Peace Fedos,
format_quote Originally Posted by
Fedos
It is difficult for me--as a born again Christian--to consider that both the Quran and Bible are inspired (or in the Quran's case written) by the same God when they don't harmonize. The Old and New Testaments, they stand up to scrutiny to one another, despite what some detractors may think.
It is evident that the Torah (old testament) and Bible (Aka Injil in the Qur'an) were from same God due to the many similiarities in beliefs. In fact we use the Qur'an as a filter to know where the religious scriptures of others have gone wrong due to adulteration. You will find all muslims assert The Torah is the old testament, the bible is the new testament and the Qur'an is the last testament :)
Someone whose well versed in these things can probably address the point made that Allah is found in the Bible.
...You haven't fully read the essay have you :raging:
I have taken the trouble of copying and pasting it from pdf :exhausted you'll find the details below :)
[PIE]Arabic is an ancient and exceptionally rich form of Semitic speech, closely related to Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac.9 Etymologically, Allah comes from the same root as the Biblical words Elo¯ hîm, ha-Elo¯ hîm, and ha-Elôh (all meaning “God”) invoked by the Hebrew prophets and the Aramaic and Syriac Alaha (“God”) used by John the Baptist and
Jesus. Elo¯ hîm derives from elôh (Hebrew for “god”), and Alaha is an emphatic form of alah (Aramaic/ Syriac for “god”), while Allah is connected to ilah(Arabic for “god”).
All three of these Semitic words for “god”—elôh, alah, and ilah—are etymologically equivalent. The slight modifications between them
reflect different pronunciations conforming to the historical
pattern of morphological shifts in each tongue.
They are akin to the variations we find, for example, between the Latin, Spanish, and Italian words for God (Deus, Dios, and Dio) or the English and German (God and Gott). Elo¯ hîm, Alaha, and Allah are all cognates—sister words—deriving from a common proto-Semitic root, which, according to one standard view, was the root ’LH, conveying the primary sense
of “to worship.” The fundamental linguistic meaning of the three Abrahamic cognates for God—Elo¯ hîm, Alaha, and Allah—is “the one who is worshipped.”
Elo¯ hîm occurs over two thousand times in the Old Testament and is customarily rendered “God” in English translation. Like the Qur’an, the Bible has a plurality of divine names: “God of preexistence”
(Elôhî qedem), “Living One of eternity” (¤ay ha-‘ôlam), “God of eternity” (E¯ l ‘ôlam), “Holy Oneof Israel” (Qadôsh Yisra’el), “Great King” (Melek
Râb), “God All-Powerful” (E¯ l Sheddâi), “God the Overwhelming” (E¯ l Gebbôr), “God the Most High” (E¯ l ‘Elyôn), and so forth. The Tetragrammaton
(Greek for “four letter word”), YHWH, is the most common word for God in the Hebrew Bible but is generally rendered in translation not as “God” but as
“the Lord” and occasionally as “Jehovah.”
The insistence among elements of the religious right on the “Judeo-Christian Jehovah” as a dichotomous opposite to the Arabic Allah is, at best, a
parochial interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, since few Jews and certainly not all Christians would be content with rendering the Biblical “Lord”
as Jehovah. “Jehovah,” as such, does not occur in the Bible but is a tentative philological construct of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, which modern scholarship generally renders as Yahweh—“he who is, or
he who gives being”—from an Old Hebrew verb “to be.” Rabbinic tradition, however, regarded the
Tetragrammaton as so sacrosanct that it was glossed as “Lord” without being spoken aloud or consigned a given pronunciation.10 In any case, the Bible declares that “YHWH is himself ha-Elo¯ hîm” (Deut. 4:35); so,
from the standpoint of the Bible, there is no theological distinction between YHWH and Elo¯ hîm, which, as shown, is a linguistic cognate of the Arabic Allah.
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Whats also fascinating is the origins of the word God and the beliefs of the individuals who used it in the pre-christian era. It is as the Qur'an mentions, Massengers or Prophets where sent to each nation reminding them of the purpose of their creation which is to worship The One True God.
[PIE]
God, the Most Beautiful Word in English
The English word “God” is a unique linguistic and theological treasure. It is pre-historic, extending into the Neolithic period and deriving from the proto-Indo- European root gheu(∂), meaning “to invoke” or “to
supplicate.” “God” is a past participial construction, meaning “the one who is invoked” or “the one who is called upon.” Like Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, and
most of the European languages, English belongs to the Indo-European family. Our word “God”—proto- Indo-European Ghuto—corresponds linguistically to the Sanskrit past participle h‰ta (“invoked” or “called
upon”), which appears in the Indic Vedas in the divine epithet puruh‰ta (“much invoked”). Etymologically, “God”—“the one who is invoked in prayer”—is remarkably close in meaning to the Biblical Elo¯ hîm and
Alaha and the Qur’anic Allah, which, as we have seen, convey the sense of “the one who is worshipped.”
“God” is also virtually identical in connotation to the Native American Lenape word for the Supreme Being “You to whom we pray.” Supplication and
worship are closely interrelated. The Prophet said in a well-known Tradition: “Supplication is the essence of worship.”
The English word “God” in its present form is ancient and pre-Christian, having no hidden or implicit link with Trinitarian theology. Its earliest documented historical use is in the poem Beowulf, the oldest poem
in the English language and the earliest European vernacular epic. Beowulf relates pre-Christian events from the early sixth century, a generation or so before the birth of the Prophet Mu^ammad. Western scholars
often find Beowulf paradoxical, because it lacks distinctive Christian references but speaks constantly of God’s grandeur, taking every occasion to praise God and give him thanks.
“God” in its present form is the most common word for the Creator in the epic, but the poem also contains scores of other magnificent divine
names, which are so deeply embedded in its fabric that they cannot have been interpolated later by medieval monks.21 Although Beowulf refers to the creation, Adam, Noah, the Flood, the resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell, it contains no references to Mosaic or post-Mosaic Biblical events or to Christ, the crucifixion, Trinitarian dogma, saints, relics, or similar ele ments that one would expect to find, if there had been any subsequent medieval editing. The poem declares God’s oneness explicitly and extols his wise and merciful governance of the world and its people; it rejects
and ridicules paganism as the work of the devil, and the epic’s hero, Beowulf—a brave and mighty but truly humble man of God—engages in constant combat with the diabolical forces of evil and destruction.
Not just in its many words for God but in general, the religious vocabulary of Beowulf expresses with exactitude the crux of the spiritual and theological vision which Muslims find so precisely expressed in the Arabic language. Beowulf is a testimony to the English language’s unique richness and should inspire us, as English-speaking Muslims, with a deeper respect for our language and its inherent power to express not only our concept of the divine but the entire repertoire of primordial prophetic teaching.
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