John1-1c

Jn1-1c From- http://sahidiccoptic.bravehost.com/solomon.html#top and more below & Compare Homoousion.htm

Jn1:1-Any difficulty in understanding this verse is Intentionally-caused by pro-Nicene-Creed- translators

and pro Nicene--Creed- Bible Publishers-It's all about the Bible Publisher’s-Biblical Theology-in JOHN1onePLUS.htm

At the time the New Testament was written, Greek manuscripts were written in all capital letters.

The upper and lower case letters were not blended as we do today. Thus, the distinction that we today make

Between “God” and “god” could not be made, and the context became the judge in determining to whom THEOS

Referred to.-Open-Example1Jn1-1.htm + More Info in AllCaps.htm. What about Jn 20:28.Open John-20-28.htm

Did Jesus Lie when He said I. Compare This Very Important Study. From--Who is I in-Jesus.htm

The main question that is not brought to peoples attention is did Jesus Lie about His Personal Individuality.

He always spoke of Himself as a Personal Pro-Noun and that He has a Personal God and Father who sent Him to earth.

The Fact is Jesus never said He was God—(He said He was God’s Son)—So on that Bases any other verse that may seem to

Imply that Jesus is God has to be perceived that Jesus is God’s Spokesman in some sense or another—It as that Simple.

Or Jesus Lied when He said-I. (The First Implied Lie and what about Jn 1:1?-Open Imply)

The Only One That Can Benefit Jesus being God is Satan --because if you believe Jesus is God-

Then you are inclined to worship Him and Jesus SAID to Worship the Father only Study -The KingJesusHasSPOKEN.htm . And

The many meanings of Worship are in PROSKUNEO.htm--Worshipping any thing other the Father will is idolatrous and will get

You Thrown in the same Lake Jehovah has prepared for Satan and Satan wants you in there with Him in the Second Death of No

Return-Compare The False EVIL Side OF The TRINITY in Study-1A.htm-to get you done away with –Open and Study and the below- Rev -21:8

And any or all the the commentaries on idolaters and he second death."

Who is I—Denying Jesus Life Is Denying Jesus

Jesus always used the words—I—Me –My—My own—My Father –My God --Himself –His Own –His-

Is Jesus Real as You -To You? Jesus always used the Personal Pro-Noun I.

I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. Jn 6:38- 6:39

This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. 6:39

I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. Jn 5:30 NASB

I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. Jn 8:28

I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me Jn 8:42

I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me

a commandment as to what to say and what to speak. Jn 12:49 Full Verses Below.

Some (Personal Pro-Noun) Joh 10:18 ISV Bible- No one is taking it from me; I lay it down of my own free will

Compare This Very Important Study.

The main question that is not brought to peoples attention is did Jesus Lie about His Personal Individuality.

He always spoke of Himself as a Personal Pro-Noun and that He has a Personal God and Father who sent Him to earth.

The Fact is Jesus never said He was God—(He said He was God’s Son)—So on that Bases any other verse that may seem to

Imply that Jesus is God has to be perceived that Jesus is God’s Spokesman in some sense or another—It as that Simple.

Or Jesus Lied when He said-I. (The First Implied Lie and what about Jn 1:1?-Open Imply)

The only one that would benefit Jesus being God is Satan—because if you believe Jesus is God

Then you will worship Him and Jesus SAID to Worship the Father only Study -The KingJesusHasSPOKEN.htm . And

The many meanings of Worship are in PROSKUNEO.htm--Worshipping any thing other the Father will is idolatrous and will get

You Thrown in the same Lake Jehovah has prepared for Satan and Satan wants you in there with Him in the Second Death of No

Return-Compare The False EVIL Side OF The TRINITY in Study-1A.htm-to get you done away with –Open and Study and the below- Rev -21:8

And any or all the the commentaries on idolaters and he second death."

Chapter 21 - Read This Chapter

21:8

"But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

Full Verses (Personal Pro-Noun) Verses

Jn 5:30 NASB

"I can do nothing * on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek

My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

Jn 8:28

So Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.

Jn 8:42

Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me.

Jn 10:18

"No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father."

Jn 12:49

"For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.

Jn 14:10

"Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.

Jn 16:13

"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

Jn 18:34

Jesus answered, "Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?"

