Eisegesis refers to interpreting a text by reading into it one's own ideas, or other ideas foreign to the text itself. Some apologists continue in a futile attempt to do that with Coptic John 1:1c.
For example, it is claimed that the indefinite ou.noute of Coptic John 1:1c should be translated as 'the one and only God,' because the indefinite article denotes unity, not 'a god.' As a "proof," 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 are quoted, where ou.noute n.ouwt is usually rendered as "one God."
But that is erroneous eisegesis. It is a blatant attempt to read philosophical dogma into Coptic grammar. The Coptic indefinite article ou does not of itself 'denote unity.' It simply means "a" when bound with a common or count Coptic noun like noute, "god." The Coptic text of the New Testament contains hundreds of examples that prove this. (For example, see Coptic Acts 28:6, where the anarthrous Greek theos is rendered by ou.noute in Sahidic (Sahidica) and ou.nouti in the Coptic Bohairic version. Horner and Greek-based English versions including the KJV render this as "a god.")
Further, it is not the Coptic indefinite article ou that means "one," but the bound idiom ou______n.ouwt. This idiom literally means "a single, an only," and is used in Coptic to denote "one," adjectivally: "one god," "one man," "one spirit," etc. (For example, see Coptic Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 6:16, 17)
Therefore, ou.noute n.ouwt simply means "one god." It is the context, not the grammar, of 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 that mandates the translation "one God" because the specific and definite reference in those verses is p.eiwt, "the Father," whom the Lord Jesus identifies as p.noute m.me m.mauaa.F , "the true God alone" (John 17:3 Horner), "the only true God."
Neither the grammar nor meaning of Coptic 1 Corinthians 8:6 or Ephesians 4:6 is the same as Coptic John 1:1c, so those verses cannot be used to exegete Coptic John 1:1c. Whereas ou.noute n.ouwt means a single god, i.e, "one god" or "one God" (in context, with reference to the Father), the fact remains that ou.noute means "a god." It does not mean some philosophical unity that calls for translating it as 'the one and only God.'
It would be far more honest to read Coptic John 1:1c for what it says, instead of trying to import foreign concepts into it.
And what Coptic John 1:1c clearly says is "the Word was a god." Or, if you prefer, "the Word was divine." But definitely not, "the Word was God."
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Calling the Trinitarian reading of Coptic John 1:1c “eisegesis” mistakes how Coptic grammar actually works. The Sahidic clause ⲛⲉ ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ places an indefinite predicate before a definite subject in a standard nominal sentence. In that slot the Coptic indefinite article ⲟⲩ– does more than the English “a/an”: it routinely marks a descriptive or qualitative predicate, not merely a new, numerically distinct member of a class. Coptologists illustrate this across the language with predicates that in idiomatic English are rendered by adjectives or qualitative nouns (“is wise,” “is truth,” “is spirit”), and John 1:1c belongs to that family. The translators had just said in 1:1b that the Word was “with the God” (ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ); if they had written ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ again in 1:1c they would risk collapsing the Word into the very person He is distinguished from. At the same time, Coptic typically disallows a bare, zero-article common noun as the predicate of this equative frame. The idiomatic solution, therefore, is exactly what we see: an indefinite predicate that describes what the subject is by nature. That is a grammatical judgment, not a philosophical imposition.
The appeal to Acts 28:6 proves too much. There, pagans conclude that Paul “is ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ,” and in that explicitly polytheistic setting “a god” is the obvious sense. But that very example shows the translators were contextually sensitive; they used the same form for an indefinite count reading when the discourse invited it. John 1:1c is not such a setting. It stands inside a rigorously monotheistic Prologue, flanked by “with the God” in 1:1b and “all things came to be through him” in 1:3. To port the polytheistic nuance from Malta into John’s high Christology is to ignore genre and context, not to honor Coptic.
Nor does the observation about the idiom with the numeral “one” weaken the case; it strengthens it. Coptic can express “one God” with constructions that include the indefinite base, and in passages like 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Ephesians 4:6 the translators use ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ in a clearly numeric sense, immediately specified by “the Father.” That is not special pleading; it is a simple reminder that ⲟⲩ– is semantically flexible. If the same morpheme can serve a numeric function in one context and a count-indefinite function in another, it is hardly sound to decree that in John 1:1c it “simply means a” and nothing more. The very diversity of Coptic usage undercuts the claim that grammar forces “the Word was a god.”
The structure of the sentence also matters. In Sahidic equatives the pattern “indefinite predicate + ⲡⲉ + definite subject” identifies the subject and characterizes it. “ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ … ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ” therefore says what the Word is, not who He is relative to another already-named person. That mirrors the Greek anarthrous predicate θεός, long recognized as qualitative in precisely this position. Far from reading dogma into the grammar, the Coptic translator preserves the Greek nuance with the resources of his own language: the Word is everything God is, while remaining distinct from “the God” with whom He was.
It is also telling that the same translators freely render direct address to Jesus with the definite form when the discourse requires it. Thomas’s confession in John 20:28, “my Lord and my God,” uses the definite possessed form for “my God,” not because the translators suddenly changed theology, but because possession and address naturally trigger definiteness in Coptic. John’s Gospel thus contains, in the same version, a qualitative predication about the Word’s nature in 1:1 and an unambiguous confession of His deity in 20:28. The two are complementary rather than contradictory.
The suggestion that it is “more honest” to render John 1:1c “the Word was a god” treats English as if it mapped one-for-one onto Sahidic. In English, “a god” almost unavoidably signals an additional deity besides God; in John’s context that is precisely the misunderstanding both the Greek and the Coptic wording avoid. Translating “the Word was God” with a clearly qualitative sense, or paraphrasing “the Word was divine” in the strongest, non-diminutive sense, is the honest way to convey what the Coptic construction is doing. It neither collapses the Son into the Father nor demotes Him to a lesser, secondary deity.
Finally, the wider Coptic tradition confirms this reading rather than refuting it. The later Bohairic keeps the same structure at John 1:1c, and the Coptic Nicene Creed confesses the Son as “True God of True God” using the same indefinite form to express shared essence without suggesting two numerically distinct “the Gods.” Coptic writers knew exactly how their article system worked; if John 1:1c had taught a second, lesser god, that creed and the Church’s worship could not have stood unaltered alongside it.
The charge of “erroneous eisegesis” lands, then, not on those who read John 1:1c qualitatively, but on the claim that ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ must denote a countable extra deity whenever it appears. The Sahidic grammar, the Johannine context, and the Coptic reception all point in the same direction: “and the Word was God,” that is, truly and fully divine in nature, personally distinct from the Father with whom He eternally was.
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