Allah Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Christianity=== The [[Arab Christians|Christian Arabs]] of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah".<ref name="Cambridge">{{cite book |author1=Lewis, Bernard |author2=Holt, P. M. |author3=Holt, Peter R. |author4=Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford |title=The Cambridge history of Islam |publisher=University Press |location=Cambridge, Eng |year=1977 |page=32 |isbn=978-0-521-29135-4 }}</ref> Similarly, the [[Aramaic]] word for "God" in the language of [[Assyrian Christians]] is ''ʼĔlāhā'', or ''Alaha''. (Even the Arabic-descended [[Maltese language]] of [[Malta]], whose population is almost entirely [[Catholic Church|Catholic]], uses ''Alla'' for "God".) [[Arab Christians]] have used two forms of invocations that were [[affix]]ed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim ''{{transliteration|ar|ALA|bismillāh}}'', and also created their own [[Trinity|Trinitized]] ''{{transliteration|ar|ALA|bismillāh}}'' as early as the 8th century.<ref name="Thomas"/> The Muslim ''{{transliteration|ar|ALA|bismillāh}}'' reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitized ''{{transliteration|ar|ALA|bismillāh}}'' reads: "In the name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God." The [[Syriac language|Syriac]], [[Latin]] and [[Greek language|Greek]] invocations do not have the words "One God" at the end. This addition was made to emphasize the [[monotheism|monotheistic]] aspect of Trinitarian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.<ref name="Thomas">Thomas E. Burman, ''Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs'', [[Brill Publishers|Brill]], 1994, p. 103</ref> According to [[Marshall Hodgson]], it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the [[Kaaba]], a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.<ref>Marshall G. S. Hodgson, ''The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization'', [[University of Chicago Press]], p. 156</ref> Some archaeological excavation quests have led to the discovery of ancient [[pre-Islamic Arabia|pre-Islamic]] inscriptions and tombs made by [[Arab Christians]] in the ruins of a church at [[Umm el-Jimal]] in Northern [[Jordan]], which initially, according to Enno Littman (1949), contained references to Allah as the proper name of God. However, on a second revision by Bellamy et al. (1985 & 1988) the 5-versed-inscription was re-translated as "(1)This [inscription] was set up by colleagues of ʿUlayh, (2) son of ʿUbaydah, secretary (3) of the cohort Augusta Secunda (4) Philadelphiana; may he go mad who (5) effaces it."<ref>James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal", ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', 108/3 (1988) pp. 372–378 (translation of the inscription) "This was set up by colleagues/friends of ʿUlayh, the son of ʿUbaydah, secretary/adviser of the cohort Augusta Secunda Philadelphiana; may he go mad/crazy who effaces it."</ref><ref>Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949)</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Type and Spread of Arabic Script|last=Daniels|first=Peter T.|year=2014}}</ref> The syriac word ܐܠܗܐ (''ʼĔlāhā'') can be found in the reports and the lists of names of Christian martyrs in South Arabia,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.syriaca.org/work/254|title=The Himyarite Martyrs (text) —}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=James of Edessa the hymns of Severus of Antioch and others." Ernest Walter Brooks (ed.), Patrologia Orientalis VII.5 (1911)., vol: 2, p. 613|pages=ܐܠܗܐ (Elaha)}}</ref> as reported by antique Syriac documents of the names of those martyrs from the era of the [[Himyarite]] and [[Aksumite]] kingdoms<ref>Ignatius Ya`qub III, The Arab Himyarite Martyrs in the Syriac Documents (1966), Pages: 9-65-66-89</ref> In [[Ibn Ishaq|Ibn Ishaq's]] biography there is a Christian leader named Abd Allah ibn Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad, who was martyred in Najran in 523, as he had worn a ring that said "Allah is my lord".<ref>Alfred Guillaume& Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, (2002 [1955]). The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq's Sīrat Rasūl Allāh with Introduction and Notes. Karachi and New York: Oxford University Press, page 18.</ref> In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated back to 512, references to 'l-ilah (الاله)<ref name=Kugener>{{Cite book|title=M. A. Kugener, "Nouvelle Note Sur L'Inscription Trilingue De Zébed", Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, pp. 577-586.}}</ref> can be found in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription starts with the statement "By the Help of 'l-ilah".<ref>Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8</ref><ref>Beatrice Gruendler, The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century according to Dated Texts (1993), Atlanta: Scholars Press, Page:</ref> In pre-Islamic Gospels, the name used for God was "Allah", as evidenced by some discovered Arabic versions of the [[New Testament]] written by [[Arab Christians]] during the pre-Islamic era in Northern and Southern [[Arabia]].<ref>Frederick Winnett V, Allah before Islam-The Moslem World (1938), Pages: 239–248</ref> However most recent research in the field of Islamic studies by Sydney Griffith et al. (2013), David D. Grafton (2014), Clair Wilde (2014) & ML Hjälm et al. (2016 & 2017) assert that "all one can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no sure sign of its actual existence has yet emerged."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Sidney H Griffith, "The Gospel in Arabic: An Enquiry into Its Appearance in the First Abbasid Century", Oriens Christianus, Volume 69, p. 166. "All one can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no sure sign of its actual existence has yet emerged.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The identity and witness of Arab pre-Islamic Arab Christianity: The Arabic language and the Bible|last=Grafton|first=David D|year=2014|quote=Christianity [...] did not penetrate into the lives of the Arabs primarily because the monks did not translate the Bible into the vernacular and inculcate Arab culture with biblical values and tradition. Trimingham's argument serves as an example of the Western [[Protestant]] assumptions outlined in the introduction of this article. It is clear that the earliest Arabic biblical texts can only be dated to the 9th century at the earliest, that is after the coming of Islam.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the 'People of the Book' in the Language of Islam. Jews, Christians and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World, Princeton University Press, 2013, pp242- 247 ff. }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Arabic Bible before Islam – Clare Wilde on Sidney H. Griffith's The Bible in Arabic|date=June 2014}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Senses of Scripture, Treasures of Tradition: The Bible in Arabic Among Jews, Christians and Muslims|last=Hjälm|first=ML|publisher=Brill|year=2017|isbn=978-90-04-34716-8}}</ref> Additionally ML Hjälm in her most recent research (2017) inserts that "manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier than the year 873"<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hjälm|first=ML|title=Senses of Scripture, Treasures of Tradition, The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims (Biblia Arabica)|publisher=Brill|year=2017|isbn=978-90-04-34716-8|quote=By contrast, manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier then the year 873 (Ms. Sinai. N.F. parch. 14 & 16)|edition=English and Arabic}}</ref> [[Irfan Shahîd]] quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collection [[Kitab al-Aghani]] notes that pre-Islamic Arab Christians have been reported to have raised the battle cry "''Ya La Ibad Allah''" (O slaves of Allah) to invoke each other into battle.<ref>Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418.</ref> According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholar [[Al-Marzubani]], "Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some [[Ghassanid]] and [[Tanukhids|Tanukhid]] poets in [[Syria]] and Northern [[Arabia]].<ref>Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452</ref><ref>A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480</ref><ref>Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page