Is Allah really the moon god - ????? nope!

Insha'Allah i will post up a little more of part one when i have sorted it out ,

in fact i am going to skip part one and give part two

part TWO
THE EARLY
CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM DEBATES


.....In a recent dialogue Dr Robert Morey accused me of making a factual error when I posed the question ‘why has no objection been made by the Jews and the Christians of Arabia in regards to the name of Allah? He replied by saying ‘You have committed a factual error in that you do not know the early debates between Christians and Muslims where the name "Allah" was rejected as pagan. I expect that Dr Robert Morey was referring to the Apology of Al-Kindy which has been translated and commented upon by Sir William Muir and also by Dr Newman. He referred to this text in his booklet where he said ‘Al-Kindi, one of the early Christian apologists against Islam, pointed out that Islam and its god Allah did not come from the Bible but from the paganism of the Sabeans. Sir William Muir comments on the words of Al-Kindi by saying:

‘His friend (Al-Hishamy) had invited him to embrace the Hanyfite, faith of Abraham, their common father. Our Apologist answers that the Hanyfite faith was in reality the idolatrous religion of the Sabeans, which the patriarch professed before his conversion to the worship of the one true God.

We see from Sir William Muir’s commentary that Al-Kindy alleges that the Hanifite faith of Islam i.e. the Abrahamic faith, stems from the paganism of the Sabeans, then he further alleges that Abraham was of this idolatrous religion until he turned in his worship to the one true God, the Qur’an states that Abraham was never one of the idolaters. It is very interesting to note that Sir William Muir writes the following in his footnote to this point:

‘But the only argument in this passage as to the propriety of circulating or translating which I have doubts is that in which he asserts the Hanyfite religion of Abraham to have been, not the Catholic faith of the Unity (as is clearly intended in the Coran) , but Sabean idolatry. To support this view, our Author twists texts of the Coran…Mahometan readers will with reason object to such misrepresentation of their Scripture.

Please take special care in noticing how Sir William Muir freely admits that he, himself, doubts what al-Kindi has asserted, due to Al-Kindi’s misrepresentation of the Qur’an to support his view that Allah stems from paganism. Therefore the integrity of Al-Kindi is questioned, not by the Muslim but by a Christian Missionary.

Bottom line, Al-Kindi only asserted that Allah was a pagan God, without any hard solid evidence to back up his theory. Thus on the weakness of it, Dr Robert Morey’s referral to the early Christian and Muslim debates in hope to brandish any evidence has failed dismally.

Furthermore, Dr Robert Morey further claims that Dr. Newman concludes his study of the early Christian-Muslim debates by stating:

"Islam proved itself to be...a separate and antagonistic religion which had sprung up from idolatry."

However Dr Newman actually wrote:

“The first three centuries of the Christian-Muslim dialogue to a great degree molded the form of the relationship which was to prevail between the two faiths afterward. During this period, Islam proved itself to be less a wayward sect of the "Hagarenes," from a Christian perspective, and more a separate and antagonistic religion which had sprung up from idolatry.

Dr Robert Morey conveniently left out that the idea of Islam originating from paganism is from a Christian perspective i.e. this is a point of view, and does not serve as evidence. Unfortunately, Dr Robert Morey has followed Al-Kindi in his baseless assumptions and misinterpretation of what the text actually says.

1. Moon god page 13
2. The Apology of Al-Kindy, 2nd Edition, page 41.
3. The sentence in brackets also belongs to Sir William Muir.
4. Ibid page 43
5. Moon god page 13.
6. N. A. Newman (Ed.), The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue: A Collection Of Documents From The First Three Islamic Centuries (632 - 900 A.D.) Translations With Commentary, 1993, Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute: Hatfield (PA), p. 719.

I will give peopletime to digest this and i will post after comments are made. btw .... this whole thread is copyrighted. by me at the time & date of this post...hhheheh

Assalamu alaikum bro jazak Allah Khair.

I have read some refutation (articles) before, but I will like to see where this goes.

