Allah is not just a word. It is also a Personal Name

Some Muslims say Allah is the Arabic word for God; so the word Allah can be used by non-Muslims to refer to their own religious concept of God. Others vehemently oppose this. They maintain that no believing Muslim should translate the English sentence ‘Zeus is a Greek God.’ as ‘Zeus is a Greek Allah’. It is absurd, sacrilegious, and an affront to Islam. Allah is the name of the one and only God and not just a word.

Jews also have a very special name for God (YHVH) that is untranslatable; and has not even been pronounced verbally out loud by Jews for the last 2400 years. The basic Semitic word ‘allah/’eloh has three root letters: alef, lamed, hey (‘ l h). It means “a god.” The Arabic does not come from Hebrew and it does not translate the Hebrew. The Hebrew does not come from Arabic and it does not translate the Arabic. Both forms, like both languages, come from a prehistoric, long-gone common ancestral Semitic language.

Since the name of God (YHVH), the Hebrew name which God used to identify Himself to Moses on Mount Sinai or Horeb (Exodus 3:14). is not pronounced in Hebrew, a variety of words and expressions to indicate YHVH are used: Adonai (my Lord), haKadosh Baruch Hu (the Blessed One), haMakom (the Place) HaTzur (the Rock), and many more.

El is also a name for God as is Elohim, a pagan name for plural Gods but used as a single in the Hebrew Bible just as the Qur’an uses We for the single I of Allah. “Allah” in Arabic is equivalent to El, the name of an ancient Canaanite Deity, and as Hebrew and Arabic are related languages, it has the same meaning in both languages.

In the days of Abraham, the religions of the Near East and India had hundreds of gods, and so had hundreds of different names for their gods. But for the monotheistic religions that trace their prophets back to Prophet Abraham, and his two sons Ishmael and Isaac, the many names of God are not really names of God: they simply describe different aspects or attributes of the one God’s multifaceted personality.

For monotheists the many names of God are just appellations: titles and descriptions. Thus, to say that God is a King or a Judge describes one of many ways the one God acts. To say that God is the Compassionate One is to describe one of the many character or personality traits of the one God.

While for monotheists each of the many ‘names’ of the one God is only one of the many appellations of the one universal creator of space and time; both Islam and Judaism also have one special Divine name that is always in the believer’s heart and soul.

Because the Qur’an is filled with beautiful Arabic poetry; it is not surprising that the Qur’an is also filled with so many (99) ‘names’ of the one God.

Because the Jewish tradition dates back more than thirty five centuries; it is not surprising that Jews have used many additional ‘names’ (70) for God over those many centuries.

The word God in English is not a name of the one God like Allah or YHVH. It is the generic term used for any and every deity, similar to the West Semitic root word EL as it is found in Sumerian and Akkadian Ellil-Enlil; Hittite and Hurrian Ellel, and Hebrew El-Elohim.

So too is a pre Islamic Goddess, one of three daughters of Allah worshiped in Palmyra as Allat and referred to by Herodotus as Alilat and worshiped as Allatu by North African Carthaginians.

The words El, Elah, Elohei and Elohim are all pre Abrahamic West Semitic generic terms for a God or for many Gods. In these various forms they appear almost 3,000 times in the Hebrew Bible.

But for Jews, the most important unique personal name of the one God is the name that God himself reveals to Moses at the burning bush: YHVH, which appears more than 6,800 times in the Hebrew Bible.

In Exodus 3:13-15, Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”.

Ehyeh is the verb “to be” future tense singular and means I will/could/might/may be/become who I may/could/will/might be/become i.e. Ehyeh is The God of Potentialities, The God of Possibilities, The Living God of Becoming and Transforming, the One who can and will liberate Israel from bondage in Egypt.

Unfortunately, the Greek and Latin translations of this verse were influenced by the Greek philosophical idea that God was similar to a permanent ideal form (like an equilateral triangle) or an unmoved mover; and is not similar to a living personality.

Since the Greeks thought God must be a static unchanging being. they mistranslated “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh’ as ‘I am who I am’ rather than its plain Hebrew meaning of ‘I will be whatever I should be to redeem you” i.e. God Almighty

The Torah continues, “And God said, “You must say this to the Israelites, “I am” (the usual false translation for God’s self revealed name) has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, Ehyeh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memory from generation to generation.’ (Exodus 3:13-15)

When Jews speak of God in the third person, God’s name is pronounced Yehyeh and written YHVH– “the One who causes being and becoming, the One who brings potentials into existence.”

