Translating the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas (50-140 A.D.)

rakovsky · Apr 15, 2019

One of the first century Christian writings that I read is the Gospel of Thomas, which is made up of Jesus' sayings, some of which are in the New Testament, and some others being found in the Church fathers as authentic sayings by Jesus (such respected sayings by Jesus outside the Bible are known as the "Agrapha"). On the other hand, the text is apocryphal, may be gnostic or "proto-gnostic", and doesn't have any authority in the Coptic Church. I'm sure that Coptic theologians share the same skepticism about the Gospel of Thomas that the EOs, RCs, and traditional Protestants have.
Much of it only survives in a Coptic language Nag Hammadi set of papyri and English translations of some of its sayings differ drastically. So I would like to see if anyone knows Coptic well enough to suggest which of the translations of the three Sayings below are best. There are hardly any forums online for people who know Coptic, so I thought that this might be some place that I could ask about the translations to these Sayings.

1. The Coptic text of Saying 70 goes:

There are quite different translations of this:

LAMBDIN'S TRANSLATION: Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you."

DORESSE'S TRANSLATION: Jesus says: "When you have something left to share among you, what you possess will save you. But if you cannot share [among you], that which you have not among you, that [ ... ? ... will ...] you.

Do you think that the Coptic text uses the word "kill" (ie. in "That which you do not have within you will kill you")?

The passage reminds me of Mark 4:24-25:

And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.

2. Do you think that Jesus asks if he is a "divider" or an "arbitrator" in Saying 72, below?:

LAMBDIN'S TRANSLATION:

A man said to him, "Tell my brothers to divide my father's possessions with me."
He said to him, "O man, who has made me a divider?"
He turned to his disciples and said to them, "I am not a divider, am I?"

LAYTON'S TRANSLATION:

Some person [said] to him, "Tell my siblings to share my father's possessions with me." He said to that person, "My good fellow, who has made me into an arbitrator?" He turned to his disciples and said to them, "So am I an arbitrator?"

I notice that the word "NPE4ПШЩЕ" appears at the end of lines 2 and 3 in the Coptic, but doesn't appear in line 1. This suggests to me that Layton's translation's use of "arbitrator" is better because it uses "arbitrator" only at the end of lines 2 and 3.

This Saying is probably related to Luke 12:13-14, which goes:
Compare with Luke 12:

13. And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.
14. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?

3. Does Saying 74 state that "nothing is in the well" or that "nobody is in the well"?

LAMBDIN'S TRANSLATION:
He said, "O Lord, there are many around the drinking trough, but there is nothing in the cistern."

BLATZ'S TRANSLATION:
He said: Lord, there are many about the well, but no one in the well.

3 of the 5 translations on the Gospel of Thomas Translations Comparison webpage say "nothing", whereas the other 2 say "no one" and "nobody". (The Gospel of Thomas: Compare The Translations)

Gerd Ludemann writes:

"This ... has an equivalent in the anti-Christian philosopher Celsus (c. 180 CE), who read it in a writing with the title 'Heavenly Dialogue'. It was in circulation among the Gnostic group of the Ophites (serpent worshippers). There it runs, 'Why are there many around the well and no one in the well?' Evidently the aphorism is meant to encourage the Gnostic to stop being a bystander and enter, in order also to be able to drink the water of knowledge." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 627)

I found Celsus' quote of the gnostics' book A Heavenly Dialogue as saying, "How comes it, that while so many go about the well, no one goes down into it?"(quoted in Origen's Against Celsus VIII.15, CHURCH FATHERS: Contra Celsum, Book VIII (Origen))

Philip_B · Apr 15, 2019

rakovsky said:
3. Does Saying 74 state that "nothing is in the well" or that "nobody is in the well"?

