itsdatruth

His name thingy not only froze my computer, it is meaningless-Christians who speak Arabic call their God Allah, but since Allah's son died to save the world, they are not moslems.

Warning to viewers of that site:Save your work, just in case.

ichabod crane

In fact, it has been proved beyond all doubt by archeologists that Allah, as well as being a generic term for deity, was also the name of the chief deity in the Arab pantheon, who was the moon god and had goddess daughters. To accuse people who point out this historical fact of being "anti-semitic" shows that the author has no concern for truth, but rather would engage in false ad hominem slurs. This is no different to Judaism, as the author notes later; the name 'El was the name of the chief deity in the Canaanite pantheon, as well as the generic name for deity. But here is the gross hypocrisy of the article. If it is "racist" to say that Allah was a pagan deity, then surely it is just as "racist" to say that 'El was a pagan deity. So the author of the article is, on his own admission, a racist.

Dumb argument. All Muhammad did is take a pre-existing deity and develop the cult of that deity in a monotheistic direction. The same thing happened in early Judaism with 'El.

This argument is self-refuting. If the term "the God" in and of itself implied that there could not be other gods, then the statement "there is no god besides the God" would be a tautology and redundant. The fact that the Islamic declaration says "there is no god besides the God" suggest a monotheism that developed from the context of polytheism.

By the way, on a pedantic point, I know Hebrew, and it doesn't have an indefinite article. I doubt whether Arabic does. So I suspect that "ilah" can mean "a god", but does not necessarily have to mean that.

Obviously if you're going to speak of the one god, you'll say "the God" (Allah) in Arabic. So what? If you're going to speak about the one god in English, we capitalize the first letter so that we say "God". They are just different linguistic conventions with the same effect. So what?

In fact, the Aramaic for God is 'elah, not alah. The author gives the Aramaic of the word God, but mis-transliterates it into English. I can tell you that the first vowel is hatef-segol, and should be transliterated as "e", not "a". The Aramaic "'Elah" derives from the name "'El". So not only is this a clear example of an error in the article, but since the author himself admits that 'El is of pagan origin, if the etymology of Allah derives from Aramaic, then Allah is proven to be of pagan origin also. Furthermore, it seems that the author is being not just ignorant, but dishonest on this point. He transliterates segol as "e" when it suits him, such as when he is discussing El, but as "a" when it suits him, when he wants to draw the comparison with Allah. Consistency requires one or the other - and it should be "e" (see Kelley, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, pages 6 and 9).

Furthermore, when Hebrews had to say the name of God (i.e. YHWH), they substituted the phrase "My Lord", not the word "God". So it is rubbish to say that Jesus would have been saying "Elah" instead of YHWH.

The rest of his article is filled with too many errors to be worth responding to. Like all Muslim apologetics that I have read, it is unscholarly, ignorant and filled with errors. Why anyone would believe in something on the basis of this kind of article, I'll never know - unless of course it's just that they want to believe it.

The author is remarkably ignorant of New Testament scholarship. But I just thought I'd post this, because it's so silly it made me laugh:

To say that Paul propagated the Trinity is so silly as to hardly be worth bothering to respond. It is highly doubtful that Paul ever thought of Jesus as God at all, let alone had a developed Trinitarian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity didn't develop until several centuries later.

premjan

I thought the "water" was pericardial fluid, which is supposed to be clear.

Johann_Kaspar

Well that would indicate that most scholars do not understand the Hebrew way of thinking and text elaborating.

Johann_Kaspar

Yep, a full gap for more pure literature creation. Nothing new.

River

Are you implying that I don't know the very Deity , that I pray to? I pray to the same G-d that spoke to 124,000 Prophets ( including Enoch, Noah, Darius, Moses, Kohan, Jesus, and Muhammad).

No, Monotheism did not develop from Polytheism. Its the other way around. Polytheism is more complex than Monotheism....It developed as Societies becaame more Hierarchal, and class structures were made..similarly a whole pantheon of gods were created to mirror this hierarchary.

---River

River

Reading too much Robert Morey "Moon god" nonsense? If you are going to give us a lecture atleast give us all the facts...

No. Archaeologists have uncovered the statue and idol of the god known as "al-lat" ( The "lat"). Archaeologists have NOT uncovered the statue and idol of G-d, Allah, ....for there exists no images of Allah ( especially amongst the Islamic world). Allah is the arabic word for G-d and is a contraction of the word "Al-Illah", " The G-d" ,the One True G-d.


----River

P.S: I see that you've read the PREFACE of the Greatest Story NEVER Told. That's quite an achievement.

River

-Toto

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...r/NTcanon.html

This article pretty much confirmed my previous beliefs about the NT. It did have some interesting details that I was not aware of...

The article states :

"there are good arguments for the existence of a lost source-text called Q which was used by Matthew and Luke to supplement their borrowing from Mark, and this has been speculatively dated as early as the 50's A.D. "

I've always believed that there existed a Q source for the Bible. I've even read the Gospel of Q which tries to extract the words and teachings of Jesus Christ (pbuh) from the "background noise". It splits up the NT into three layers Q1, Q2, Q3 ( reflecting teachings that evolved from Jesus's role as the teacher and as the prophet) However, recently I had a debate with an adament Trinitarian who stated that the existence for a Q is myth. I found that hard to believe.---River

In Section V of the Article [ Gnostics make the First Move] The Gnostics proposed that Jesus had a book titled " The Gospel". Interestingly Jesus's Al-Injeel of the Quran also translates to the singlular " The Gospel".

In Section VI , there is a brief reference to Ezra ( Prophet Uzair of the Qur'an) and the compilation of the OT Canon. I've read earlier, that the Torah of Moses' time was more or less destroyed....and that the Prophet Ezra tried his best to revive the Torah and was ultimately unsuccessful. Though I'm not sure how much of the story is grounded on myth ....---River


Section 8, states that Justin Martyr was largely responsible for the NT Canon....hmm I have to research this Justin Martyr guy....perhaps he had quite some influence?---River


Somewhere else in the article it mentioned that the later the date...the less likely the gospels or biblical scriptures would get tampered with. (due to the fact that there are many in circulation) This is important to note...I believe....

I have always favored the Apochrypha more than the NT and I will cite my reason soon....But whenever I speak of "Apochrypha" the Christians ( mostly Trinitarians) dismiss it automatically....I ask them why ....and they say that it has to do with the dating or sumthin....But according to this article, their claims should'nt have weight. I believe the Apochrypha is better than or on par with the NT canon....because I feel that the Eastern sects of Christianity ( Islam seems to agree with many of the ideas of the eastern sects) were heavily persecuted and their works were censored. I've always felt that the higher the level of controversy or censorship surrounding a work.....the more likely it would reflect the Truth....and I believe that the Truth is powerful ...and in general people ( and mostly people in power) do not appreciate the Truth----for Reality demands that they accomodate with changes in the way they govern their lives....and no one says that the Truth is easy.......However, that is my opinion on things...


Peace
River

Toto

"Q" is a hypothetic document (that sounds better than "myth" or "old theologians' tale"). It is widely accepted now, but some scholars have started to make a good case against its existence. See Vorkosigan's book review of The Case Against Q by Mark Goodacre

Actually, Section 8 states that Justin's pupil, Tatian, made the first attempt to construct an orthodox canon, by combining the four gospels into one Diatesseron and adding some of Paul's letters. But Tatian's work is lost.

There is more about Justin here

dado

it absolutely did: Abraham himself came from a polytheic home. it is *much* easier to construct a pantheic world view than a monotheic one - that is why Abraham is cherished.