The Word ​“Elo­him” in the Hebrew Quran

Often the mis­sion­ar­ies try to argue that the name for God is Yah­weh, and that since the word (Allah) is not ety­mo­log­i­cal­ly relat­ed to this name, it there­fore fol­lows that Mus­lims wor­ship a dif­fer­ent deity. How­ev­er, what they fail to recog­nise is that it is ety­mo­log­i­cal­ly accept­ed that the root word of (Elo­him) which is eloh, is indeed :

[…]a cog­nate form of the word allah, the des­ig­na­tion of deity used by the Arabs.W.E. Vine, Mer­rill F. Unger, William White Jr., Vine’s Com­plete Expo­si­tion Dic­tio­nary, Thomas Nel­son Pub­lish­ers, Nashville, TN, 1996.

This can­not be bet­ter exem­pli­fied than to see it in a Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an.

Some expla­na­tion of the his­to­ry behind the Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Quran is need­ed. The first trans­la­tion of the Qur’an into Hebrew was com­plet­ed by a Ger­man Jew named Her­mann Reck­endorf in 1857. In 1936, a new trans­la­tion by Joseph Joel Rivlin (Yosef Yo’el Rivlin) was pub­lished. Anoth­er trans­la­tion, this one by Aharon Ben Shemesh, was released in 1971. The most recent was pro­duced by Uri Rubin in 2005 and is pub­lished by Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Exam­ples of Elo­him In The Hebrew Quran

The fol­low­ing are some exam­ples from the Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an by Joseph Joel Rivlin, where­by the word ​“elo­him” is con­sis­tent­ly trans­lat­ed from the Ara­bic ​“allah” from the Qur’an in its orig­i­nal Arabic.

Quran 1:1

This appears in Qur’an 1:1 (Sura’ al-Fati­ha) of the Hebrew trans­la­tion­See Yosef Yo’el Rivlin, Alkur’an /​tirgem me-‘Arvit, Devir, Tel Aviv (1936−1945). More infor­ma­tion is avail­able here.:

B’shem Elo­him, ha-Rachaman, V’ha-Rachum

Com­pare it with the very same verse in the Ara­bic Qur’an :

Bis­mi-Allah ar-Rah­man ar-Rahim

Both trans­late into Eng­lish as : ​“In the name of God, Most Gra­cious, Most Mer­ci­ful.“We have referred to A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an : Text, Trans­la­tion, and Com­men­tary for the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the Bas­malah and the lat­er trans­la­tions of the Quran­ic vers­es involved.

Apart from the exam­ple giv­en above, we would like to present more exam­ples from the Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an, which uses the word Elo­him and Eloh. Note that the Hebrew trans­la­tion always ren­ders Ilah and Allah as Eloh and Elo­him, respec­tive­ly.

Quran 3:2

The fol­low­ing appears in Qur’an 3:2 of the Hebrew translation :

Elo­him, ein eloh mibal­adaiv, ha-Chai, ha-Qayam 

The orig­i­nal Ara­bic ren­der­ing of Qur’an 3:2 is :

Allahu la ila­ha ila huw­al hayyul qayyum

which trans­lates into Eng­lish as : ​“God ! There is no god but He, the Liv­ing, the Self-Sub­sist­ing, Eternal”.

Quran 3:18

The next image appears in Qur’an 3:18 of the Hebrew translation :

He’id Elo­him ki ein eloh mibal­adaiv, V’ha-Malakhim V’An­shei hada’at ya’idu ken

The orig­i­nal Ara­bic ren­der­ing of Qur’an 3:18 would be :

Sha­hee­da-Allahu innahu la ila­ha ila huwa wal malaikatu wa ulul ​‘ilmi qaima bil qisti la ila­ha ila huw­al ​‘azeezul hakeem

This trans­lates into Eng­lish as : ​“There is no god but He : That is the wit­ness of God, His angels, and those endued with knowl­edge, stand­ing firm on jus­tice. There is no god but He, The Exalt­ed in Pow­er, The Wise”.

Quran 6:1

This last exam­ple is from Qur’an, 6:1 of the Hebrew translation :

Hat­T’hi­lah L’Elo­him, ash­er bara et ha-shama’im V’et ha-arets, V’ya’as afe­lah V’orah…

The Ara­bic from Qur’an, 6:1 is :

Alham­du-lil­lahi lazhee kha­laqa’ as-sama waa ti wal-ard­ha wa-ja ​‘alaazhu-lu mati wan-nuur…

The Eng­lish trans­la­tion is : ​“Praise be to God, Who cre­at­ed the heav­ens and the earth and made the dark­ness and the light.…”

Con­clu­sions

The sim­i­lar­i­ties are so obvi­ous that it can no longer be denied — in the face of this lin­guis­tic evi­dence — that Elo­him is indeed relat­ed to the word Allah, as both Hebrew and Ara­bic are sis­ter lan­guages in the Semit­ic fam­i­ly. Much like how there are exam­ples of Allah in the Ara­bic Bible, the above exam­ples will demon­strate that there are no dif­fer­ences in mean­ing when ​“Allah” in Ara­bic and ​“Elo­him” in Hebrew are used interchangeably.

Insha’al­lah, the com­par­isons above will help quell the doubts of those who have been duped into believ­ing that ​“Mus­lims wor­ship a dif­fer­ent god” by Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary pro­pa­gan­da, and which some mis­sion­ar­ies had even gone so far as to say that ​“Allah” is the name of a moon god.

And only God knows best.