The Word Elo­him” in the Hebrew Qur’an : Lin­guis­tic and The­o­log­i­cal Parallels

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi

One of the recur­ring claims made by Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies is that Mus­lims wor­ship a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent deity, often hing­ing on the assump­tion that the Islam­ic name for God, Allah (Allah) has no lin­guis­tic or the­o­log­i­cal con­nec­tion to the Judeo-Chris­t­ian con­cept of God, com­mon­ly referred to as Yah­weh or Elo­him (Elohim). This claim, how­ev­er, dis­in­te­grates under clos­er scruti­ny, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we exam­ine the use of Elo­him in the Hebrew Quran, which serves as com­pelling evi­dence of the shared monothe­is­tic tra­di­tion across the Semit­ic faiths. 

Con­trary to the polem­i­cal sug­ges­tion that Allāh is for­eign to the bib­li­cal tra­di­tion, schol­ars wide­ly accept that the root of Elo­him in Ara­bic, name­ly ʾilāh, is indeed a cog­nate of ʾĕlōah in Hebrew. This lin­guis­tic rela­tion­ship is not only the­o­ret­i­cal­ly valid — it is observ­able in actu­al scrip­ture trans­la­tions. In fact, his­tor­i­cal Hebrew trans­la­tions of the Qur’an demon­strate that Jew­ish trans­la­tors con­sis­tent­ly ren­dered the Ara­bic Allāh as ʾĔlōhīm. This con­sis­ten­cy refutes the notion that the God of Islam is some­how unre­lat­ed to the God of the Hebrew Bible.

Con­nec­tion Between Elo­him and Allah

Lin­guis­ti­cal­ly, both Allah and Elo­him orig­i­nate from the shared Semit­ic trilit­er­al root ʾ‑L-H (أ‑ل-ه in Ara­bic ; א‑ל-ה in Hebrew), con­vey­ing the con­cept of deity. W.E. Vine, Mer­rill F. Unger, and William White Jr. in their Com­plete Expos­i­to­ry Dic­tio­nary affirm this link clearly :

[…]a cog­nate form of the word allah, the des­ig­na­tion of deity used by the Arabs.1

This state­ment not only con­firms the ety­mo­log­i­cal con­nec­tion but also under­mines the mis­sion­ary argu­ment that Mus­lims and Jews do not share com­mon lin­guis­tic ground in their con­cep­tion of God. Under­stand­ing the par­al­lel between Elo­him and Allah offers a foun­da­tion for inter­faith com­pre­hen­sion and expos­es the flaws in accusato­ry mis­sion­ary nar­ra­tives. This can­not be bet­ter exem­pli­fied than to see it in a Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an.

The Word "Elohim" in the Hebrew Qur'an: Linguistic and Theological Parallels 1

The first com­plete Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an was under­tak­en by the Ger­man Jew­ish ori­en­tal­ist Her­mann Reck­endorf in 1857, titled Der Koran ins Hebräis­che Über­tra­gen, pub­lished in Leipzig.2 Reckendorf’s work, though less known today, marked a piv­otal moment in inter­faith tex­tu­al trans­mis­sion — it rep­re­sent­ed one of the ear­li­est sys­tem­at­ic attempts by a Euro­pean Jew­ish schol­ar to ren­der the Islam­ic scrip­ture into the sacred lan­guage of the Hebrew Bible. His moti­va­tions were both philo­log­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal, aimed at demon­strat­ing the struc­tur­al and con­cep­tu­al par­al­lels between Islam and Judaism by align­ing Qur’anic vocab­u­lary with estab­lished Hebrew reli­gious ter­mi­nol­o­gy. This includ­ed ren­der­ing the Ara­bic Allāh as ʾĔlōhīm in the Hebrew Quran, mir­ror­ing the Hebrew Bible’s con­sis­tent nomen­cla­ture for the divine.

