Did Ahmed Deedat Truly Know Greek?

Ahmed Deedat’s Reputation as a Showman, Not a Scholar

Now, there's a man I wish I had had the opportunity of debating, not because he was actually a particularly good apologist, but he was a tremendous showman. And sadly, he's had a huge impact upon the entire next generation of Islamic apologists.

So many have seen his videotapes, and they repeat his arguments over and over again uncritically. He was not a scholar. He was not even an apologist. He was a showman. When you look at his arguments, if you take away all the unnecessary verbiage where he's just trying to impress you about how much he claims to know, if you just boiled it down to the actual arguments, his arguments would really be considerably lower than your average Jehovah's Witness going door-to-door today, especially against the deity of Christ and things like that.

But he claimed to have this tremendous facility with languages, and he claimed to know Greek. And so, in a two-and-a-half-hour diatribe, which is available in many formats today, I'm sure it's on YouTube, I found it listed on the web in real audio format, a two-and-a-half-hour diatribe against the deity of Christ, he makes error after error after error in this material, and yet people are still using this material to this day despite how bad it is.

Here's an example that illustrates that while Achmed Didat claimed to know Greek, he didn't know Greek. It is plain beyond all question that he could not read the Greek language. He could not handle it appropriately.

In fact, when I first recorded this video, and I'm redoing it now, even I did not see how completely wrong Didat was because my mind saw what he was saying, and I actually mentally fixed his error and put it in the proper Greek form.

I didn't even criticize him for the main element of his actual error. Sam Shamoon, thank you Sam, pointed this out to me. And so, now that I see it right in front of my eyes, I go, wow, I can't even believe someone could be this wrong about what they're claiming here.

Why John 1:1 Exposes the Greek Errors

But let's look at this section. He's talking about John 1 .1. He's talking about the forms of the word God, hatheos, nominative, masculine, and singular. And he makes some claims about what's found in John 1 .1, and what various words mean.

And basically, he never really gets anything right, and makes some basic, basic errors. Let's take a look at what he says.

He said, yes. I said, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. I said, what is the Greek word for with God, deus? He's silent. He said, he'd be five years Greek before he became a GD.

I said, what is the Greek word for God? He's silent. I said, the Greek word is homotheos. Homotheos literally means the God, for which you Western nations, you have a system of translations, that when it is a proper noun, you put a capital letter.

When it is a common noun, you put a small letter. So, you have put a capital G for God. Right? That's your system. And the word was God. I said, what is the Greek word there for God? He's silent. I said, the word there is tontheos.

Tontheos means a God. Why did you put another capital G there? A God should have a small g. No. A God. A godly person. That's what he's trying to say. It's a godly word. Why did you put a capital G there?

Let's take a look at John 1 .1 and see how well Ahmed Dida did. Remember, it's his people that are putting this video out. They even took the time to insert graphics and things like that. So, clearly, this represents his most important kind of work.

It's not just an off-the-cuff comment. This is stuff that he's putting out so that people can see what it is he has to say. So, let's look at what he had to say. First of all, he claims that the word for with God in John 1 .1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, is hatheos.

He is incorrect. The actual term, as you can see on the screen, is tontheon. Kaihalagos ein pros tontheon. The word was pros, with, tontheon. Accusative, masculine, singular of the Greek term theos. Tontheon.

So, he is in error when he says, well, hatheos means the God. He's trying to draw a distinction between the God of John 1 .1b and the a God, he claims, is in John 1 .1c, and the word was God. This is just a very confused, borrowed from Jehovah's Witness presentation, but it isn't even semi-accurate along those lines either.

And so, he makes that first claim. He's wrong. It's not hatheos, it's tontheon. Then, when it says the word was God, he says this is tontheos. There is no such thing as tontheos. Ton is the article for the accusative masculine singular, in this case, and ha is the form for the masculine nominative singular.

And the problem is he's now put the accusative with a masculine nominative form. He's got the wrong article with the wrong form. And anybody who has ever studied Greek, you simply could not pass the first two weeks of a Greek class without knowing the difference between a nominative and an accusative and knowing the forms of the definite article, that the ha is the nominative and ton is the accusative.

So, it is very clear that his entire argument against John 1 .1 is fraudulent. It's wrong. And his knowledge of what's actually found in John 1 .1 in the Greek is wrong as well. Here, for example, I provide you the declension of the os in the singular form.

The os is a masculine noun, and so the nominative, the nominative is the case of subject generally, is hatheos. The genitive, which is case of possession, it's actually a very, very rich case. It has the genitive and ablative functions in it, is totheou.

The dative, blockative, instrumental, indirect address, numerous other forms like that is totheou. And then the accusative, which is that of the direct object, is tontheon. So you can see the forms both of the articles, which roughly corresponds to our word the, though in Greek the article is significantly much more rich and full in meaning and usage than we have in English at all.

You can see that ha is for the nominative, and ton is for the accusative. But theos is a nominative form, and theon is the proper accusative form. Didot simply has it completely wrong and does not seem to even recognize this.

You could not read a single paragraph, a single sentence of Greek, without knowing the differences between these forms and the fact that he did not know these differences later in his life demonstrates that he had never mastered the Greek language at all.

And any time you hear him talking about Greek as if he actually knows it, you must immediately suspect that he is going on secondhand information and you cannot trust what he has to say at this point.

The Eternal Word and the Gospel of John’s Testimony

So what you actually have is the exact opposite of what Didot is trying to argue. John 1 tells us that in the beginning the word was already in existence. As far back as you want to push that beginning, the word was already in existence.

This is seen through the word ein, the imperfect form of I, me that is used there. It does not have any indication of beginning, origin, source, or creation. The word is eternal, and yet the word has a personal relationship.

It is face to face with God. And then the word is described as to his nature being deity or God. That is why theos does not have an article in front of it. It is functioning as a predicate nominative, and it is placed before the verb.

It is describing for us this logos, and this John 1, 1 is meant to be the window through which we view the rest of the Gospel of John, and when we do, we can see it properly. When we refuse John's own definitions, as Didot clearly does, he has to as a Muslim, then the Gospel of John becomes a jumble for us.

It does not become nearly as clear in its testimony of who Jesus Christ is. The important thing to remember is when you hear Ahmed Didot speaking, the vast majority of his verbiage is just showmanship.

It is not there to actually provide any meaningful context, and if you were to strip his arguments down to this level, you would discover that his arguments are woefully lacking. If you are a Muslim watching this, please listen as we continue to take his material apart and demonstrate that this man who has been famous amongst Muslims for many years really had no meaningful arguments to place against the Christian faith.

Thanks for watching.