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Deedat and the Greek Language
Deedat and the Greek Language
This request was sent to me via email:
Dear brother,
I am a christian and Jesus is my Lord and Saviour.
I want to ask you one thing about Ahmed Deedat, whether he has knowledge of
greek language. I saw him writting something about the bible in greek but
the thing he wrote, I couldn't find it in the bible. May be I can tell you what
he wrote about.
He says the first occurrence of 'God' in john 1:1 in greek is 'hotheos' and
the second occurrence of 'God' in john 1:1 in greek is 'tontheos', and he wanted
to explain something about it. Do you know something about this, because I am
doubtful about his knowledge of greek language.
Though this brother has been confused by Deedat's propaganda tricks, he was right
in doubting Deedat's claims. Just glancing at it, it already I looked very wrong.
I finally found the passage on a web site with the address
http://www.engr.csufresno.edu/~msa/christ_islam.html.
And I also looked it up in my Greek New Testament.
Deedat is so wrong, that I am curious whether he would even be able to find
the passage he talkes about should I ever have the opportunity to hand him
a Greek New Testament. I doubt he can even read it, let alone translate it.
Anyway, the Greek text of John 1:1 is:
En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos.
and the boldface words are the two mentionings of "theos" = "god" in the sentence.
The Greek phrase for "the god" is 'ho theos' [subject case], 'ho' = "the", 'theos' = "god",
'ton theon' is the accusative form [object case] of it.
Deedat's ignorance shows in several ways.
1) In 'ton theos' he mixes 'ton' (the accusative case of the article) with 'theos'
(the nominative of the noun) which is an impossible construction in Greek.
2) The accusative case 'ton theon' is the FIRST mentioning of God in the verse
[while he claims 'tontheos' to be the second], while 'theos' [without article but
the nominative case] is the second mentioning of it.
3) Basically all serious scholars agree that the usual Bible translation
"In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God."
is the correct translation. And this opinion is shared by many "atheist" linguists
and grammar specialists, who say "this is the right translation" though we don't
believe that the content of the sentence is correct.
There are a few people [especially the Jehovah's Witnesses] whose theological
presuppositions are that Jesus cannot be God, and therefore they do translate it
differently [i.e. "and the word was divine" (still not what a Muslim really wants
to hear) or "and the Word was a god" (New World Translation, published by the JWs)].
But this is linguistically bogus. If you need some literature that discusses it
in detail, I can give you references.
Another article on the same topic
including images of the Greek text.
Ahmed Deedat Rebuttal Page
Answering Islam Home Page