This pio­neer­ing effort was suc­ceed­ed by sev­er­al impor­tant Hebrew trans­la­tions, each reflect­ing the intel­lec­tu­al and ide­o­log­i­cal cli­mate of its time. Among them, Yōsēf Yōʾēl Rivlīn’s 1936 trans­la­tion stands out as the most influ­en­tial. A promi­nent Zion­ist schol­ar and ori­en­tal­ist, Rivlīn approached the Qur’an with a unique blend of schol­ar­ly rig­or and cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty. His trans­la­tion, pub­lished by Devir in Tel Aviv, remains one of the most wide­ly cit­ed sources in com­par­a­tive Semit­ic lin­guis­tics and reli­gious stud­ies. Rivlīn’s ver­sion is espe­cial­ly notable for its care­ful atten­tion to the­o­log­i­cal fideli­ty — he fre­quent­ly uses ʾĔlōhīm to ren­der Allāh, there­by affirm­ing the lin­guis­tic and con­cep­tu­al uni­ty between the Abra­ham­ic faiths and main­tain­ing the word ʾĔlōhīm in the Hebrew Quran.

Lat­er con­tri­bu­tions came from Aharōn ben Shemesh in 1971, who brought a mod­ernist tone to the text, and Ūrī Rubin in 2005, whose aca­d­e­m­ic trans­la­tion was pro­duced under the aus­pices of Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty Press. Rubin, a well-respect­ed schol­ar in Islam­ic stud­ies and Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture, based his work on crit­i­cal edi­tions of the Qur’anic text, ren­der­ing the Hebrew in a style intend­ed for schol­ar­ly read­er­ship. Though more recent, Rubin’s ver­sion is typ­i­cal­ly used in aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles rather than pop­u­lar or inter­faith discourse.

Among these trans­la­tions, Rivlīn’s work con­tin­ues to hold pre-emi­nence in terms of cita­tion fre­quen­cy and influ­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in inter­faith stud­ies and lin­guis­tic analy­ses. His choice of ʾĔlōhīm — as opposed to more gener­ic Hebrew terms like ʾĒl or Hašēm — reflects a delib­er­ate the­o­log­i­cal align­ment that chal­lenges polem­i­cal claims of dis­con­ti­nu­ity between Islam and the Hebrew tra­di­tion. In Rivlīn’s ren­der­ing, ʾĔlōhīm in the Hebrew Quran becomes not just a lin­guis­tic equiv­a­lent, but a the­o­log­i­cal affir­ma­tion of shared monothe­ism across Semit­ic revelation.

Exam­ples of Elo­him in the Hebrew Quran

Here are select exam­ples where Rivlin ren­dered the Ara­bic Allah” as ʾĔlōhīm in the Hebrew Quran, affirm­ing the the­o­log­i­cal uni­ty expressed in the Qur’an :

Qur’an 1:1

This appears in Qur’an 1:1 (Sura’ al-Fati­ha) of the Hebrew trans­la­tion3 :

Bšēm ʾĔlōhīm ha-raḥamān wə-ha-raḥūm
Bšēm ʾĔlōhīm ha-raḥamān wə-ha-raḥūm

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

Bismi-llāhi al-Raḥmāni al-Raḥīm
Bis­mi-llāhi al-Raḥmāni al-Raḥīm

Both trans­late into Eng­lish as : In the name of God, Most Gra­cious, Most Mer­ci­ful.“4

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 ʾĔlōhīm and Eloh. Note that the Hebrew trans­la­tion always ren­ders Ilah and Allah as Eloh and ʾĔlōhīm, respec­tive­ly.

Qur’an 3:2

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

ʾĔlōhīm, ʾēn ʾĕlōah mibbalʿādāyw, ha-ḥay, ha-qayyām
ʾĔlōhīm, ʾēn ʾĕlōah mib­balʿādāyw, ha-ḥay, ha-qayyām

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

Allāhu lā ʾilāha ʾillā huwa al-ḥayy al-qayyūm
Allāhu lā ʾilāha ʾil­lā huwa al-ḥayy al-qayyūm

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

Qur’an 3:18

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

Heʿīd ʾĔlōhīm kî ʾēn ʾĕlōah mibbalʿādāyw, wə-ha-malʾāḵīm wə-ʾanšē ha-daʿat yaʿīdu kēn
Heʿīd ʾĔlōhīm kî ʾēn ʾĕlōah mib­balʿādāyw, wə-ha-malʾāḵīm wə-ʾanšē ha-daʿat yaʿī­du kēn

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

Shahida Allāhu ʾannahū lā ʾilāha ʾillā huwa wa-l-malāʾikatu wa-ʾulū al-ʿilmi qāʾiman bi-l-qisṭi
Shahi­da Allāhu ʾan­nahū lā ʾilāha ʾil­lā huwa wa-l-malāʾikatu wa-ʾulū al-ʿil­mi qāʾi­man bi-l-qisṭi

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”.

