A Contemporary English Translation of Coptic John 1:1-18

A Contemporary English Translation of Coptic John 1:1-18
© Copyright 2006

1. In the beginning the Word existed. The Word existed in the presence of God, and the Word was a divine being. 2. This one existed in the beginning with God. 3. All things came into existence through him; without him nothing that exists came to be. What came to be 4. through him is life, the life that is the light of mankind. 5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overtake it.

6. There came a man who was sent by God, his name is John. 7. This one came to bear witness, to bear witness about the light, so that everyone may actively believe through him. 8. He was not the light, but his purpose was to bear witness about the light.

9. The real light which gives light to everyone was about to come into the world. 10. He was in the world, the world which came into existence through him, but the world did not know him.

10. He came to those who were his own, yet those who were his own did not receive him. 12. But he gave authority to become children of God to those who did receive him, to those actively believing in his name. 13. The origin of these was not flesh and blood, nor human will; they were begotten from God.

14. The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his dignity, the dignity possessed by a Father’s only Son; he was filled with divine loving-kindness and truth. 15. John bore witness about him, calling out and declaring, “This was the one concerning whom I said, ‘He who comes behind me has come to be ahead of me, because he existed prior to me.’” 16. From his fullness we all received life, and divine loving-kindness upon divine loving-kindness. 17. The Law was given through Moses, but the divine loving kindness and the truth came to be though Jesus, the Christ. 18. No one has ever seen God at any time. The divine being, the only Son who is in the bosom of his Father, is the one who has revealed him.

Notes:
Verse 1c. Coptic, ΝЄΥΝΟΥΤЄ ΠЄ ΠϢΑϪЄ neunoute pe pSaje, literally, “the Word was a god.” Alternatively, “the Word was divine.”

Verse 14, dignity. Or, “glory.”

Verses 14, 16, 17, divine loving-kindness. Or, “unmerited favor.” (Greek, charis)

Verse 18. The Coptic text here (“divine being…only Son”) is apparently a conflation of the early Greek variant readings for this verse: monogenhs theos (Vaticanus; p66, etc.); ho monogenhs theos (Sinaiticus (c); p75, etc.) and ho monogenhs huios (Alexandrinus, etc.)

The Coptic text translated is based on the texts of George W. Horner, and J. Warren Wells (by permission).

Magazine article about Coptic John 1:1

The November 1, 2008 issue of The Watchtower magazine, currently printing 37.1 million copies per issue in 169 different languages, has a significant article that mentions the Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1.

The title of the article is: Was the Word “God” or “a god”?


SAHIDIC COPTIC JOHN 1:1

Hn tehoueite nefshoop ngi pshaje
Auw pshaje nefshoop nnahrm pnoute
Auw neunoute pe pshaje

A literal translation of the Sahidic Coptic:

In the beginning existed the word
And the word existed in the presence of the god
And a god was the word

Unlike the contemporaneous versions in Syriac and Latin, the Sahidic Coptic language has both the definite and indefinite grammatical articles in its syntactical system. The Coptic translators used the Coptic definite article in identifying the God that the Word was with, and they used the Coptic indefinite article in identifying the divinity of the Word. This is a feature in both the Sahidic and the Bohairic Coptic versions.

James Moffatt and Coptic John 1:1, 18

Dr. James Moffatt (1870-1944) was a notable scholar of Biblical Greek and translator of the 1934 Bible version which bears his name. I've had him on the shelf for some time and recently looked at his translation of John 1:1 and John 1:18.

What interested me is that Moffatt's English translation of the Greek text(s) was quite close to what an accurate English translation of the Sahidic Coptic text would say, the Coptic text itself being based upon ancient Greek texts.

In other words, it appears that Moffatt took a similar message from those Greek texts that the Coptic translators did when they rendered their Greek texts into their own Egyptian Coptic language.

At John 1:1 Moffat renders:

The Logos existed in the very beginning, the Logos was with God, the Logos was divine.

The Sahidic Coptic text, with my 2006 Contemporary Translation:

Hn teHoueite neFSoop nCi pSaJe auw pSaJe neFSoop nnaHrm pnoute auw neunoute pe pSaJe
In the beginning the Word existed. The Word existed in the presence of God, and the Word was a divine being.

At John 1:18 Moffatt renders:

Nobody has ever seen God, but God has been unfolded by the divine One, the only Son, who lies upon the Father's breast.

The Sahidic Coptic text, with my 2006 Contemporary Translation:

pnoute mpelaau nau eroF eneH. pnoute pShre nouwt petSoop Hn kounF mpeFeiwt petmmau pe ntaFSaJe eroF
No one has ever seen God at any time. The divine being, the only Son who is in the bosom of his Father, is the one who has revealed him.

I was translating the Coptic, Moffatt was translating the Greek, but this similarity is amazing. Perhaps it is simply that both Moffatt and the Coptic translators were concerned with grammatical accuracy in these verses or had the same understanding of their meaning in the context of John's Gospel as a whole.

It is worth noting that, unlike John 1:1, the ancient Greek texts for John 1:18 exist in a number of variants, the notable ones being 1) monogenhs theos; 2) ho monogenhs theos; 3) ho monogenhs huios, i.e., "only [- begotten] god," "the only [- begotten] god," and "the only [- begotten] son."

Translators today usually put their preferred rendering in their main text and others in their footnotes. However, it appears that the Coptic translators did not footnote the variants, but conflated them. Perhaps they believed there was equal weight for both the "son" and the "god" readings found variously in manuscripts or papyri like the Vatican 1209, p66, p75 ("god") and Alexandrinus, Ephraemi Rescriptus, etc. ("son").

It is less likely that they postulated "son" from monogenhs alone, since this Greek term appears in the New Testament along with huios, which would give a redundant reading, something like "only-son son." At any rate, what is known for sure is that both the "son" and the "god" readings are attested in the ancient Greek manuscripts, and those manuscripts or their predecessors were likely available to the 2nd/3rd century Sahidic Coptic translators.