The Coptic Versions of the Gospel of John: Their Relevance for the Greek Text

The Coptic version is the most important ancient translation of the New Testament. The Sahidic version is within this language for most of the books of the New Testament (and also for the Gospel of John) outstanding. This is due to the age of the translation as well as the number of manuscripts attesting this text in this dialect. The Sahidic version belongs (on principle) to the Alexandrinian form of the text of the New Testament. It gives, however, witness to many important variants. The translation from Greek into Coptic started already around the end of the second century. However, manuscripts from the time before the end of the persecutions, that is from before the beginning of the 4th century, are very rare. Thus, the Coptic version of the Gospel of John gives witness to rare variants of the Greek texts used for translation. The aim of this project is to use the data of all Coptic dialects for the textual tradition of the Greek Gospel of John. For this all known and available manuscripts of this text in the Sahidic dialect must be used, that is to say, six fully preserved manuscripts and approximately 130 fragmentary manuscripts. Furthermore, the other dialects like proto-Bohairic, Bohairic, Lycopolitan or Achmimic translations have to be used in this process. The interlinear presentation of all attested variants makes it possible to analyse critically the Greek version(s) which was (were) used in the process of translating the text of the Gospel of John into Coptic. This will also be published electronically. Attestations of variants (identified during the previous project) have already been included into the critical apparatus of the 28th edition of Novum Testamentum Graece. The results of the proposed project are not only important for Coptology. They will also provide the Editio Critica Maior of the Gospel of John with most important data. The Editio Critica Maior uses all known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament as well as the ancient translations (Latin, Syriac and so forth) for the documentation of the textual variants. The Coptic version being the most important of the ancient translations of the New Testament must be included. The Editio Critica Maior of the Gospel of John will document the results of the work with the Coptic versions of the Gospel of John. Thus, the results of this project will immediately be available for all who work in the field of Biblical Studies.

The research project P28821 dealt with the Coptic translation of the Gospel of John. Coptic was the language of "Christian Egypt". Translation of the Gospel of John started early (probably 2nd/3rd century AD). Translations into different Coptic dialects exist. The aim of the project was to evaluate the Coptic translation of the Gospel of John as to its value for the attestation of Greek variants. This is an important question: The different books of the New Testament were written and handed as manuscripts. An "original copy" does not exist. It is, therefore, an important venue of research to document the variants of the Greek manuscripts. Early translations of the New Testament may provide evidence of rare textual variants of the Greek text which might either be not well attested or even lost during the transmission of the text over the centuries. Of outstanding importance are the early translations to which Coptic belongs. Any translation has a concrete source text. Thus, it might be the case that these early translations preserve variants which were lost in Greek textual tradition. Besides Coptic, also Latin, Syriac or Gothic belong to the early translations of the New Testament. The aim of the project was to analyse the Coptic translation as to its value for the textual tradition of the Greek text of the New Testament and - as far as possible - to identify the Greek text underlying the translation for the variation units. The results were added to a database (versional editor). This database contains the information on the Greek variants, the information of the Coptic tradition has been added during the research project. Other research teams add the information to the other early translations (as mentioned above). This database will be the source material for a new critical edition of the Greek text of the Gospel of John. The research was embedded in the larger context of the so called Editio Critica Maior (ECM). The ECM is a multi-national research project.