{"id":3361,"date":"2012-12-31T15:25:52","date_gmt":"2012-12-31T07:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=3361"},"modified":"2013-02-20T17:43:49","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T09:43:49","slug":"clearing-the-misunderstanding-on-the-use-of-allah-in-bahasa-bibles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/clearing-the-misunderstanding-on-the-use-of-allah-in-bahasa-bibles\/","title":{"rendered":"Clearing the Misunderstanding on the use of Allah in Bahasa Bibles"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dr SK Teoh<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Many Muslims and even some Christians have misunderstood the use of \u201cAllah\u201d in Bahasa Bibles.\u00a0\u00a0 To clarify some of the confusion:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The BM Bible or the Alkitab is not translated from the English Bible but from the original languages, ie \u00a0Hebrew and Greek.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Hebrew word for God is El or Elohim (similar root as Ilah in Arabic) and YHWH or Yahweh for LORD. The Greek words are Theo for God and Kurios for Lord.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Biblical translators all over the world have used the local language terms for Elohim and Yahweh eg God and LORD in English; Dios and Senor in Spanish, Shangti and Zhu in Chinese<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For 15 centuries, Arabic Bibles have used Allah for God and Rab for Lord (predate Islam)<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first Malay translation of the Bible was made in 1612, and Allah was used for God and Tuhan for Lord in this and all the subsequent translations till today.<\/p>\n

6)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Malay-speaking (and Iban) Christians have used the term Allah for more than a hundred years in Malaya and the Borneo states in worship, prayers and reading their holy scriptures.<\/p>\n

7)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Twenty million Christians in Indonesia have used Allah for years without any misunderstanding or objection.<\/p>\n

8)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 English Bibles nor Bibles of other languages obviously do not use the Bahasa terms<\/p>\n

9)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Forbidding the use of the term \u201cAllah\u201d by Christians, not only infringes their rights to practise their faith but also lead to confusion.\u00a0 For example, is the \u201cTuhan\u201d in Negara-Ku and Rukun Negara not the \u201cMuslim God\u201d or can Christians sing the Selangor Anthem where \u201cAllah\u201d is used?<\/p>\n

10)\u00a0 Theological\u00a0 meanings between Christianity and Islam\u00a0 will always be different whether the term used is \u201cAllah\u201d or \u201cTuhan\u201d or \u201cGod\u201d.<\/p>\n

*This letter from a contributor first appeared in Harakah Daily<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dr SK Teoh Many Muslims and even some Christians have misunderstood the use of \u201cAllah\u201d in Bahasa Bibles.\u00a0\u00a0 To clarify some of the confusion: 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The BM Bible or the Alkitab is not translated from the English Bible but from the original languages, ie \u00a0Hebrew and Greek. 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Hebrew word for God is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}