Call it attention seeking but i want this post to be noticed, so i can catch feedback

Allah (swt) aint the moon god

hes the god of the moon and everythin brap brap u no dat was heavy

Are you Just trying to focuse on his quote.
Anyway, So far it is fairly good.
You might wan't to expand your introduction, get rid of thos massive Sub Headings. However I am expecting more.

Yeh youre right bro i need a proper intro to introduce a summary of his arguemnt , what do u suggest?

Although I am not sure if what is under the heading "PART ONE
NO OBJECTIONS!"
You seem to rush into it. Maybe it is better to give them a light feel around it, introduce Islam, (maybe what Allah means according to Islam,), your aim, the importance of this study, the crux of Roberts Morey argument, and how you going to approach it i.e. Methodology. e.g. You going to look at some of those archoelogical sources. In your case you are looking at early sources, or records.

Maybe you wan't to change the Headings "No Objection from Jews", "No Objection from Christians" e.t.c and use another Headings.

Anyway so far it is good. Writing Articles takes time. I will give in more thoughts on the issue, that is if I do come up with any.

Thnax for your comments, i am going to work on an approach as you suggested and break into it slowly. Your advice has helped greatly. JazakUllah.

I may need some help on the pagans part... did the pagans ever accuse Muhammad saws for stealing from the Jews and the Christians?

Sample of yet to come, to get people intrested insha'Allah:

The Jews and the Christians believe that the personal name for God Almighty is “Yahweh”. Throughout religious scriptures He is known asYaw, Yah, Yahu, El, Elohim or Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. God is known as “Allah” to the Muslims. Dr Robert Morey argues that “Allah” is a pagan deity, particularly the moon god which was worshipped in ancient Mesopotamia. However Dr Robert Morey does not want his readers to know that exactly the same argument has also been used against the God of the Bible, “Yahweh”. Scholars have suggested that Yahweh was “in fact a pagan deity”. Mark Smith opines that Yahweh is a polytheistic deity at the head of the Israelite pantheon. Even though the Ten Commandments command that there should be no other gods, other biblical texts lend a suggestion that the Israelites knew about other gods and did not reject them as being false deities. They simply stated "there is no god like You, O Lord?" placing Yahweh at the top of their polytheistic pantheon of pagan deities. Walter Reinhold, echoes that Yahweh evolved from earlier gods and goddesses, taking on their feats, epithets, titles, and glories and persona. However the Israelites transformed the pagan deity to the supreme God of monotheism. Professor Cohn also confirms this point, claiming that the Canaanite gods had merged into one deity being Yahweh. Robert Graves and Raphael Patai touch further on this topic by saying “Prophets and Psalmists were as careless about the pagan origins of the religious imagery they borrowed,” including the name “Yahweh”. Another name for Yahweh is Yah. George Arthur Buttrick states that “the name Yah appears 25 times in the Old Testament” Professor Hommel, suggests that this god “Yah is another form of the name Ea..." Ea is Enlil, the Sumerian pagan deity known as “Father of the gods”. George Hart, in his "A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses" suggests that Yah/Yahweh is the Akkadian moon-god, Sin. Another name for Yahweh is Yaw. Stephen Herbert Langdon, views “Yaw” as a female deity and points out that archeologists have found a coin that gives strong indication that “Yaw” was actually the sun god.

Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century,Mark S Smith, Peabody,MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2001.
p.139. Cohn
p. 28. Robert Graves & Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis.
New York. Greewich House. 1983 reprint of 1963, 1964 edition
p. 409. vol. 2. B. W. Anderson. "God, Names of." pp. 407-416. George Arthur Buttrick. Editor. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville. Abingdon Press. 1962
p. 59. Theophilus G. Pinches. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia. London. Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1908
"A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses by George Hart, published in 1986 by Routledge, ISBN 0-415-05909-7,
p.44, fig. 24. Stephen Herbert Langdon. The Mythology of All Races- Semitic. Vol. 5. Boston. Marshall Jones Company. 1931. pp. 454

Documentation:

