Some apologists have made the claim that the use of the indefinite article ou in the Coptic bound construction ou.noute ["a-god"] at John 1:1c is insignificant, that it is merely a grammatical necessity that does not change the meaning from "the Word was God" to "the Word was a god."
But that is incorrect. Whereas in the Greek New Testament, the anarthrous theos, i.e., "god" without the Greek definite article, may mean either "God" or "a god" depending on context, Sahidic Coptic grammar has both the definite and the indefinite article , and the use of either Coptic article with a common or count noun like noute, "god," does have significance.
Although the use of the Coptic definite article with noute does not always refer to God Almighty [e.g., Acts 7:43] -- since the definite article can also be used anaphorically -- when God Almighty is the specific referent, the Coptic definite article is used routinely in the Sahidic Coptic New Testament.
The Sahidic Coptic translators had a choice at John 1:1c as to which bound construction to use, a definite one or an indefinite one, in accordance with Sahidic syntax and grammar. If they understood the Greek text to say "the Word was God" they would have used the Coptic definite article bound with the count noun: p.noute. They did not have to use the Coptic indefinite article unless they understood the Greek to actually say "the Word was a god," i.e., ou.noute pe pSaje.
Therefore, the fact that they did use the Coptic indefinite article at John 1:1c is very significant.
The Egyptian theologian Origen (c. 185-254) was roughly contemporaneous with the Egyptian Sahidic Coptic translators. Origen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and taught there for a while. In his Commentary on the Gospel of John, Origen writes that even in the New Testament Greek text of John 1:1c, the choice of the article is significant. He says:
"We next notice John's use of of the [Greek] article in these sentences. He does not write without care in this respect, nor is he unfamiliar with the niceties of the Greek tongue....He uses the [Greek definite] article when the name of God refers to the uncreated cause of all things, and omits it when the Logos ["the Word"] is named God...as God who is over all is God with the article, not without it."
Origen also distinguishes between Almighty God, whom he calls "Autotheos, God of Himself," and the Word or Logos, who 'attracts divinity to himself' by being with God in intimate association, "not possessing that [divinity] of himself, but by his being with the Father." -- Ante Nicene Fathers, volume 9, page 323
If the Sahidic Coptic translators had a viewpoint similar to that of their fellow citizen and contemporary, Origen, it is more than likely that they also 'did not write without care' with respect to John 1:1c. It was not because they had no other option that they wrote "a god" [ou.noute] as the translation of the Greek's anarthrous theos in this verse.. They did have another option. They had the option of using the Coptic definite article here if they understood the Greek to mean "the Word was God" instead.
Nor did the Sahidic Coptic translators write "the Word was a god" out of ignorance of Greek grammar and syntax. Koine Greek was still a living language when the Sahidic Coptic translators did their work, and by then Greek had been a part of Egyptian culture for 500 years. If anything, it is likely that those Coptic translators had as good or better an understanding of the living Koine Greek as do scholars today.
The conclusion: The Coptic translators rendered John 1:1c from the Greek text to say "the Word was a god" because that is exactly what they understood it to say, not because they were grammatically ignorant of Greek, or grammatically restrained by Coptic from doing otherwise.
Very interesting Memra. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, while not commenting on John's Gospel, nevertheless made a similar distinction between the one true God and his (Philo's) version of the logos based on the use and disuse of the Greek article.
ReplyDelete"And do not pass by what is here said, but examine it accurately, and see whether there are really two Gods. For it is said: 'I am the God who was seen by thee;' not in my place, but in the place of God, as if he meant of some other God. What then ought we to say? There is one true God only: but they who are called Gods, by an abuse of language, are numerous; on which account the holy scripture on the present occasion indicates that it is the true God that is meant by the use of the article, the expression being, 'I am the God [ho theos];' but when the word is used incorrectly, it is put without the article, the expression being, 'He who was seen by thee in the place,' not of the God [tou theou], but simply 'of God' [theou]; and what he here calls God is his most ancient word [logos]." (On Dreams, 1.228-230)
It's irrefutable that the Greek-speaking Egyptians of the first few centuries viewed a major difference between an articular theos and an anarthrous theos occurring in the same context, a difference in identity. This is reflected wonderfully in the Coptic version of John 1:1 with the use of both types of articles.