BU John 1:1 In BU-Paragraph 4 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with “the theos,”

and the Word was “theos.” Since the definite article is missing from the second occurrence of “theos”

(“God,”) the usual meaning would be “god” or “divine Compare B2.S Bibles or BestnTOnenessBibles.htm

There is More Info in-AllCaps.htm & John-20-28.htm

Compare Jn 1-1-(1Tim3-16)-(1Jn-5-7)-- What Is a-god.htm and What is Trindirty

Many Bible Publishers Translated- a-god or a-God---Long Before Colwell’s Birth.

Open and Study JOHN1onePLUS.htm

Who Was Colwell and What was His Rule Colwell's Rule in 5.htm BestBiblesComingInTheFUTURE.htm

Is oneness in the Bible 8.htm Oneness. defined htm

Who Wrote the Greek Bible Grammatical Rules for the Bibe You read 7.htm

Plus The development History of the Trinity History Open T

Study B2.S Bibles or BestnonTrinitarianOnenessBibles.htm

The Coptics in 200-300 A.D. understood God’s word and translated John 1:1 as "a god"

back before the Nicene Creed appeared in 325AD.

200-300 A.D. Open SahidicCopticGospelofJohn.htm

The Coptics understood Koine Greek very well and used it every day as an Administration language Open CopticsPlus.htm

John1.1 Any difficulty in understanding this verse is intentionally caused by the translators –

Study 1- GODorgod.htm -2 -AllManuscriptsWereWrittenInAllCaps.htm

An Early Coptic Translation and John 1:1c

Prepared by Solomon Landers
January, 2006

Sahidic Coptic John^#
Ϩⲛ ⲧⲉϩⲟⲩⲉⲓⲧⲉ ⲛⲉϥϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲛϭⲓ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ
ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ ⲛⲉϥϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲛⲛⲁϩⲣⲙ ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ
ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛⲉⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ

Transliteration
1:1a Hn tehoueite nefshoop nci pshaje
1:1b Auw pshaje nefshoop nnahrm pnoute
1:1c Auw neunoute pe pshaje

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. They made translations of the koine Greek Gospels into several languages. By about the year 200, the earliest of these were found in Syriac, Coptic, and Latin.¹ Coptic was the language spoken by Christians in Egypt, in the Sahidic dialect, until replaced by the Fayyumic and the Bohairic dialects in Coptic church liturgy in the 11^th century C.E.

Coptic itself was the last stage of the Egyptian language spoken since the time of the Pharaohs. Under the influence of the widespread use of koine Greek, the Coptic language came to be written, not in hieroglyphs or the cursive Egyptian script called Demotic, but in Greek letters supplemented by seven characters derived from hieroglyphs. Coptic is a Hamito-Semitic language, meaning that it shares elements of both Hamitic (north African) languages and Semitic languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic.

Much was made of it in the scholarly world when an apocryphal gospel written in Coptic, titled the "Gospel of Thomas," was discovered in Egypt near Nag Hammadi in December 1945. Yet, after an initial welcome, the scholarly world has been strangely silent about an earlier and more significant find, the Sahidic Coptic translation of the canonical Gospel of John, which may date from about the late 2^nd century C.E.² This manuscript was introduced to the English-speaking world in 1911 through the work of [Reverend] George William Horner. Today, it is difficult even to find copies of Horner's translation of the Coptic canonical Gospel of John. It has been largely relegated to dusty library shelves, whereas copies of the "Gospel of Thomas" (in English with Coptic text) line the lighted shelves of popular bookstores.

In the book, The Text of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1987), Kurt and Barbara Aland, editors of critical Greek New Testament texts, state:

"The Coptic New Testament is among the primary resources for the history of the New Testament text. Important as the Latin and Syriac versions may be, it is of far greater importance to know precisely how the text developed in Egypt." (Page 200, emphasis added)

The Sahidic Coptic text of the Gospel of John has been found to be in the Alexandrian text tradition of the well-regarded Codex Vaticanus (B) (Vatican 1209), one of the best of the early extant Greek New Testament manuscripts. Coptic John also shows affinities to the Greek Papyrus Bodmer XIV (p75) of the late 2^nd/3^rd century.³ Concerning the Alexandrian text tradition, Dr. Bruce Metzger states that it "is usually considered to be the best text and the most faithful in preserving the original."⁴

Therefore, it is all the more strange that insights of the Sahidic Coptic text of John 1:1 are largely ignored by popular Bible translators. Might that be because the Sahidic Coptic Gospel of John translates John 1:1c in a way that is unpopular in Christendom? The Sahidic text renders John 1:1c as auw neunoute pe pshaje, clearly meaning literally "and was a god the Word."**^% Unlike koine Greek, Sahidic Coptic has both the definite article, p, and the indefinite article, u. The Coptic text of John 1:1b identifies the first mention of noute as pnoute, "the god," i.e., God. This corresponds to the koine Greek text, wherein theos, "god," has the definite article ho- at John 1:1b, i.e., "the Word was with [the] God."

