Is Allah = Yahweh ?

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Anyway, I'm done here. I don't have time to debate dishonest people.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

No, what it shows is that you know how to go through a modern textbook and modern linquistics classroom for 4 semesters. That wonderful. Millions of other people do that every day. We'll learn Norther Hazteca together if you wish just to prove that we both can.

That however does not do anything to demonstrate that Arabic Christians before Islam used Allah as the general word for the Christian or Jewish deity.

"Allah" comes from the same root as "Elohim". Bringing up the whole "Moon God" thing and being unable to prove it at all (yes, it's Evangelical propaganda) and instead attacking me proves to me that you're a dishonest person. I have no desire to discuss anything further with you.

 

[m423156]

You're going to cite 8th and 9th century 'Christian' texts when Islam was begun in the 7th century?

Furthermore, you haven't actually cited what these supposed texts are and quoted them. Nor have you shown where they were produced and by whom.

See any problems here?

 

[m423156]

"Allah" comes from the same root as "Elohim". Bringing up the whole "Moon God" thing and being unable to prove it at all (yes, it's Evangelical propaganda) and instead attacking me proves to me that you're a dishonest person. I have no desire to discuss anything further with you.

I'm not attacking you. I'm attacking your argument, which any serious student should do.

If you really had any evidence for what you claim, you could easily produce it.

Therefore, what you are claiming is at this point nothing but rumor, hearsay, and propaganda.

Until you have something of actual substance, I will continue to read and study real Arabic scholars like Syed Kamran Mizra.

And lastly, what etymological evidence do you have that Allah was ever derived form the Hebrew 'Ellohim'?

Are you serious?

You're going to need to bring some major source material and evidence to support that claim.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Right ... Just even go the wikipedia article for the etymology of Allah.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

I'm not attacking you. I'm attacking your argument, which any serious student should do.

If you really had any evidence for what you claim, you could easily produce it.

Therefore, what you are claiming is at this point nothing but rumor, hearsay, and propaganda.

Until you have something of actual substance, I will continue to read and study real Arabic scholars like Syed Kamran Mizra.

And lastly, what etymological evidence do you have that Allah was ever derived form the Hebrew 'Ellohim'?

Are you serious?

You're going to need to bring some major source material and evidence to support that claim.

You produced no evidence for your assertion of "Allah" being a "Moon God". It's up to you to produce the evidence for that; it's not up for me to provide the evidence to disprove it. This is why I'm calling you dishonest.

 

[m423156]

Right ... Just even go the wikipedia article for the etymology of Allah.

The etymology isn't from Ellohim.

The Encyclopedia of Religion says: "'Allah' is a pre-Islamic name ... corresponding to the Baylonian Bel" (ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1908, I:326)

Perhaps you should expand your horizons and not get your source information from wiki. There is a reason why universities do not allow using Wikipedia in scholarly works and papers.

 

[m423156]

You produced no evidence for your assertion of "Allah" being a "Moon God". It's up to you to produce the evidence for that; it's not up for me to provide the evidence to disprove it. This is why I'm calling you dishonest.

And I'm calling you dishonest.

Besides, you apparently did not read.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/skm30804.htm

And I'm still waiting for this supposed evidence for a pre-Islamic Christian use of Allah.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Not a reliable source. Can you produce a scholarly journal?

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Also, you do realize that El and Yahweh were used in the Canaanite pantheon, right?

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Furthermore, if your source is acceptable, than this source should be acceptable:

Why do many Arab Christians refer to God as ?Allah?? ? ChristianAnswers.Net

 

[m423156]

Not a reliable source. Can you produce a scholarly journal?

Is Dr Syed Kamran Mirza and his years of Islamic and Arabic studies not 'scholarly' enough for you?

I'll tell you what you have done. You've given me a great idea. I'm going to personally begin a research project to see if I can uncover what the actual pre-Islamic Christian usage for 'God' was. If it is Allah, it should be easy to prove. If it isn't, then that's where things get interesting.

It just so happens that some work in this area has already been done.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1313147/tracts/Allah and Pre-Islamic Christians.pdf

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

You're making an appeal to authority, which is again dishonest. I don't know who Dr. Syed Kamran Mirza is; however, calling "Allah" a "Moon God" is pretty much against the whole body of anthropological work on the subject.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Is Dr Syed Kamran Mirza and his years of Islamic and Arabic studies not 'scholarly' enough for you?

I'll tell you what you have done. You've given me a great idea. I'm going to personally begin a research project to see if I can uncover what the actual pre-Islamic Christian usage for 'God' was. If it is Allah, it should be easy to prove. If it isn't, then that's where things get interesting.

It just so happens that some work in this area has already been done.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1313147/tracts/Allah and Pre-Islamic Christians.pdf

I'm sorry, that's not a scholarly work, either. It's not from an academic journal, and it doesn't source to academic journals. Surely as someone getting a masters in divinity, you can appreciate me wanting academically sound sources.

 

[m423156]

I'm sure that nothing I ever cited would be scholarly to you. And I really care not one wit anyway. I do believe that you are dishonest, and I do believe that you are politically motivated and biased. So I'm really not interested in anything you have to say on the subject, and I also know you're wrong.

