Reading this thread the thought struck me, this conversation is a little like debating the structural details of some nonexistent bridge a conman sold us all.
John 1:1 in Coptic Translation
by slimboyfat 79 Replies latest jw friends
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Narkissos
Thanks for the link sbf.
This comforts me in thinking that the true problem is not grammatical but theological. I.e., in which theological-mythological-imaginary system could the phrase "the Word was a god" make sense (or not), in the original Johannine community and the later Coptic Christian community. Unfortunately the article doesn't deal with that.
In harmony with Jesus' command to them, the early Christians eagerly spread the message of the good news of Jehovah's Kingdom far and wide.
The first sentence of the article gives the illusion of an originally unified orthodox Christian message (which btw is identified to the modern message of JWs by the sneaking use of "Jehovah"), which I think is totally wrong.
It may be noted that the earliest Coptic translation was likely made before Trinitarianism gained a foothold in the churches of the 4 th century. That may be one reason why the Coptic translators saw no need to violate the sense of John's Greek by translating it "the Word was God." In a way, then, the ancient Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1c was the New World Translation of that day, faithfully and accurately rendering the Greek text.
As if the Trinitarian/Arian debate was the only issue at hand. No mention is made of the Gnostic debate which was the prominent issue in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, of the obvious proto-Gnostic overtones of the original Fourth Gospel, or of the fact that the Coptic community was a bulwark of Gnosticism (as the Nag Hammady library shows) long after Gnosticism was rejected as heretic in the Latin and Greek Church.
The true problem is that "the Word was a god" makes no sense at all in classical monotheism, whether Trinitarian or Arian (hence it must be either rejected as a mistranslation or explained away as figurative speech). Otoh it makes perfect sense in Gnostic thought where divine plurality and oneness are not regarded as incompatible.
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slimboyfat
Narkissos,The most amazing thing, I thought, in the note was the implication that mainstream scholars have somehow colluded to suppress the Coptic translation because it supports a non-Trinitarian view of John 1:1. He complains that the only translation of this Coptic witness has been allowed to gather dust, whereas the Gospel of Thomas is on the shelves of popular book stores. But I shoud think the popularity of the Gospel of Thomas as against the translation of a canonical text in yet another obscure ancient language is easily explained without recourse to conspiracy speculation.
I am not sure "and the Word was a god" would be meaningless. The Psalms call angels and judges gods; the DSS talk about divine "sons of god"; and many scholars have argued that John's main concern in calling Jesus "a god" is to emphasize Jesus' superiority over such OT figures as Moses who contemporary Jews had promoted to the status of "god". Have you read Larry Hurtado's take on the state of Jewish monotheism in the first century? I would recommend his first book on the subject One God, One Lord above his later works.
About John being proto-Gnostic - could you give some references? I thought 1 John was written by the same author, and that tract explicitly counters Gnostic teaching: for instance he states that any who deny Jesus came in the flesh is an anti-Christ.
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Leolaia
There actually was a second-century AD Gnostic commentary (in the Valentinian tradition) on the gospel of John, written by Ptolemy of Rome and cited by Irenaeus. Since many of the Nag Hammadi writings buried in c. 350 AD were of Valentinian origin, Ptolemy's allegorical interpretation of John 1:1 may well be relevant to the Coptic version. Ptolemy interprets the en arkhé "in [the] beginning" as spatial, not temporal, that is to say, the Word was in the Beginning, and the Beginning is "the first being engendered by God" (Adversus Haereses 1.8.5). Ptolemy goes on to clarify that the Beginning is also called "Son" and the "only-begotten god" in John. The Son is called the Beginning because he is the source of all other emissions (Ptolemy may also be influenced by Revelation 3:14 which designates Jesus as the arkhé of God's creation). Since the Word was "in" the Beginning (just as the Son is "in" the believers in John 6:56, 17:21 and the Father and Son are mutually "in" each other in 10:29, 38, 14:11, and with the Father, Son, and believers all mutually "in" each other in 17:22-23), the Word is not the Son himself but his emanation: "By this Son was emitted the Word, in which was the entire essence of the aeons that the Word later personally formed" (1.8.5). The Father, who is the ultimate parent and source of the Beginning (= the Son), is the theos with which the Word was (John 1:1b). By stating that the Word was "with God", the author would be indicating that BOTH the Beginning and the Word were with the Father, since the Word is "in" the Son. By mentioning "God," "Beginning", and "Word",
"He [i.e. John] unites them; this is to show forth both the emanation of the latter two, i.e. the Son and the Word, and their union with one another and simulatneously with the Father. For the Beginning was in the Father and from the Father, and the Word was in the Beginning and from the Beginning. Well did he say 'The Word was in the Beginning', for it was in the Son. 'And the Word was with God,' as was the Beginning. 'And the Word was God,' reasonably so, for what is engendered from God is God. This shows the order of emanation. 'All things were made through it, and without it was not anything made.' For the Word became the cause of the forming and origination of all the aeons that came after it" (1.8.5).
