapsing him into the Father. Rendered into idiomatic English, that is why “the Word was God” (understood qualitatively) or “the Word was divine” in the strongest sense accurately conveys what the Sahidic says, while “the Word was a god” suggests a second deity the text does not countenance.