TJ
Thanks for the comments and the instructive reference to Philo.
ReplyDeleteIf Coptic grammar "necessitates" the indefinite article, yet the meaning remains "the Word was God," then there should be other instances in the Coptic NT where this would be so.
ReplyDeleteIt is my understanding that John 1:1 would be the only instance in the Coptic NT where God is referred to using the indefinite article.
Thanks for your comments, Abernathy. You are correct.
ReplyDeleteJohn 1:1 would not use the indefinite article when referring to God, since nowhere else in the Sahidic Coptic New Testament do we find such a usage.
Coptic scholar Bentley Layton has written, "in Coptic, God is always without exception supplied with the def. article." This is when it refers to the One God of the Bible, "God" with a capital "G."
Routinely, the Sahidic Coptic word "noute" does not mean "God," but "god." It may be used without any article at all, with the Sahidic Coptic indefinite article ("a god"), or with the Sahidic Coptic definite article ("God").
Inasmuch as the indefinite article is used at John 1:1c in Coptic, the meaning is clearly "a god."
You might find this quote interesting!
ReplyDeleteLATIN & PART GREEK TEXT: “...Suscitavit enim mihi Deus aliud semen pro Abel.” Vides, quemnam maledictis incessant, qui honestam ac moderatam incessunt seminationem, et diabolo attribuunt generationem. Non enim simpliciter Deum dixit, qui articuli præmissione, nempe ὁ Θεός dicens, significavit eum, qui est omnipotens....” - (Book III Chapter 12, The Stromata by Clement of Alexandria (153-217) Translated by William Wilson.)
http://www.logoslibrary.org/clement/stromata/312.html
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (c. 153 to 217 C.E.): “...'For God has raised up for me another child in Ables place.' You see who is the target of the slanders of those who show their disgust at responsible marriage and attribute the process of birth to the devil? ( Scripture ) does not merely refer to “a god”. By application of the ( definite – article ) it indicates the almighty ruler of the universe...” - (Book III. Chapter 12:81; Page 307. Stromata in “The Fathers Of The Church” Clement of Alexandria Stromateis Books 1-3, Translated by John Ferguson 1991.)
Another English version of the above:
ReplyDeleteCLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (circa. 153 to 217 C.E.): “...For God has raised up for me other seed instead of Abel." You see who is the object of the blasphemy of those who abuse sober marriage and attribute birth to the devil? The Scripture here does not speak simply of a God, but of the God, indicating the Almighty by the addition of the definite article. ...” - (Book III. Chapter 12:81. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA - THE STROMATA, OR MISCELLANIES - BOOK III TThe Library of Christian Classics: Volume II, Alexandrian Christianity: Selected Translations of Clement and Origine with Introduction and Notes by John Ernest Leonard Oulton, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin; Chancellor of St. Patrick’s and Henry Chadwick, B.D., Fellow and Dean of Queens’ College Cambridge, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1954. pages 40-92.)
(ORIGEN OF ALEXANDRIA): “...There was God with the article [1:1b] and God without the article [1:1c], then there were gods in two orders, at the summit of the higher order of whom is God the Word, transcended Himself by the God of the universe. And again, there was the Logos with the article and the Logos without the article, corresponding to God absolutely and a god..." - (Commentary on the Gospel According to John, translated by: Mensies, Allan, D.D., Professor of Biblical Criticism, St. Andrews University. Appearing as vol. q0 in: The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, Origens Book 2, part 2, p 324. American Reprint of the Edinburgh 2nd Edition.)
ReplyDeleteThe 800-lb elephant the obvious point of the whole discussion is that the Trinity doctrine hinges on certain interpretations and understandings of John 1:1 and John 1:14 together which say that the word was God in Jesus was the word therefore Jesus is God however since the scripture does not say that the word was God it says the word was holy in the Coptic a God is a transference of holiness to something not a statement that it is a God.