3 of the 5 translations on the Gospel of Thomas Translations Comparison webpage say "nothing", whereas the other 2 say "no one" and "nobody". (The Gospel of Thomas: Compare The Translations)

One wonders if any pf this relates to the Samaritan woman narrative in John 4, where we often miss a lot of the force of the passage as we do not give enough credit to the Samaritan Redeemer expectations which are reflected in this passage culminating in the declaration 'savior of the cosmos'

dzheremi · Apr 16, 2019

Note: Sahidic Coptic, in which this text is written, is not the dialect used in the Church, which has used Bohairic since the 9th century or so, so it is hard to understand these even if you know Coptic quite well, unless you are a Coptologist (they usually know Sahidic since there were more texts written in that dialect than others; 99% of all academic courses and resources you might find aimed at learning/teaching the language will be Sahidic, for this reason), which I am not. So my source for all of these is Azevedo's Simplified Coptic Dictionary (Sahidic Dialect), since it's the only one I have that specifically deals with that dialect of the language (Crum's dictionary has vocab from several dialects, but my copy is in storage and the only one I could find online is difficult for me to navigate). I do have Reintges Coptic learner's grammar, which is Sahidic and I'm told is incredibly excellent (I've worked with this author's materials before, so I suspect that to be the case), but I have not yet had a chance to delve into yet. All of this is to say, I don't really know Sahidic very well at all, but I can look things up in a dictionary.

rakovsky said:
1. The Coptic text of Saying 70 goes:

There are quite different translations of this:

Do you think that the Coptic text uses the word "kill" (ie. in "That which you do not have within you will kill you")?

I could not find the exact form of the root word for this in Azevedo's dictionary, which gives mouout as "to kill", so I'm going to guess it does say "will kill you" f(na)mout, since that's the closest thing I can find to the Bohairic word I already know, mōout

2. Do you think that Jesus asks if he is a "divider" or an "arbitrator" in Saying 72, below?:

LAMBDIN'S TRANSLATION:
LAYTON'S TRANSLATION:
I notice that the word "NPE4ПШЩЕ" appears at the end of lines 2 and 3 in the Coptic, but doesn't appear in line 1. This suggests to me that Layton's translation's use of "arbitrator" is better because it uses "arbitrator" only at the end of lines 2 and 3.

The root of this is pōš (pōše), peš-, poš# (spelling wasn't really standardized, as you can tell), "to divide, to share". This is why you get "eunapōše" in line one, I'm assuming for "divide my father's possessions" (eunapōše nnhnaau mpaeiot; this one is pretty obvious, since 'father' is a very basic word that is the same in both dialects: iōt).

You can draw your own conclusions from this. I don't have any problem with Layton's translation.

3. Does Saying 74 state that "nothing is in the well" or that "nobody is in the well"?

3 of the 5 translations on the Gospel of Thomas Translations Comparison webpage say "nothing", whereas the other 2 say "no one" and "nobody".

The reason why this is is because laau (sorry; I've lost my Coptic text support somehow, so hopefully you know how to transliterate) can mean either "no one" or "nothing".

rakovsky · Apr 16, 2019

I'm impressed.

dzheremi · Apr 16, 2019

Correction to the above/excuse to blab on and on about Coptic some more: apparently the most frequently occurring root form for 'father' in Sahidic has the initial e as pictured in the saying: eiōt. I had figured it was the other way around, as Sahidic tends to look a bit "vowel impoverished" in comparison to Bohairic (hence things like the consecutive n's in nnhnaau; depending on whose analysis you believe, the superscript line which represents the jinkim either inserts an epenthetic "e" value vowel before it -- enenhnaau -- or simply marks the consonant over which it appears as the syllabic nucleus -- ṇ.ṇ.hna.Ɂau or some similar syllabification; this is complicated by a few different factors, not the least of which is that you eventually find it in Coptic manuscripts, particularly in later Bohairic manuscripts and texts printed today, appearing over basically everything, including vowels, with seemingly no motivation), but in Azevedo the version with the initial e appears first (with the version I wrote -- which is what you find in Bohairic -- appearing second), so I'm assuming it's the primary one.

Hmm. Like they say, ya earn something new every day.

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Translating the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas (50-140 A.D.)

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