Was Deedat Right? Not Quite: John 1:1 Revisited

John 1:1 and the Misreading of the Greek Text

I was sent a link to a video response to my own video that I posted demonstrating that Ahmed Didat's comments on John 1 .1 were inaccurate and incorrect. You remember that I documented that he didn't even have the proper Greek terms, and hence the argument that he was making about John 1 .1 where he tries to differentiate between the God and Lagos in different elements of John 1 .1 A, B, and C, the three clauses of John 1 .1.

It was just completely invalid, and that obviously he was unable to actually handle the Greek language, though he claimed to be able to do so. So I was sent a response, and let's look at the first few moments of this video reply that was sent to me.

Hello everyone, this is Colin once again. I'm making this video in response to Dr. Oakley's video where he talks about Didat's argument with regards to the Greek as found in the Gospel of John 1 .1 which reads from the KJV,.

Now Dr. Oakley brings up the argument that Didat was wrong, and that he was using incorrect Greek words to show that Christians have altered the text of the New Testament. I'm here to tell you that he is correct, and I know that might shock some people, but in all technical purposes, Didat used the wrong Greek words.

Reasons for this? He was an old man. Who knows? I'm not going to guess, I really don't care. What matters, however, and this is where Dr. Oakley misses the point entirely, Didat's argument, as I will illustrate later in this video, he was correct.

His initial conclusion was correct. Now, was his word usage incorrect? It was. He said hantios and things like this, so he is incorrect. But his conclusion that Christians are altering the Gospel of John 1 .1 is correct, and I'll show you why.

Now, I'm not certain that this young man actually knows what Didat's argument really was, and I'm not sure how you can make a correct argument based upon not being able to actually read the language. But the gentleman has said that I've completely missed the point of how to correctly translate John 1 .1.

And so, you're probably working ahead of me here, you probably know where this is going. If you're familiar at all with the subject of John 1 .1, and especially the massacre of the text by Jehovah's Witnesses and things like that, if you've listened to my debate with Greg Stafford where this issue came up, you probably know where this is going.

But he then goes into trying to explain by holding up pieces of paper to the camera, which you generally cannot read because the light reflects off and you can't see them. But he tries to explain the words that appear in John 1 .1.

In the process, he demonstrates he cannot read Greek. He's only using Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. He doesn't know the difference between a V and a noon. He regularly mispronounces the words and just obviously does not know the language at all.

Which is perfectly fine, unless you're going to post videos where you claim someone doesn't get it who has been teaching the language since 1995. And that's the problem we have here. Finally, after holding up a number of pieces of paper and trying to explain what's in John 1 .1, he finally gets around to making his assertion as to what it really says.

Here, let's take a look at it.

Here is that in the second instance, so in the beginning was the word. In the second instance where theos is used in that verse, it is simply written as this. Ho is not there. The article ho is not there.

Meaning that it can only be translated as theos, meaning a god. Not translated as god, according to the Greek. So the correct translation should be this. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with god.

And the word was a god. So, this is how it should be correctly translated. And other random translations similar to the Greek can be found in another place. For instance, it is properly translated as hotheos.

For example, if you look at 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, it reads, in that verse, hotheos is translated as the god, with a small g, to refer to Satan. In the same verse, tontheon is translated as just god, capital g.

So this is a clear pick-and-choose tactic whether the Christians wish to translate certain words as a lesser god, lowercase g, the god or a god, or god, capital g. They are picking and choosing how to translate.

And this is irresponsible as far as translation goes. So what is the conclusion? The conclusion is that this is incorrect wording. And furthermore, regardless of what Dr. Oakley says, Didat's final conclusion was correct.

Yes, the man was human. He made a mistake. He was using incorrect Greek words to illustrate his point. But in the end, his conclusion was this. Christians are incorrectly translating John 1, verse 1. And that is the point.

If anything is unclear, if I have been confusing in this video, this is a new video for me as well. I am not a scholar in Greek, and therefore this was new for me. So if anything is confusing, if I need to explain anything better, let me know in the comments.

If not, I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope this sheds some light. And peace be with you all.

The Greek Article and Predicate Nominatives in John 1:1

Now, the number of errors here are almost too many to count. But our gentleman does not understand Greek articles. I have a book here, for example, Dan Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Just the section only on the subject of the article is very, very large.

For example, it takes up basically from here, even sections on absence of the article, use of the article, so on and so forth. This much space. And obviously just reading Strong's Exhaustive Concordance is not quite going to give you that amount of information.

The fact of the matter is that what the gentleman is missing is that if the article were to appear with theos in John 1, verse 1, you would be making an equation between the logos and theos. That's because you have the verb that is used here.

It's a form of I mean. And to be able to identify a predicate nominative and to not turn this into an equative sentence, the subject has the article, the predicate nominative does not. If both had the article or neither had the article, then you'd be making an equation between logos and theos, which would make John 1, verse 1 contradictory with itself.

It would be saying that all of the logos is all of theos, all of theos is all of the logos. That is not what John is going to be teaching because the logos is going to become flesh, John 1, verse 14, and it is not the father who becomes flesh, it is the son who becomes flesh.

So to be able to differentiate properly, then you could not put the article with the word theos, or you would in essence be teaching a false theology. So the reason it's not there is purposeful in the text, and most believe that the fact that the term theos appears before the verb is indicating to us the nature of the logos.

It is describing what the logos is, not who the logos is. Now this gentleman obviously has not read any of the works that describe this. I would invite him to do so, because I think it would help him to understand that DDOT was completely wrong on every possible count, and that John 1, verse 1 cannot be translated, the word was a god.

And very briefly, let me just mention in regards to the 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4 passage, if you'd actually look at that, you would see that it's not parallel at all syntactically or grammatically, and in fact a good friend of mine by the name of Don Hartley has written an excellent work that addresses the issue of who really is the theos of 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, and he makes a pretty strong argument that we should read that text as a judgment text, and that it is God who is in reference there.

But remember, capitalization, things like that, all English issues of capitalization, those are editorial things. DDOT and this individual are saying that we were changing our scriptures, we've changed nothing.

John 1, verse 1 says what John 1, verse 1 says. He's basically saying, well, you're mistranslating it. Well, and as we've seen, we've not mistranslated it. John 1, verse 1 teaches that the Logos eternally existed, the Logos eternally had a relationship with who we see later on as the Father, and that the Logos is, as to his nature, true deity.

That's what the text reads. Thanks for watching.