ReplyDeleteYou begin from a premise that does not need to be denied: the Sahidic indefinite article in John 1:1c is significant. The predicate ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is genuinely morphologically indefinite. Nothing is gained by pretending that ⲟⲩ- is meaningless, ornamental, or merely a scribal filler. The decisive question, however, is not whether the article is significant but what semantic functions an indefinite article phrase can perform when it functions as a nominal predicate. Your argument repeatedly moves from the true statement “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is formally indefinite” to the much stronger statement “therefore it must denote one individual member of a class of gods.” Standard Sahidic grammar does not permit that inference.
ReplyDeleteBentley Layton’s reference grammar is particularly damaging to your argument because it distinguishes the morphology of the indefinite article from the semantic function of the phrase it actualizes. In his treatment of the indefinite article itself, Layton does not assign ⲟⲩ- only the meaning “one specimen of the lexical class.” He explicitly includes another possibility: an entity characterized by the QUALITY of that lexical class. In other words, the indefinite article can participate both in class-instance denotation and in property-oriented description. Your argument treats the first of those possibilities as though it exhausted the grammatical category.
The point becomes still clearer in Layton’s treatment of gendered common nouns. He distinguishes DENOTATION, in which an expression names an entity as a particular instance of a class, from DESCRIPTION, in which it characterizes an entity by the quality associated with the lexical class. Crucially, he states that the distinction is ordinarily not encoded by a different formal realization. The reader or hearer must interpret the expression from the larger textual argument, the sentence pattern, the article selected, the lexical semantics of the noun, and other contextual factors. He further observes that although gendered common nouns are generally denotative in ordinary reference, when they function as predicates in the nominal sentence descriptive function occurs frequently, typically with ⲟⲩ- or its plural counterpart.
That distinction cannot be dismissed as a peculiarity of mass nouns, abstract nouns, or adjectives, because Layton applies it to the exact noun at issue in your argument. In §292 he first defines a denotative predicate as one that names an entity as an instance of a class or as a unique individual. He then says that a gendered common-noun predicate is ambiguous between denotation and description. His actual example is ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ: “He is a god” and “He is divine.” He immediately defines descriptive predication as speaking of an entity by its quality and states that descriptive predicates can themselves be indefinite article phrases. He again repeats ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ as capable of both “He is divine” and “He is a god.”
That evidence directly contradicts your final assertion that, because the indefinite article is present, “the meaning is clearly ‘a god.’” It is not a matter of Trinitarian theology being imposed on Coptic grammar. The standard reference grammar itself says that the same morphologically indefinite phrase with the same gendered count noun admits the two semantic construals you are trying to collapse into one.
You therefore set up the dispute incorrectly when you contrast “significant article choice” with “mere grammatical necessity.” There is a third and grammatically normal possibility: the article is genuinely indefinite and genuinely significant, while the resulting indefinite predicate functions descriptively rather than denotatively. That is precisely the phenomenon Layton describes. Morphological indefiniteness and denotative class-membership are not synonyms.
DeletePlumley independently illustrates the same distinction between overt indefinite morphology and idiomatic predicate meaning. In his predicate-first nominal sentence, he gives ⲟⲩⲛⲟϭ ⲡⲉ, literally something like “a great one, he is,” but translates it naturally as “He is great.” He then describes the expanded Predicate–Particle–Subject construction. The indefinite article has not somehow disappeared or become grammatically unreal; rather, an indefinite nominal expression is performing descriptive predication. Thus the principle “if ⲟⲩ- is really there, English a/an must appear and the predicate must classify an individual” is simply not Sahidic grammar.
Your appeal to Layton’s statement that the God of the Bible is regularly expressed as ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is therefore based on a real observation but an incorrect inference. Layton does indeed state that when ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ names the unique biblical God, it is realized with the definite article. In his discussion of determinators he treats ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ as the standard designation of the God of the Bible, and elsewhere he similarly lists it among definite expressions naming unique referents. But this is a rule about referential naming. It does not mean that every predication of deity must use precisely the same definite referring expression.