Ptolemy explains that the whole totality is "God", as the Word and the Beginning are emanations engendered by the Father, and the aeons engendered by the Word similarly spring from the divine essence, and the unity of everything is maintained by their mutual being "in" each other, as the Father is "in" the Son, and the Son is "in" the Father, and the Word is "in" the Son, etc. etc. These are all united within the Pleroma (i.e. the "fullness", cf. Colossians 2:9, Ephesians 3:19). The divisions only come when the Demiurge (i.e. the "Craftsman") created matter and isolated the incorporeal essences and locked them up in the corruptible material world, becoming "the Father and god of things outside the Pleroma" (1.5.2). The purpose of the Savior is to find these lost material essences and help them find their way back to the Pleroma, so they can become one with the Father and the Son.
Within this system, any portion of the divine enamation is "God" or "a God", but there is no division between the emissions because all are united within the Pleroma as "God". All are merely emissions from the original parent, the Father, through intermediary enamations such as the Son and the Word, and so forth, along the geneology of the aeons, i.e. in the order of enamantion. So what kind of theological Sitz im Leben did the Coptic translation of John originate in? Since, as Narkissos says, the Coptic community was the "bulwark" of Gnosticism, the possibility of Gnostic bias in this translation has to be considered. Could the use of the indefinite (i.e. u-noute) be intended to indicate that the Word was an emanation of God, and thus "a God", while definite p-noute is distinguished as the parent of the emanations? Is there any evidence in the choice of words that arkhé is used to refer to a divine being, and not a time, such that the Word is spatially and not temporally "in" the Beginning? I wonder if scholars of the history of gnosticism have commented on the Coptic translation of John 1?
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Leolaia
About John being proto-Gnostic - could you give some references? I thought 1 John was written by the same author, and that tract explicitly counters Gnostic teaching: for instance he states that any who deny Jesus came in the flesh is an anti-Christ.
It is quite reductionist to construe a work as anti-gnostic merely because it rejects docetism (as does the gospel of John, as the episode with Thomas clearly indicates), for there was much more to gnosticism than just that. The term "proto-gnostic" is used to refer to the distinctive concepts, terms, motifs, ideas, etc. that anticipate later full-blown gnosticism, which may lack the developed mythology one might find in Valentinianism (for instance), or lack docetic christology, or lack a demiurgical view towards Creation, but which already have in place many other ingrediants of the gnostic worldview, such as systematic dualism, a realized eschatology, a non-atonement soteriology, incorporation of the Hellenistic Heavenly Man myth and/or descent myth, empahsis on gnosis or wisdom, and many other elements that are found in John, and other proto-gnostic works such as Colossians, Ephesians, the "sophia" sections of 1 Corinthians (likely reflecting a Sophia christology of the Apollos sect in Corinth), the Gospel of Thomas, and so forth. These stand midway between works that stand outside of this trend (such as Matthew, or James) and later mature gnosticism. The author of John drew from the same proto-gnostic tradition as the later second-century gnostics, but also did not share many of their other distinctive ideas. Thus there is no Yaldabaoth/Demiurge myth in John, or a concept of creation as inherently evil, and thus Ptolemy has to impose this concept on John itself and thus limit John 1:3 as referring only to the spiritual sphere of divine emissions and not to the natural world which is most naturally would refer to. The fact that Paul was proto-gnostic endeared him to Marcion and other second-century gnostics, and similarly John was a favorite of Valetinian gnostics, which led some orthodox Christians to reject John as well, ascribing it to the early gnostic Cerinthus. There is in fact one theory on the composition of John that it was substantially based on the Cerinthian gospel, but edited to tone down the realized eschatology (hence the insertions referring to an futurist eschatology) and counter his docetism and other concepts.
Here is one website I found on John as being proto-gnostic:
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Narkissos
The most amazing thing, I thought, in the note was the implication that mainstream scholars have somehow colluded to suppress the Coptic translation because it supports a non-Trinitarian view of John 1:1. He complains that the only translation of this Coptic witness has been allowed to gather dust, whereas the Gospel of Thomas is on the shelves of popular book stores. But I shoud think the popularity of the Gospel of Thomas as against the translation of a canonical text in yet another obscure ancient language is easily explained without recourse to conspiracy speculation.