The name YHVH was spoken publicly for almost a thousand years, from the time of Moses, throughout the centuries of the 1st Temple of Solomon. But it was ultimately replaced by Adonai (Lord) before the 3rd century B.C.E., because God’s actual Holy name was eventually considered too holy to speak audibly. In later centuries even the substitution Adonai was considered too holy to utter; and pious Jews till this day do not use any name for God at all (except in prayer); but say only HaShem–the name (of God) when speaking about the one and only God.

Islam takes a different view. The most well known of Allah’s 99 names is Ar- Rahman -‘the kindest and most forgiving one’; but Allah has kept to Himself knowledge of His greatest name, and He has not granted knowledge thereof to any of His creation.

The meaning of God’s name YHWH, is central to Jewish theology. There are two approaches: the philosophical, focusing on God’s essence (“being”) and the kabbalistic, focusing on God’s evolving relationship with Israel (“becoming”). Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), Judaism’s chief exponent of the rationalist tradition, holds that all divine names, except the Tetragrammaton, refer to God’s activities: judge, ruler. creator, merciful, forgiver, etc.

But for Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (1194-1270), a prominent Spanish medieval exegete and Kabbalistic mystical Bible expositor, God is far more interactive and personal than just a first cause of existence, and thus the names capture different dimensions of God’s dynamic being.

The name YHWH, which occurs repeatedly in the book of Genesis, is only introduced formally in Exodus 3:13, in direct response to Prophet Moses’ request for it at the burning bush. Exodus 6:3 corroborates its unprecedented disclosure to Moses: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shad-dai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My (deepest) name YHWH.”

The Torah’s first communication of YHVH to Moses includes a seductive play on the root “to be” in the future tense of ehyeh asher ehyeh (Exodus 3:14) “I will/may/can be who I will/may can be” and not in the wide spread erroneous present tense of “I am who I am.”

YHWH conveys a relational being in a partnership of reciprocity with Israel. It connotes a God of endless becoming, as the imperfect I will be indicates, a deity who will be elusive, continually shaped and reshaped by the respective partners with whom he/she/but not it establishes a relationship. Other divine names then derive naturally in this respect from the core relational name YHWH. They correlate to various dimensions of God such as compassion, mercy, or justice, which are all manifest in relationships.

As opposed to Maimonides’ detached, unaffected existence, Rashi exquisitely captures this God of relationship by fleshing out the meaning of ehyeh asher ehyeh as, “I will be with them during this affliction as I will be with them during their oppression by other kingdoms.” For God provides the comfort, assistance, and empathy expected of any partner in a meaningful relationship. ‍

Kabbalistic reinventions of ehyeh asher ehyeh, push this relational mutuality between God and human beings even more. For example, employing a traditional technique of transposing letters in words to create new words, the Name YHVH becomes I will be what you will be אהיה אשר תהיה.

Rabbinic and mystical interpretations of an evolving, impressionable, at times suffering, God, emerge more naturally from the original sense of a personal interventionist God subject to emotions and affectation in the Hebrew Bible as well as its rabbinic glosses.

The difference between the personal intimate name of God the believer uses in prayer and when reciting his or her holy scripture, and all other names; is a measure of the believers piety and love of the God of his or her own religion.

When Christian believers speak about Jesus they are referring to the “Divine Son of God” who connects them to God the father. When Jews or Muslims speak about Jesus they are referring not to God, but only to a man of God.

Indeed, Paul and his followers converted Jesus the Jewish prophet into Jesus the totally personal Devine Son of God; and this may be why the Qur’an uses “We” and not “I” when speaking to Prophet Muhammad so when he repeated God’s words, no one should think he was a son of God.

When Jews do not utter the name YHVH they are referring to the God who made a covenant at mount Sinai with the descendants of their ancestors; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel. Neither Christians or Muslims connect to God this way.

When Muslims use the word Allah they mean the one God they worship and adore; who sent Prophets, speaking their own language to every nation and tribe in the world, and sent Prophet Muhammad to proclaim the Qur’an in Arabic. This is the same one God; who sent Jesus to proclaim the Gospel and Moses to proclaim the Torah. Neither Jews nor Christians connect to God in this very universal way.

Thus, for Muslims the word Allah is both a generic for the one God of all monotheistic religions; and a special personal Islamic name when spoken with devotion and love by a Muslim.

As an American Reform Rabbi, I can understand why many Muslims would object to Christians using the word Allah in the context of saying that Jesus is the son of Allah. Another word for Divinity is needed. On the other hand, one could say that Allah spoke to Jesus as the Qur’an itself states, “Allah said: Jesus, I will take you back and raise you up to Myself…” (3:55)

If people of good will use the generic aspect of the word Allah only in a monotheistic context, and use another word for a trinitarian or polytheistic context, we can have more light and less heat in our own religious lives.