The simplest argument to make is this: The general Arabic word for deity, God, and divinity is الإله, not الله. Allah is a proper name and always has been.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

I'm sure that nothing I ever cited would be scholarly to you. And I really care not one wit anyway. I do believe that you are dishonest, and I do believe that you are politically motivated and biased. So I'm really not interested in anything you have to say on the subject, and I also know you're wrong.

The simplest argument to make is this: The general Arabic word for deity, God, and divinity is الإله, not الله. Allah is a proper name and always has been.

I am neither politically motivated nor biased; I am not dishonest, however, you have been using dishonest debate tactics and logical fallacies. Etymologically, Allah proceeds from the same root as Ilah (it is, in fact, a contraction of "al-" and "Ilah"). They are from the same proto-Semitic root as Elohim. This is not disputed in linguistic anthropology. It is a proper noun, yes. What matters is the current context of it, used in modern times by the people who use it, and not the past pagan context of it. Muslims do not worship a "Moon God" -- Allah is the name Muhammad chose for his deity, probably because of the influence of Arab Christians and Jews around him (he was probably inspired by them, seeing as how much he co-opted from them in the Quran). Anyway, the same is true for YHWH (about using the present context and not historical), which linguistically has a historical root in pagan Canaanite religions.

 

[m423156]

It doesn't matter if Muslims worship a moon god today, they worship a false god that was once considered the moon god by the Meccans, and was in fact the Meccan equivalent of BAAL.

There is a reason that Islam has the star and crescent moon, and it isn't just for Ramadan. Ramadan itself had pagan roots. There are a number of perfectly good words for deity and God in Arabic besides Allah. However, especially in the east, there is a tremendous peer pressure to say that Allah is just a general denotation for deity. That is as flatly false in usage as saying that BAAL (the Lord) is a general word for Lord. That may be what it denotates, but that isn't what it connotates. And it's the connotation that Islam insists be kept.

And I also know that there is no length to which a Muslim will not go to misdirect and conceal the facts.

If one wants to call IHVH Allah, they might as well call IHVH BAAL too, because it is the exact same act and error.

Is Allah the same God as IHVH?

Answer this question and it will answer the first:

Is BAAL the same Lord as Adonai?

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

You really don't get it, do you? It comes from the same root as Elohim, thus why it's translated as Allah in Arabic. The term "ilah" indicates "god". The term "Allah" indicates "God" or "the God". The Arabic Bible DOES NOT translate YHWH into Allah, but only the proper noun God (see, capital letter?) into Allah. You disparage Christian Arabs who speak Arabic by insisting that they not use the term Allah (or, more typically Allah-ab which means "God the Father" -- it still contains the special calligraphy for Allah), which is part of their linguistic heritage and means the same to them as God (capitalized) means to an English speaker. Essentially, you're pointlessly splitting hairs.

 

[m423156]

You really don't get it, do you? It comes from the same root as Elohim, thus why it's translated as Allah in Arabic. The term "ilah" indicates "god". The term "Allah" indicates "God" or "the God". The Arabic Bible DOES NOT translate YHWH into Allah, but only the proper noun God (see, capital letter?) into Allah.

Yes. That is correct.

The Arabic Bible that was translated in the 1800s does in fact translate it as Allah.

You don't get it, do you?

That is irrelevant to the argument.

You would have to know the translators and their motives for doing this.

Because they could have actually used the generic word for 'deity' and translated it as


وهية or المعبود, which actually are as generic as the English words 'Deity' and 'Divinity'. But they didn't. They chose الله. I'm saying that there is no good reason to do so except for political purposes. If you say that there is no political intent here, I'm just going to laugh.

If you had lived in ancient norther nIsrael, I have no doubt that you would have been among the politically correct BAAL/IHVH syncretists who saw no difference in IHVH/BAAL/TAMUZ . JezeBEL didn't see any difference either and wanted to kill Elijah for daring to imply that there was a difference. I'm saying that you and millions of others are doing exactly what Jezebel and millions of other ancient Israeli BAAL worshippers did. The exact same thing. Equating things that are not to be equated. They were in union with the IHVHists and the BAALists. Today's syncretists church seeks to be in union with the churches and the mosques. There is no difference. It is all the same half-language of Ashdod that got Israel destroyed.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

If one wants to call IHVH Allah, they might as well call IHVH BAAL too, because it is the exact same act and error.

Is Allah the same God as IHVH?

Answer this question and it will answer the first:

Is BAAL the same Lord as Adonai?

Baal and Adon are from two separate roots for the term "lord", and they also have distinct other meanings as well. Whereas both Allah and ilah are Arabic terms for God from exactly the same root; they share the same semitic root as Elohim.

This is needlessly splitting hairs on your point. Dishonesty again.

Arab Christians call our God, Allah and Allah-al-ab. They understand him differently than a Muslim understands their version of God. For Arab Christians, it's the distinction between the God (Allah) and a god or gods (ilah). They use the term differently than a Muslim does; I don't see what your problem with it is.