Indeed, Layton himself prevents you from reading his rule that way. The same grammar that says the unique biblical God is named with definite ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ also says that predicative ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ can mean “He is divine.” You cannot quote the former statement as though the latter did not exist. The two are compatible because “refer to the unique God” and “predicate deity of a subject” are different semantic operations.
That distinction also exposes the problem in your counterfactual claim that “if they understood the Greek text to say ‘the Word was God’ they would have used … ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ.” You are silently assuming that English predicative God must correspond to Coptic definite the God. It does not. “The Word was God” does not mean “the Word was the God” in the sense of identifying the Word as the same referring expression as the one previously mentioned. The traditional English rendering is deliberately predicative: it attributes deity while the preceding clause distinguishes the Word relationally from the one with whom he was. Your proposed Coptic test therefore begs the very question under dispute. You assume that there are only two semantic choices, “the God” and “a god,” when Sahidic grammar itself recognizes an indefinite descriptive predicate as another semantic construal of the same morphology.
This also means that your treatment of the translator’s “choice” is too crude. Yes, the translator selected ⲟⲩ- rather than the simple definite article. That selection excludes treating the surface expression as merely the same definite referring phrase as ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ. But it does not tell you, without further analysis, whether the indefinite predicate is denotative or descriptive. Layton says explicitly that both functions are available and that context participates in resolving them. To infer from “not the same definite referring expression” to “therefore a separate subordinate member of a class of gods” is to add a semantic step that the article itself does not encode.
DeleteYour own observation about Acts 7:43 should make you wary of turning the article system into an ontology. You correctly acknowledge that a definite divine noun need not denote the supreme God, because definiteness can arise from discourse and anaphora. That means definiteness is not equivalent to “Almighty deity.” The same methodological discipline must be applied in the other direction: indefiniteness cannot simply be equated with “lesser deity.” Articles express grammatical determination and discourse relations; they are not lexical labels for ontological rank.
Your categorical statement that nowhere else in the Sahidic New Testament is the indefinite article used with ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ when the biblical God is intended also requires qualification. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6, the Sahidic uses indefinite morphology in expressions corresponding to “one God,” whose referent is explicitly the Father. Wright and Ricchuiti discuss both passages and regard the indefinite article there as functioning numerically in the relevant syntactic environment. For An Answer Those passages are not exact syntactic duplicates of John 1:1c, and they should not be presented as though they proved a qualitative reading there. Their importance for your claim is narrower: the indefinite article with ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ is not intrinsically a marker of a lesser or non-Almighty deity. Your absolute formulation is therefore untenable. What remains true is the more limited proposition that referential naming of the unique biblical God normally employs the definite form.
Your appeal to Origen does not rescue the argument. The passage you quote from his ‘Commentary on John’ is genuine and important. Origen deliberately notices the Greek article contrast in John 1:1, calls the Father αὐτόθεος, and distinguishes θεός without the article when applied to the Logos. He unquestionably employs a hierarchical theological vocabulary. There is no reason to conceal that. But you move from that historical fact to a conclusion that does not follow: that the Sahidic translator must therefore have encoded Origen’s interpretation by choosing the Coptic indefinite article.
Origen is analyzing the Greek definite article and Greek anarthrous θεός. He is not providing a semantic grammar of the Sahidic indefinite article. Greek has no indefinite article corresponding to Coptic ⲟⲩ-. Consequently, even if the Sahidic translator had known Origen’s exegesis, you would still have to demonstrate independently that Coptic ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ encoded the specific denotative or hierarchical value you assign to it. Layton’s grammar prevents you from doing that merely from morphology, because the same Coptic predicate is explicitly ambiguous between “a god” and “divine.”
There is a further historical problem with calling Origen the translator’s “fellow citizen.” Origen belonged to the Alexandrian intellectual world, whereas Sahidic is the major southern Egyptian Coptic variety. Current scholarship treats the Coptic New Testament not as a single undifferentiated “Egyptian” version but as several dialectal versional traditions extending geographically from Sahidic and other southern varieties toward Bohairic in the north. It also emphasizes translation technique and intra-versional variation rather than assuming a single Egyptian theological environment behind all Coptic forms. “Both were Egyptian” is therefore much too coarse a historical bridge to establish dependence or shared exegesis.