Agreed.
Side comment: while Bible scholarship has largely broken free from confessionalism these days, in many ways it still bears the marks of its confessional background. It initially developed as an auxiliary of systematic theology, which required it to answer dogmatical questions and back up dogmatical answers. It certainly has become increasingly autonomous, at least as far as answers are concerned -- but the questions are often the last thing to change, and they are essential. In the present case, a fresh approach of Johannine theology, free from the obsession with the question whether Jesus was God (i.e. the "orthodox" 'God') or not, is still at its first steps I think.
I am not sure "and the Word was a god" would be meaningless. The Psalms call angels and judges gods; the DSS talk about divine "sons of god"; and many scholars have argued that John's main concern in calling Jesus "a god" is to emphasize Jesus' superiority over such OT figures as Moses who contemporary Jews had promoted to the status of "god".
Yet if Jesus is called "god" in a figurative sense, i.e. on a really non-divine sense (assuming exclusivistic monotheism), how would that show any "superiority" over the angels, judges, or Moses?
When you take into account the polytheistic background of the OT "gods" or "sons of (the) god(s)", and the notion of "angels" as a later reinterpretation from the perspective of monotheism, a different picture emerges. And then the Gnostic perspective of a supra-divine oneness, making room for a plurality of "gods" in a realistic-mythological sense, appears as a new synthesis of polytheism and monotheism (which suits the inclusivistic and sometimes syncretic mood of Gnosticism).
Have you read Larry Hurtado's take on the state of Jewish monotheism in the first century? I would recommend his first book on the subject One God, One Lord above his later works.
No I have not. Thanks for the tip.
About John being proto-Gnostic - could you give some references? I thought 1 John was written by the same author, and that tract explicitly counters Gnostic teaching: for instance he states that any who deny Jesus came in the flesh is an anti-Christ.
Leolaia replied on GJohn. Whether 1 John was written by the same author as the later strata of GJohn or by someone else downstream, whether it is really anti-docetic and a fortiori anti-Gnostic are debated issues. "Jesus Christ (not "the Word") coming (present tense) or having come (perfect tense, implying "once and for all") in the flesh" is a strange way to state an "orthodox" view of "salvation history". If we compare 1 John to clearly anti-Gnostic writings such as the Pastorals or Jude (which rely on church hierarchy and authority, salvation through objective faith or "sound doctrine," insistence on futuristic yet sine die eschatology), 1 John still sounds pretty Gnostic imo. The big question is who the adversaries really were: full-fledged Gnostic sectarians against whom the Elder would hold for a milder form of Gnosticism in distanced relationship with the great Church (R.E. Brown), anti-Gnostic bishops in the line of the Pastorals, as 3 John's Diotrephes (F. Vouga), or even Judaisers (Leolaia quoted another scholar upholding this view a few months ago)? -
Butterflyleia85
So is the Son of God Jesus? And is Jesus the Word? And is the Word a "God" or a "god"? What is Coptic Translation? What other Translations could there be?
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problemaddict
Oh my. This is quite the resurrection. Lets just say that both "god" and "a god" are technically accurate renderings. John 1:1 does not have all of the answers. The word was"divine" seems to be something I have found both trinitarians and JW's tend to agree with...but it changes little.
Think about it this way. if the bible is accurate, spirits cannot have "sons". Therefore any explanation using this term would be to condecend to our understanding of how things work.
Perhaps that is the point.
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Phizzy
I think there is a later thread where Leo explains the use of language in the Coptic version, and explains how the use of the indefinite article is not the same as in English, and cannot be used as an argument by either camp.
Here is part of it that I saved : "
The Watchtower article is thus wrong about Coptic grammar and does not acknowledge that the Coptic rendering in John 1:1 is actually ambiguous between an indefinite "The Word was a god" and a qualitative "The Word was divine". Both options would require the indefinite article in Coptic and thus the use of the indefinite article in the Sahidic text does not by itself favor an English rendering with an indefinite article versus one with a qualitative expression. The value of the Coptic version is rather in confirming the linguistic findings of Harner and subsequent writers that the theos in John 1:1 is not to be understood as definite (although cf. John 1:18 where the Coptic uses a definite expression p-noute "God" to refer to Jesus, a fact not mentioned in the Watchtower article). "
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slimboyfat
Well I was right, the Watchtower did make use of this information in a later article. I made a thread about that too.