[Vision2020] Did Jesus Pray to Allah?

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries:

For those who do not subscribe to the Daily News I have posted this
column.  The full version, complete with images of the Bible in Arabic and
the Virgin Mary holding an Arabic text, is attached as a PDF file.

The editor and I made some last minute revisions to the title and text,
but, for some reason, the following substitution was not made:

I wanted to substitute this paragraph (as I did below):

One could argue that Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah in English) was a unique divine
revelation to Moses and therefore special to the Judeo-Christian tradition.
However, in his book "The Early History of God," Mark Smith has discovered
that Yahweh has an earlier appearance as a warrior-god in religious
traditions of the Midianites and Edomites.

For this one:

Some argue that Allah is a superior word for God because it is genderless
and cannot be made into a plural. In the Old Testament Elohim is sometimes
found with a plural verb (Genesis 1:26). I agree with Muslims who are
concerned that the Trinity undermines the unity of God and the Christian
claim to monotheism.

I did this to forestall any respondent who would say that Yahweh is a
unique revelation of God.

I also wanted to use Mark's versions of "My God, my God" because evidently
the Aramaic original was more clear in that Gospel.

As I said in my KRFP radio commentary: "This is Nick Gier, the Palouse
Pundit, urging you to make a friend among the many fine Muslims on the
Palouse."

nfg

*DID JESUS PRAY TO ALLAH? *


By Nick Gier, the Palouse Pundit


Early this month the Georgia Department of Education removed a teaching
guide for world history.  Parents in Walton County were protesting the way
Islam was being taught, especially the claim that Jews, Christians, and
Muslims worship the same God. Some parents were fearful that their children
had actually become Muslims because they had been forced to memorize the
Five Pillars of Islam.


Meanwhile half way across the world a judge in Malaysia ruled last year
that the word Allah is exclusive to Muslims and that the nation’s 2.5
million Christians must refrain from using the word in their scripture and
worship.


Malaysian Christians speak Malay and their Bibles are printed in that
language, but Allah, a loan word from Arabic, is used for God. These Bibles
have been confiscated all around the country. In January of 2010, after a
lower court judge ruled in favor of the Christians, nine churches and a
convent were fire bombed by militants on motorcycles.


There are about 12 million Arabic speaking Christians in the world. They
live as substantial minorities in Lebanon (35%) and Syria (10%) and in
lesser numbers in Iraq, Palestine, and North Africa.  Contrary to popular
belief, the majority of Arabs living in the U.S. are Christians, not
Muslims.


Jews and Christians prayed to God as Allah long before the prophet
Muhammed. Wikipedia informs us that “the first Christian ruler in history
was an Arab called Abgar VIII
<http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Abgar+VIII> of Edessa
<http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Osroene>, who converted ca. AD
200.” The Covenant of Medina (AD 622) recognized Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam as different religions, but it declared that their adherents
worshipped the same God, acknowledged by all those present as Allah.

               In response to his country’s controversy, Malay Christian
scholar Ng Karn Weng states: “I think the government knows that its policy
of banning the use of the word ‘Allah’ by non-Muslims is just
intellectually untenable, legally indefensible, and morally embarrassing.”

               Laying out a detailed linguistic explanation, Weng informs
us that “*allah* is an ordinary Arabic word which is not specifically
linked to a particular religion.”  The word is composed of two parts
“al-ilah” literally meaning “the strong God.”  Il as God is exactly the
same as the Hebrew El, which appears many times in the Old Testament as El
Bethel (God at Bethel) and El Shaddai (God of the Mountain).

               Elohim, however, is the most common word for God in the Old
Testament. Allah and Elohim are not names of God; rather, they are generic
Semitic words for deity itself. When the Quran lists the 99 names of God,
Allah is not among them.

Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, an ancient Semitic language from the
Assyrian Empire. There are at least a dozen phrases in the New Testament
where the original language is Aramaic.  One of them is rather famous: “My
God (*elahi*), my God, for what have you forsaken me?”(Mark 15:34). Trying
to be as authentic as possible in his film *The Passion of the Christ*, Mel
Gibson has Jesus speaking Aramaic and praying to Elaha, the Biblical
Aramaic equivalent of Allah.

            One could argue that Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah in English) was a
unique divine revelation to Moses and therefore special to the
Judeo-Christian tradition.  However, in his book *The Early History of God*,
Mark Smith has discovered that Yahweh has an earlier appearance as a
warrior-god in religious traditions of the Midianites and Edomites.


When I taught the existence of God in my philosophy classes, the
conclusion, if any the arguments are valid, is that there is one God not
many.  Deity could be expressed in any number of languages as Allah, God,
Dieu, or Gott, but of course it would be either arrogant or ignorant for
believers to insist that only their word for deity is the legitimate one.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years.

 A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.
--Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understanding!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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