Al’lah is simply defined by the New American Webster Dictionary as “(Moslem) God”. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Allāh (Arabic: “God”) as the one and only God in the religion of Islam.
There are 129 million references on Google Search for the word “Allah”.
This paper is a compilation of information gleaned from some of them and internet webnews.
Most scholars agree that allah is the Arabic word that shares the same ancestral root as the biblical Aramaic elah and Hebrew eloah, which is the singular of elohim, a generic word for God used throughout the Old Testament.
The name’s origin may be traced to the earliest Semitic writings in which the word for “God” was “Il” or “El”, the latter being the Old Testament synonym for YHWH.
Western scholars are fairly unanimous that the source of the word is probably Aramaic from the Syriac word alāh (“the god”).
It has its root in the word ’l, which in Syriac was pronounced as alâhâ (“the god”), which has the same meaning as ha-’elôah in Hebrew, ho theos in Greek and Allâh (= al-ilâh) in Arabic.
The word allah also appears in other Semitic languages such as Assyrian, Babylonian, Aramaic and Phoenician Ugarit languages.
In the Semitic languages, this word refers to a power which is beyond the reach of human beings, a power that belongs to the gods.
The Arabic translation of the Bible, along with the holy books of other religions (Torah, Sikh) uses it based on a common treasury of the Arabic language.
There are controversies about the pre Islamic origin of the word allah, which most sources claim to have been previously used by pagan Meccans as a reference to the creator deity, possibly the supreme deity, in pre-Islamic Arabia.
Inscriptions with the word “allah”, dated from as early as 5th century BC, have been discovered in archeological findings in the region, lending support to the fact that the word was already in general use before Islam and Prophet Mohammad (570-632 AD).
His father, who died several months before Mohammad’s birth, was called Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muṭṭalib (545-570AD).
Abd Allah, which means "servant of God", "slave of God" or "worshipper of God" was once a common name among Arabic-speaking Jews as well.
The term Allāh is derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article “al-“ "the" and “ilāh "deity, god" to al-lāh meaning "the [sole] deity, God".
In Islamic tradition, there are 99 names of God each of which evoke a distinctive characteristic of Allah.
All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all comprehensive divine name. Muslims insist that the name “Allah" must be used in every language and cannot be translated to “Dios” in Spanish, “Dieu” in French, or “God” in English.
Muslims thus regard "Allah" not as a generic word for god, but as the proper name of “the God” as revealed to the Prophet Mohammad (?610AD).
Shared usage of the word Allâh was acknowleged in the Qur’an by Prophet Mohammad. The Madinah Covenant drawn up by the Prophet after the Hijrah 622 AD acknowledged that while the Jews and Christians had different religions (dîn), they were still part of the people of the one Allâh (God), meaning that they were people who worshipped the true Allâh (God)
This view was reiterated in the Hadith which recorded the incident when the Christians from Najran met with the prophet in Madinah to discuss matters relating to dogmas where they differed from the prophet.
The Christians were invited by Muhammad to use the prayer room in his house to conduct their worship, because there was no church in Madinah.
The prophet acknowledged that the Christians worshipped the same Allâh (God) although their religion (dîn) was different.
The Wikipedia Bahasa Indonesia summarizes it as follows: Allāh adalah kata dalam bahasa arab yang merujuk pada nama Tuhan. Perkataan tuhan dalam bahasa arab adalah Ilah sebagaimana dalam dua kalimah sahadah Islam. Kata Allah ini lebih banyak dikenal sebagai sebutan tuhan oleh penganut agama Islam. Kata ini sendiri di kalangan para penutur bahasa arab, adalah kata yang umum untuk menyebut tuhan terlepas dari agama mereka, termasuk penganut Yahudi dan Kristen Arab. Konsekuensinya, kata ini digunakan dalam terjemahan kitab suci agama Kristen dan Yahudi yang berbahasa arab, sebagaimana pula terjemahan Alkitab dalam bahasa Indonesia dan Turki.
Allah in Bible Translations
The oldest Arabic translation of the Bible (manuscripts dated 867 AD) by Bishr Ibn Al Sirri, a Nestorian Christian living in Damascus, was discovered in the 19th century in the Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai.
Since the ninth century AD, Arab Christians have continued to translate “elohim” and “theos” (the primary terms for god in Hebrew and Greek) as “allah” in the Arabic Bible and Muslim writers have used Allah in their quotations of the Christian Bible.
Jewish scholars have also been translating elohim and elah as Allah since the earliest known Arabic translations of the Torah in the ninth century until today.
As of July 2010, translations of the books in the Bible have been made into 3,168+ languages, one of the two Testaments in 1,668 languages, and the complete Bible in 457 languages.
Albert Cornelius Ruyl, a Protestant Dutch merchant in Indonesia, translated the book of Matthew into Malay in 1612, which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. He then translated Mark which was published in 1638.
The Malay (Indonesian) New Testament was printed in 1731 and the complete Al Kitab in 1733.
The Malay translation of Matthew has the distinction of being the first non European language translation of any book of the bible.
Both the terms Allah and Tuhan are used in the Malay and Indonesian Bible. Mainstream Bible translations in both languages use Allah as the translation of Hebrew Elohim (translated in English Bibles as "God").
This goes back to early translation work by Francis Xavier in the 16th century. Following the precedence set by the Arab Christians, Allah is used to translate el/elohim and Tuhan (TUHAN) is used to translate Yahweh (YHWH).
The word Tuhan is also applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Thus we read of the Lord Jesus as Tuhan Yesus.
The word Lord was used to translate the word kurios 8400 times in the Greek version of the Old Testament. It refers to human beings only 400 times and to God 8000 times. Of these 8000 times, 6700 are substitutes for the word YHWH.
The transference of the title kurios LORD/YHWH to Jesus Christ is testimony to the belief in the deity of Christ right at the beginning of Christianity.
The Indonesian (BIS) bible (Alkitab Kabar Baik dalam Bahasa Indonesia Sehari-hari) uses the word “Allah” 4192 times, “Tuhan” 6871 times and “TUHAN Allah” 977 times.
In the first book of the bible, Genesis there are over 180 verses containing this word “Allah” translated in the English version as “God”.
This simple statistical survey shows clearly that the demand by Muslims that Christians simply substitute the word Allah with Tuhan is untenable since it will render many Biblical references to God and Jesus Christ incoherent.
What is the translator’s job when handling the Scriptures?
It is to communicate as faithfully as possible, taking a word that is used in the source language, and utilizing its equivalent (if there is one) in the target language.
The principle is this: that when referring to God, you may use the generic cultural word for “god”, but not the proper name of a specific god from that culture (e.g. Baal, Zeus, Thor, etc.).
In the Arabian, Malay, Indonesian or Iban translation of the Bible, the word allah has been used in the generic sense for god, not referring to the Allah professed by Muslims.
The Malay language is a member of the Austronesian language family spoken as a native language by more than 33 million over Malaya, Sumatra and Borneo and the national language of Malaysia and Indonesia. 20 million Indonesian Christians use the Alkitab in Indonesia (90% Muslim).
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