DeleteNor does approximate contemporaneity establish interpretive dependence. The dating, localization, and developmental history of the earliest Coptic translations are precisely the matters that require caution. To argue, “Origen was Egyptian and roughly contemporary; therefore the Sahidic translators probably shared his article theology,” is a hypothesis, not evidence. You would need some demonstration that the translators knew and adopted Origen’s distinctive exegesis, or at least that the Coptic construction has a semantic value uniquely predicted by it. Ordinary Sahidic grammar already explains the construction without that hypothesis.
Origen himself also complicates the use you make of him. In the very passage where he distinguishes “ὁ θεός” and “θεός,” he identifies two opposite theological errors: collapsing the Son’s distinct existence into the Father and, on the other side, denying the Son’s divinity by placing his essence outside the Father’s such that Father and Son become separable. Whatever hierarchical features Origen’s theology contains, you cannot turn him into a simple witness for the proposition “the Word is merely one separate god alongside God.” Moreover, elsewhere Origen explicitly denies that the Son came into existence from non-being and denies that there was ever a time when the Son did not exist; he places Father and Son beyond temporal beginning. Thus Origen is historically relevant to the development of Greek exegesis of John 1:1, but he does not provide a shortcut from Sahidic ⲟⲩ- to a Watchtower-style ontology.
Your argument from the translators’ knowledge of Greek is likewise beside the linguistic point. There is no need to accuse the Sahidic translators of ignorance. You may grant them excellent competence in Greek and still ask what their Coptic sentence means. A highly competent bilingual translator must choose target-language constructions whose semantic ranges do not map one-for-one onto the source language. The fact that Greek was deeply established in Roman Egypt makes competent translation plausible; it does not establish that one contested target-language construction has only the semantic value you prefer.
Indeed, your argument here is internally unstable. You insist that the translators were sophisticated enough to perceive fine semantic distinctions in Greek, but then you interpret their Coptic through the elementary equation ⲟⲩ- = English “a” = individual class membership. A sophisticated account must instead ask how Sahidic itself encodes predication. Layton supplies the answer: indefinite article phrases can be denotative or descriptive, and the exact expression ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ exemplifies both possibilities. The translator’s competence therefore increases the importance of analyzing Sahidic semantics accurately; it does not abolish that semantics.
The claim that “they did not have to use the Coptic indefinite article unless they understood the Greek to actually say ‘the Word was a god’” is consequently the central error in your presentation. Layton’s grammar directly falsifies the “unless.” A Coptic writer can use an indefinite article phrase precisely in descriptive nominal predication. The phrase remains morphologically indefinite while semantically characterizing its subject. Nothing about this makes the article insignificant. It means that the article’s grammatical category underdetermines the denotation-versus-description question.
DeleteYour final contrast between ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ “God” and ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ “a god” is therefore too schematic. When ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ names the unique biblical God, the expression is indeed definite. When ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ functions as an ordinary denotative predicate, “a god” is entirely legitimate. But when the same gendered common noun functions descriptively, Layton explicitly gives “divine” as its interpretation. Coptic does not force you to choose between acknowledging the indefinite article and acknowledging descriptive predication. It requires you to acknowledge both.
The philologically defensible conclusion is therefore more precise than yours. The Sahidic translator did make a significant grammatical choice in John 1:1c: the predicate is not the ordinary definite referring expression ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ. A denotative rendering “the Word was a god” is grammatically possible. But the very reference grammar you invoke also establishes that the exact morphologically indefinite predicate ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ can function descriptively, “he is divine,” and that gendered common-noun predicates are to be disambiguated through sentence structure, lexical semantics, and context rather than article morphology alone. Your indefinite article is therefore significant; what it is not is a self-interpreting lexical code for “one subordinate god.” The step from indefinite morphology to necessarily denotative class-membership, and from there to a particular ontology of the Logos, is the step your argument has not established.