“Yahweh is an almagam of many gods and goddesses, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Syrian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Canaanite... Gods fused into Yahweh's persona are Enlil, Anu, Utu (Shamash), Ea (Enki),and the Egyptian Hyksos' god Baal Saphon (Baal Hadad) as well as Seth”
(Yahweh-Elohim's Historical Evolution (Pre-Biblical)
Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld )



"The titles and attributes of many other Near Eastern deities were successively awarded to Yahweh Elohim...Prophets and Psalmists were as careless about the pagan origins of the religious imagery they borrowed, as priests were about the adaptation of heathen sacrifical rites to God's service. The crucial question was: in whose honour these prophecies and hymns should now be sung, or these rites enacted? If in honour of Yahweh Elohim, not Anath, Baal or Tammuz, all was proper and pious."
(p. 28. Robert Graves & Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis.
New York. Greewich House. 1983 reprint of 1963, 1964 edition)



"Professor Hommel, the well-known Assyriologist and Professor of Semitic languages at Munich, suggests that this god Yah is another form of the name Ea..."
(p. 59. Theophilus G. Pinches. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia. London. Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1908)

"The reason of the coming of the Flood seems to have been seems to have been regarded by the Babylonians as two-fold. In the first place, as Pir-napishtim is made to say "Always the river rises and brings a flood" -in other words it was a natural phenomenon. But in the course of the narrative which he relates to Gilgamesh, the true reason is implied, though it does not seem to be stated in words. And this reason is the same as that of the Old Testament, namely, the wickedness of the world...Pir-napishtim was himself a worshipper of Ae, and on account of that circumstance, he is represented in the story as being under the special protection of that god...It has been more than once suggested, and Professor Hommel has stated the matter as his opinion, that the name of the god Ae or Ea, another possible reading of which is Aa, may be in some way connected with, and perhaps originated the Assyro-Babylonian divine name Ya'u "god," which is cognate with the Hebrew Yah or, as it is generally written, Jah...There is one thing that is certain, and that is, that the Chaldean Noah, Pir-napishtim, was faithful in the worship of the older god, who therefore warned him, saving his life."
(pp.112-114. "The Flood." Theophilus G. Pinches. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia. London. Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1908)
"It is not certain, however, that 'yahweh' was the oldest form of the name. A short form 'yah' appears 25 times in the Old Testament (Ex 15:2; and cultic cry 'hallelu-yah'= 'praise yah'). Sometimes the short form appears as 'yahu' or 'yo' as in proper names like Joel ('Yo is God') or Isaiah ('Yah is salvation')."

(p. 409. vol. 2. B. W. Anderson. "God, Names of." pp. 407-416. George Arthur Buttrick. Editor. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville. Abingdon Press. 1962)


"Thanks to the rediscovery in recent times, of considerable portions of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Canaanite literature, it is now possible to recognize in the Bible several traces of ancient Near Eastern mythology. These appear in three forms : (a) direct parallels; (b) allusions; and (c) survivals in figurative expressions. In all cases they are accommodated to the religion of Israel by boldly transferring to Yahweh the heroic feats of the older pagan gods..Direct parallels to ancient Near Eastern myths are represented principally by (a) the fight of Yahweh against the dragon; (b) the stories of Creation and Paradise; and (c) the tale of the Deluge...All this is simply the Hebrew version of the story told in the Ugaritic myth of Baal concerning the victory of that god over the draconic Yam (alias Nahar), the genius of the Sea and Rivers..."

(p.481. Vol. 3. T.H. Gaster. "Myth, Mythology." G.A. Buttrick. Editor. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville, Tennessee. Abingdon Press. 1962)


"Yaw was associated with the Canaanitish Mother-goddess. `Ashart-`Anat, as we know from the name of the deity of the Jews at Elephantine, `Anat-Yaw, where two other father-mother titles of divinities occur, such as Ashim-Bethel, `Anat-Bethel, in which the titles of Astarte are combined with the sun-god Bethel. It is precisely at Gaza. where Yaw as a sun-god appears on a coin (fig. 23), that coins frequently bear the figure of this `Ashtart-Yaw, Anat-Yaw, Anat-Bethel, corresponding to the Phoenician Melk-Ashtart, Eshmun-Ashtart. Fig. 24, of the Persian period, is charcteristic of this male-female, or female-male deity, and the heads, being joined, prove that under these names was worshipped a deity who combines the attributes of both."
(p.44, fig. 24. Stephen Herbert Langdon. The Mythology of All Races- Semitic. Vol. 5. Boston. Marshall Jones Company. 1931. pp. 454)