The koine Greek text indicates the indefiniteness of the word theos in its second mention (John 1:1c), "god," by omitting the definite article before it, because koine Greek had no indefinite article. But Coptic does have an indefinite article, and the text employs the indefinite article at John 1:1c. This makes it clear that in reading the original Greek text, the ancient Coptic translators understood it to say specifically that "the Word was a god."

The early Coptic Christians had a good understanding of both Greek and their own language, and their translation of John's koine Greek here is very precise and accurate. Because they actually employed the indefinite article before the word "god," noute, the Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1c is more precise than the translation found in the Latin Vulgate, since Latin has neither a definite nor an indefinite article. Ancient Coptic translations made after the Sahidic, in the Bohairic dialect, also employ the indefinite article before the Coptic word for "god."

The Coptic word neunoute (ne-u-noute) is made up of three parts: ne, a verbal prefix denoting imperfect (past) tense, i.e., "was [being],"; u, the Coptic indefinite article, denoting "a,"; and noute, the Coptic word for "god." Grammarians state that the word noute, "god," takes the definite article when it refers to the One God, whereas without the definite article it refers to other gods. But in Coptic John 1:1c the word noute is not simply anarthrous, lacking any article at all. Here the indefinite article is specifically employed. Thus, whereas some scholars impute ambiguity to the Greek of John 1:1c, this early Coptic translation can be rendered accurately as "the Word was a god." This is the careful way those 2nd century Coptic translators understood it. The Coptic expression for "was a god," ne-u-noute pe, is the same Coptic construction as found at John 18:40, where it says of Barabbas that he ne-u-soone pe, "was a robber," accurately rendering the Greek original, en de ho barabbas lestes, wherein the word for "robber" lestes, is anarthrous: "a robber." No English version renders this, "Barabbas was Robber." Likewise, John 1:1c should not be rendered to say, "the Word was God," whether the text is Greek or Coptic, but "the Word was a god." In Horner's 1911 English translation from the Coptic, he gives this translation: "In the beginning was being the word, and the word was being with God, and a God was the word."

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.

That very point may give some indication as to why the Sahidic Coptic translation of John 1:1c is largely kept under wraps in academic religious circles today. Most new English translations continue to translate this verse to say "the Word was God." But the Coptic text provides clear evidence — from very ancient times — that the New World Translation is correct in rendering John 1:1c as "the Word was a god."

Sbt Adds -Compare

Compare JOHN1onePLUS.htm +-GODorgod.htm-Aa.htm Jn 1-1-(1Tim3-16)-(1Jn-5-7)-- WhatIsagod.htm Coptics.htm-

Plus Colwell's Rule in 5.htm Is oneness in the Bible 8.htm

Plus Oneness. defined htm and Who Wrote the Greek Bible Grammatical Rules 7.htm

Plus The development History of the Trinity History Open T and What is Trindirty

Footnotes:

↑ Aland, p. 68
↑ George William Horner, The Coptic version of the New Testament in the southern dialect, otherwise called Sahidic and Thebaic, 1911, pp. 398, 399
↑ Aland, p. 91
↑ Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2^nd edition, United Bible Societies, 1994, page 5

Other References:

Egyptian Grammar, 3^rd edition, by Sir Alan Gardiner (Griffith Institute, 1957)
The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, (with Coptic text) by Marvin Meyer (Harper Collins, 1992)

Websites:

http://ctmatrix.org/sahidica.org/sahidica.htm
http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/coptic/coptjohn.shtml
http://www.worldscriptures.org/pages/copticsahidic.html

^#You may need to download the New Athena Unicode font to your machine to properly view the Coptic text appearing on this website.

**The translation of the Sahidic Coptic version of John 1:1c into English can be diagrammed as:

ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛⲉⲩⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲉ ⲡϣⲁϫⲉ
auw ne-u-noute pe pshaje