Sahidic Coptic Translation of John 1:1

The manuscript shown here (dating from about 600 C.E.) contains a translation of the Gospel of John into the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic language. Coptic was spoken in Egypt in the centuries immediately following Jesus’ earthly ministry. Along with Syriac and Latin, Coptic was one of the first languages into which the Christian Greek Scriptures were translated. Translations into Coptic were available by the third century C.E., so they can give us insight into how the Greek text was understood at that time. This may be of special interest when it comes to the much debated second part of Joh 1:1, which in many translations reads: “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Unlike Koine Greek, Syriac, and Latin, the Sahidic Coptic dialect does have an indefinite article (in some ways corresponding to “a” and “an” in English). As shown here, the two occurrences of the Coptic word for “God” (highlighted) look slightly different—the first one (1) with the definite article (circled in red) and the second one (2) with the indefinite article (circled in red). Thus, when rendered literally into English, the translation would read: “And the Word was with the God, and the Word was a god.”—See study note on Joh 1:1 for more information regarding the rendering “and the Word was a god.”

1. “the” (circled in red) God

2. “a” (circled in red) god