, "the god Yawi is a newcomer, a syncretistic deity to whom his devotees claim to assimilate the local gods such as Ila/El or Adad [or Dagan]." Yawi, of course, is the same as Yahweh."

(p. 284. Herbert B. Huffmon. "Yahweh and Mari." pp. 283-289, in Hans Goedicke. Editor. Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright. Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins Press. 1971)

“Indeed, the Hebrew Bible itself, the great excoriator of the idolaters, owes something to the Mesopotamian world. Knowledge gleaned from Ugaritic texts has cast much light on early Hebrew. The two languages are not so very different, but the most startling discoveries relate to the development of what was to become a distinctly Jewish monotheism. Although the idea would have appalled the Prophets of Israel, it seems clear that El, the Ugaritic and Canaanite father god, displays a number of characteristics typical of Yahweh and can even be seen as the evolutionary precursor of Israel’s Jehovah. El also has much in common with Enlil, Sumer’s “king of heaven and earth.” Many other Sumerian and Akkadian themes are present throughout the Old Testament. The most obvious example being the tales of the flood …which find there way into Genesis…”

(p137 Middle Eastern Myth & Mankind – Epics of Early Civilization)


As scholars translated these texts it became clear that the character of the Hebrew god Yahweh shared much with earlier Ugaritic models. In the Judaic development of monotheism, Yahweh seems to have combined qualities of the older Canaanites deities El and Baal. However, in their eagerness to deny this connection and to emphasize the uniqueness of Yahweh, the Old Testament prophets denounced Baal as a false god of enemy tribes. The Canaanites deities also have much in common with the Mesopotamian pantheon. El who was the chief of the gods who upheld and enforced the institution of kingship.”

(Middle Eastern Myth & Mankind – Epics of Early Civilization, p97)





Yahweh claims in Exodus 6.2–3:
I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name Yahweh.

“…in Psalm 29, Yahweh is clearly envisioned as a storm god…”



Yahweh was called Baal bible confirms Hosea 2:16 (RSV)

"And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me, 'My Husband' and no longer will you call me, 'My Baal." For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more."

“There were many Yah gods throughout the lands of Egypt, Canaan, and Assyria. Yah is associated with the moon god in Egypt, with the heifer/cow gods of Jeroboam, and with goat gods. One thing is certain, the real God of Israel was not Yah or Yahweh as we are led to believe.” – Pastor Reckart @ [email protected]

In Israel, ancient Hebrew inscriptions have been found on pottery. One translated artifact reads: "Thus says...Say to Yehalle[lel], Yo`asa and...I bless you (herewith- or: have blessed you) to/before Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah." (Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis. Fortress Press. 1998. ISBN 0-8006-2789-X ).


"Some have argued that the god Yaw (Yahweh) was a moon-god but the sources both Aramaic and Hebrew indicate his identity with the rain and thunder god, Adad." (p.41, Stephen Herbert Langdon. The Mythology of All Races, Semitic. Vol.5. Boston. Marshall Jones Company 1931 / p.41, Langdon)

“…Yahweh was worshipped as a Golden Calf by Israel…”. -Walter Reinhold

El, Canaanite high god, El was identified with Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. (p.419, Sarah Iles Johnston, Religion of the Ancient World, Harvard University Press).

The god El, worshipped by Abraham and later identified with Yahweh, was the high god of the Canaanite pantheon…the theophancies of Yahweh in the Bible (e.g., on mount Sinai: ) are described in language that is very similar to descriptions of Baal in the Ugaritic texts…Yahweh is far more often depicted as a storm god, in accordance with Canaanite imagery … In Israel, however, Yahweh was no longer worshipped primarily as a storm god, but as the god who bought the people of Israel into existence. (p.182, Sarah Iles Johnston, Religion of the Ancient World, Harvard University Press).

