The Name of God : Attempting To Move Beyond The Polemics
By Bob Kee
The general reaction towards the impending non-renewal of the publication permit of the Roman Catholic Church’s newspaper, Herald, has generally taken two main approaches :
- The Muslim Perspective
The assertion of the right to restrict the use of the term Allah by non-Muslims when referring to God in the Malay language due to fears of confusion and the lingering suspicion that it is meant to proselytise Muslims - The Christian Perspective
The assertion of the right to use the term Allah by Malaysian Christians when referring to God in the Malay language due to the precedent set by Arab speaking Christians and the lingering suspicion that this is meant to further restrict the freedom to profess their faith
What troubles me is that neither perspective attempts to seek to breach the barrier that divides us as a community and approach the issue with the presumption of goodwill on the part of either parties. In fact, there is an underlying presumption of ill-will with Christians assuming that this is another attempt to undermine their freedom to profess their faith as they see fit and Muslims assuming that there is an insidious attempt to proselytise their brethren by the Christian community.
An appeal to an Arabic precedent in using the term Allah is, in my humble opinion, inherently flawed. While the Malay language does derive a lot of their vocabulary from Arabic roots; especially its religious vocabulary, the Malay language is not the Arabic language. Fellow blogger; Hafiz Noor Shams; presents a well written introduction of how the original Arabic term Allah has evolved from a common noun to a proper noun in the Malay language. While it is arguable that this evolution is perhaps a result of historical revisionism or at the very least a contemporary development, it does provide a better understanding as to why such a misunderstanding could occur.
Such evolution in the usage of terminology is not unique to the Malay language. In the Chinese language, the term shangdi (上帝) was originally borrowed from the Chinese folk religions by Bible translators as the translation for the term God when they translated the Bible into Chinese. Over time, the term shangdi evolved to an almost exclusive usage within the Christian community.
On the other hand, the accusation that Christians may have insidious designs in translating the term God to Allah is equally flawed.
One of the challenges that the Bible translators faced when translating the Bible into the Malay language was the difficulty in translating the terms יהוה (YHWH), אֲדֹנָי (Adonai), אל (El), אלהים (Elohim) and the other derivations of the name of God in the Hebrew scriptures into the Malay language. This becomes especially difficult in the instances where the term אֲדֹנָי יהוה (Adonai YHWH) appears together.
In many English translations, the above combination has generally been translated as Lord GOD following the convention set by William Tyndale since the 16th century. The term יהוה (YHWH) was also translated as LORD or LORD (in capitals) to distinguish it from the term אֲדֹנָי (Adonai) which was translated as Lord.
The use of Allah was first used to translate the name of God into Malay with the publication of the diglot Gospel of Matthew in Dutch and romanised Malay in 1629 as a result of the work of Albert Cornelisson Ruyl. Further translations of the Christian scriptures in the Malay language (both in its romanised as well as Jawi forms) from the 17th century onwards continued with the convention of using the term Allah as the translation of the name of God. This was especially so in the occurences of the אֲדֹנָי יהוה (Adonai YHWH) combination whereby it became translated as Tuhan Allah.
In contemporary usage, this has resulted in the convention whereby the term יהוה (YHWH) where it occurs in the Bible being generally translated as Allah or TUHAN (in capital letters) and the term אֲדֹנָי (Adonai) translated either as Tuhan (in capital and small letters). The term אלהים (Elohim) has also been generally translated as Allah. A good example can be seen in how Deuteronomy 6:4 is translated :
In the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition of the Leningrad Codex :
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֶלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָדtransliterated as :
Shmo Ishral YHWH aleinu YHWH Achd
The English language Today’s New International Version :
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one
The Malay language Today’s Malay Version :
Ingatlah, hai Israel! TUHAN - dan TUHAN satu-satunya - ialah Allah kita.
and perhaps more literally in the Alkitab Terjemahan Baru :
Dengarlah, hai orang Israel: TUHAN itu Allah kita, TUHAN itu esa!
While there has been a few different translations that have chosen to use the term Jehovah or Yahweh where the term YHWH occured, this have generally been of very limited usage and popularity due to the inherent difficulties in actually determining how YHWH was initially pronounced in the first place plus the half a millenia popular convention and usage as elaborated above.
Now, having elaborated the above, I would venture that to leave such matters to politicians have always been a big mistake, one with consequences that the Church historically has had to deal with and continues to deal with today. In our context, to allow the Internal Security Ministry to determine what constitutes proper usage of religious terminology within a particular faith community would set an extremely dangerous precedent for all faith communities in this country, whether Muslim or otherwise.
In my humble opinion, such difficulties and misunderstandings are best resolved with mutual dialogue on the basis of mutual respect and the assumption of mutual good-will. This of course, might be a bit difficult in our context due to our precedent in using religious and ethnic issues as political tools for division and control. But I have hope and trust in the wisdom of Malaysians to break this mould.
And we should perhaps wise up to the possibility that this is probably just the latest attempt to shore up Umno’s waning fortunes among the Muslim-Malay population by manufacturing a situation where a reaction; at the very least; is guaranteed and put the Muslim-Malay population in an artificial stage of siege against a perceived bogeyman in order to consolidate support for Umno.
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