The Name of God in the Bible The God of the Old Testament is known as YHWH ()or, when pointed with the correct vowels, Yahweh. This translates as The Self-Existent One, being derived from the Hebrew háwáh, meaning to exist. As Allah is the name of God on the Muslim Holy Scriptures, the Koran (or Quran), so Yahweh is the Name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Bible. What is particularly interesting and significant is the fact that Yahweh never appears as the name of of any deity outside the Bible. There is no record anywhere of any other tribe or religion which worhipped Yahweh. The Hebrew Name of God is unique to the Bible and its chosen people. From this alone we may deduce that the Name Yahweh was not borrowed from some other culture or religion. It emerged unquely within the Bible revelation. It is claimed by Muslims that Allah is the God of the Bible and that he is mentioned in the sacred texts. This is absolutely not true. The name Allah does not appear once in either the Old or New Testaments. The only time God is referred to by name in the Old Testament is either as YAHWEH (meaning He (who) is) or as a contraction, YAH. [Please note that the name Jehovah is not a biblical name of God but was especially created by Jews afraid to pronounce the Sacred Name by combining the consonants YHWH with the vowels from adonai, meaning Lord]. The word alah does exist in Hebrew but it is not a proper name and it never refers to God. It has three principal meanings: (a) to curse, swear, or adjure; (b) to lament (weep); and (c) to arise, ascend, climb, go away, leap, etc.. It is an indisputable fact that ALLAH does not appear even once as the Name of God, or even of a man, in the Hebrew Scriptures. There is no word alah or allah in the Greek New Testament at all. It was, quite simply, unknown in the Bible world. To therefore claim that Allah was the name of God in the Bible is without one single shred of evidence. God has always been known as Yahweh, or (much less frequently) by the contraction Yah. Muslim scholars have gone to great lengths to try and prove that the Arabic Allah is, in fact, the same as the Hebrew Eloah, which is not a proper name and simply translates as God. The words El and Elohim also translate the same way, appear far more numerously than Eloah, and may be used to designate either the true God, pagan deities, idols, or even human judges. It is for this reason that I have heard Muslim apologists get annoyed when other Muslins talk about God instead of Allah because the word God can be applied to any religions god. They recognise that Allah is a proper name which distinguishes the God of the Muslims from the God of the Jews and Christians, or the gods of the Hindus and others. Eloah is, in any case, a derivative of El and its plural Elohim which doesnt remotely sound like Allah. You will not find many (if any) Muslims insisting that they worship the Hebrew Eloah - the only time they ever try to make a connection is when trying to recruit Jews and Christians to Islam. If I were confess that Eloah were my God and that Mohammed was his prophet I doubt any Muslim would believe I had converted to Islam! There is another El-derived word for God in the Old Testament which sounds similar to Allah and that is Elah. It is only used by the prophets Ezra, Daniel and once by Jeremiah. It is, again, not a proper name, and actually also means an oak tree and was thus also used by pagans as a title for their tree deities, i.e. idols. I doubt somehow that Muslims would wish their Allah to be associated with an idol. Even if the Muslim scholars were right about Eloah (which the evidence strongly repudiates) we would then be faced with the problem that God has two proper names - Yahweh and Eloah/Allah - which contradicts Gods own testimony in the Old Testament that He is only known as Yahweh. The Name Yahweh is enshrined in the Third Commandment:
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:55:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015