Allah couldn't possibly be the 'Moon God' even our holy Scriptures refer to God as Allah!

Although i've been reading up on it, to why people come to his conclusion.

Salam - just getting this post back at the top , i like for people to give this thread a read and give comments and feedback ...wasalam,s

infact i might as well give people that little extra.. hang on ... let me dip in my goody bag ..

THE NAME ALLAH USED BY JEWS AND CHRISTIANS “BEFORE” ISLAM

Dr Robert Morey in attempt to prove that the “Allah” is alien to the Jews an the Christians cites documents cites from many “Islamic scholars” only to claim “The following citations reveal that there is a general consensus among Islamic scholars that Allah was a pagan deity before Islam developed”. – page 13 winning the war against radical Islam. He quotes from western scholars and Christian theologians such as: Arthur Jeffery, John Gilchrist, Alfred Guillaume, e.t.c. however when we reference their works we find them to contradict the whole purpose for which Dr Robert Morey cites them.

John Gilchrist clearly states that the name “Allah” was indeed used by Christians before the dawn of Islam, he even cites Arthur Jeffrey as an authority when he says “It will be useful to point out here, however, that there is nothing unique about the word Allah, nor must it be regarded as coming originally from the pages of the Qur'an. On the contrary it is quite clearly derived from the Syriac word Alaha (meaning "God") in common use among Christians in pre-Islamic times (cf. the authorities cited by Jeffery in The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an, p.66)...” (Chapter 6 Textual History of The Qur’an & The Bible). The site “Answering Islam” confirm this saying “It seems unlikely that the name Allah comes from al-ilaah "the God", but rather from the Aramaic/Syriac alaha, meaning 'God' or 'the God'. The final 'a' in the name alaha was originally the definite article 'the' and is regularly dropped when Syriac words and names are borrowed into Arabic. Middle-eastern Christianity used 'alah' and 'alaha' frequently, and it would have often been heard. But in the Aramaic/Syriac language there are two different 'a' vowels, one rather like the 'a' in English 'hat' and the other more like the vowel in 'ought'. In the case of 'alah', the first vowel was like 'hat' and the second like 'ought'. Arabic does not have a vowel like the one in 'ought', but it seems to have borrowed this vowel along with the word 'alah'. If you know Arabic, then you know that the second vowel in 'Allah' is unique; it occurs only in that one word in Arabic. Scholars believe that Jesus spoke mostly Aramaic, although sometimes he spoke Hebrew and he might have spoken Greek on some occasions. If Jesus spoke Aramaic, then he referred to God using basically the same word that is used in Arabic. (www.********************)


Another scholar Dr. Robert Morey quotes is Alfred Guillaume. In his book entitled Islam, Alfred Guillaume states: “In Arabia Allâh was known from Christian and Jewish sources as the one God, and there can be no doubt whatever that he was known to the pagan Arabs of Mecca as the supreme being.” (Islam page 7-8) Further archeological evidence has been found with the inscription “Allah”. The free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia reports “The pagan Arabians also used the word "Allāh" in the names of their children; Muhammad's father, who was born into pagan society, was named "`Abdullāh", which translates "servant of Allāh". "`Abdullāh" is still used for names of Muslim and non-Muslims (e.g. Christians also used the word, as testified by the Zabad inscription). "Abdullāh" was also the name of the father of Maimon, whose son Moses is the Jewish principal Rabbi commonly known in English as Maimonides. Maimonides himself wrote his works mostly in Arabic on which his name appear as "Mussa bin Maimun ibn Abdullah al-Kurtubi.” The evidence demonstrates that Allah was known to the Jews and the Christians before the advent of Islam as the true universal G-d. Therefore Muhammad was not “trying to have it both ways” as Dr. Robert Morey suggests.

the missing link is answering- blah blah you know who, the Admin edited the link ...wasalams