Qur’an 6:1

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

Ha-tehillāh lʾĔlōhīm, ʾăšer bārā ʾet ha-šāmayim wə-ʾet ha-ʾāreṣ, wə-yāʿas ʾafēlāh wə-ʾōr...
Ha-tehillāh lʾĔlōhīm, ʾăšer bārā ʾet ha-šāmay­im wə-ʾet ha-ʾāreṣ, wə-yāʿas ʾafēlāh wə-ʾōr

The Ara­bic from Qur’an, 6:1 is :

Al-ḥamdu li-llāhi allaḏī khalaqa al-samāwāti wa-l-ʾarḍa wa-jaʿala al-ẓulumāti wa-l-nūr....
Al-ḥam­du li-llāhi allaḏī kha­laqa al-samāwāti wa-l-ʾarḍa wa-jaʿala al-ẓulumāti wa-l-nūr.…

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

Con­clu­sions

The usage of the word ʾĔlōhīm in the Hebrew Quran serves as a pow­er­ful lin­guis­tic and the­o­log­i­cal bridge that direct­ly chal­lenges the oft-repeat­ed claim that Islam presents a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent con­cep­tion of God. The evi­dence drawn from Hebrew trans­la­tions — espe­cial­ly those pro­duced by Jew­ish schol­ars such as Yosef Yoʾel Rivlīn — clear­ly demon­strates that the Ara­bic Allāh is reg­u­lar­ly ren­dered as ʾĔlōhīm, the very term used through­out the Hebrew Bible to refer to the God of Israel. This cor­re­spon­dence is not inci­den­tal ; it is root­ed in the shared Semit­ic ety­mol­o­gy of both terms, with ʾĔlōhīm and Allāh stem­ming from a com­mon pro­to-Semit­ic root for divinity.

The sim­i­lar­i­ties are so lin­guis­ti­cal­ly and con­tex­tu­al­ly obvi­ous that it can no longer be denied — in the face of this tex­tu­al evi­dence — that the two terms are relat­ed in both ori­gin and mean­ing. Just as the Ara­bic Bible con­tains the word Allāh to denote the God of the Chris­tians, the Hebrew Qur’an uses ʾĔlōhīm to rep­re­sent the God of the Mus­lims. In both cas­es, we are not deal­ing with dif­fer­ent deities but rather with dif­fer­ent expres­sions of the same eter­nal monothe­ism artic­u­lat­ed through sis­ter languages. 

Inshāʾ Allāh, this com­par­a­tive evi­dence will serve to counter and dis­arm the false­hoods prop­a­gat­ed by Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary polemi­cists who claim, with­out basis, that Mus­lims wor­ship a dif­fer­ent god” or that Allāh refers to a so-called moon god. These claims not only lack lin­guis­tic and his­tor­i­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty, but they also ignore the deep and ancient inter­con­nect­ed­ness of the Abra­ham­ic tra­di­tions. The usage of ʾĔlōhīm in the Hebrew Quran offers a clear rebut­tal to these dis­tor­tions and serves as a tex­tu­al tes­ti­mo­ny to the uni­ty of God across Semit­ic faiths.

And only God knows best.

  1. W.E. Vine, Mer­rill F. Unger, William White Jr., Vine’s Com­plete Expo­si­tion Dic­tio­nary, Thomas Nel­son Pub­lish­ers, Nashville, TN, 1996.[]
  2. Reck­endorf, Her­mann. Der Koran ins Hebräis­che Über­tra­gen. Leipzig : 1857.[]
  3. See Yosef Yo’el Rivlin, Alkur’an /​tirgem me-‘Arvit, Devir, Tel Aviv (19361945). More infor­ma­tion is avail­able here.[]
  4. 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.[]
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