Origins of Yahweh?

It would maybe depend on the Islamist and the situation? If you acceded to their demand, they might spare you.
 

Conceivably, there might be something situational where I would acquiesce, not unlike lying to the Gestapo about hiding Jewish fugitives, but I’m not able to imagine any right now. :slightly_smiling_face: And yes, that is another question.

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It is fascinating that you think a militant Islamicist would threaten a Christian with death unless they affirm the greatness of God, which anyone who had read the Qur’an would know that Christians affirm anyway. That you would refuse to acknowledge that God is great is puzzling, making it sound as though if Muslims have adopted the idea of God’s greatness from Judaism and Christianity, you will deny it rather than acknowledge that there are attributes of God affirmed by all the so-called Abrahamic faiths…

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Not fascinating but astounding is that you appear to think that there are no uneducated Islamist bullies that could do that. I have actually read such a story that I do not believe was apocryphal, but unfortunately cannot cite. And the question really pertains to the greatness and deity of Jesus, not Allah, if you might please consider for a moment.

The Allah of Jesus is not the same as the Father of Jesus in each and every context where the words Allah and God are used, as, once again, @Daniel_Fisher aptly developed.

So you do in fact affirm the existence of more than one God?

So God isn’t Jesus or God the Father isn’t great? My guess is they would be executing you thinking you were an atheist. Christians as People of the Book are generally protected in Islam and Muhammad and early Muslims were allied with some Arabic Christian tribes (though at certain times and places things could get very harsh and as non-Muslims they did have special taxes). Also if they were requiring you to say something to prove you were Muslim it is likely something like “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet”. I suspect you agree with the first part though disagree on the second part.

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Go on YouTube and you will hear Muslims speaking English and talking about “God.”

What about the growing negative connotation of the word “Evangelical”?

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While this exchange has been a little edgy, it has helped me better understand who God is especially in relation to Islam and Judaism, not to mention LDS, Druze, and other monotheistic religions and sects. I have a lot to learn, but can understand Moses’ question at the burning bush:

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’Then what shall I tell them?”

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Please re-read what I posted. did i say anything that claimed or suggested that Muslims do not in fact use the word “God” in English? If so, can you specify? I would not have made such a claim as i don’t believe that. perhaps you could highlight specifically what i wrote that gave that impression, and if i in fact misspoke, i will retract.

what about it?

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No one would say this? I dispute this. it is not difficult to find examples where people in fact use language in such a manner. Whether you personally like or approve of such language, people do in fact say such things…

“…as we swapped stories about our childhood, a peculiar truth emerged. It became clear that we were each talking about a different person. To each of us, she had been a different mother.”

"It now occurs to me that I played so many different roles in my life. I was a different person to various people, depending on who they wanted me to be. If they were all to speak at my funeral, you would think they were each talking about a different person."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1978/06/15/how-the-zoo-keeper-lost-his-elephants/3c113608-1107-47c9-be41-24f08ac4f74a/

To meet Al Perry, or to see him in action with animals most of the time, would make one wonder if Reed and Stevens weren’t talking about a different person.

And of course i could keep going. Can we agree that some people do, in fact, use the language of “talking about a different person”?

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One final thought for now… if someone believed in one single supernatural being they called “God”, but the being they referenced and believed in was neither “eternal”, nor “omnipotent”, nor “omniscient”…

then at some point i think we would all recognize that we are indeed talking about an entirely different being, not simply the same being “with different attributes”… even though omnipotence, eternality, omniscience, etc., are what we generally call “attributes of God”, no? they might call their deity “God”, and believe that there is only one such being, but if said being is neither eternal nor omniscient nor omnipotent, then i would maintain that we are indeed not talking about the same entity, the same being. the basic core characteristics that define what i even mean by the word “God” are not shared, so how could i say that it is the same being?

Now some of us believe that the very definition of God includes more than just those more basic or raw characteristics as omnipotence, etc… for example, some of us believe that one core essential aspect of God is that, say, “God is Love”… thus if someone hypothetically believed in an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being that was entirely devoid of love, then whatever being they believed in, I would dispute that it deserves the title, “God”, whatever they wanted to call it. And yes, i’d say that whatever it was that they believed in was an entirely different entity than what i was describing by the word “God”, as they don’t share the same essential characteristics.

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Words are just begs where we hang ideas. Many words have also been loaded with emotion that rises from our cultural experiences.

My guess is that the use of the word Allah or related issues would not be such a source of disagreement if we could get rid of the emotional loads that we have absorbed during our life.
It is often difficult to understand how subjective our attitudes and use of the words is.

I’m no exception. I can say that God is great. When I should say it in the form ‘Allahu Akbar’ my mind associates it with pictures of aggressive muslim jihadists, maybe attacking those who are not muslims. This is an unjustified association and should not bother me if I could be completely rational. God is great, even if some people misuse the word and tell things that are not true about Him.

It reminds me of the discussion I had long ago with Jehovah’s witnesses. When we prayed, I had to use the word Jehovah, otherwise the Jehovah’s witnesses assumed I was praying some other god, angel or maybe even the devil.

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I obviously would agree that there are people whose view of God is so different that, like these authors, one could say it is as though there are talking about a “different God.” As an American Baptist I would expect members of my denomination to be more likely to say that about Westboro Baptist Church than about mainstream Islam. And personally my own view is closer to that of many mystical theologians not only in Protestantism or even Christianity more broadly, but also Sufism, than to some of my fellow Baptists who think of God in highly literalistic anthropomorphic ways.

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But in using the “as though” language i understand you to be still insisting that technically they are worshipping the same God?

Let me ask this, to be sure i understand your position…

If, hypothetically, someone happened to believe in the ancient Greek pantheon of gods, and then for some reason began to disbelieve in every one of the Greek gods with the sole exception of Hephaestus, believing in him as the sole and exclusive supernatural being (but keeping all his other typical attributes, abilities, personality, weaknesses, limitations, etc.),… he would be a “monotheist”, strictly speaking, in that he believed in no other supernatural beings or deities.

in such a scenario, the only real / essential characteristic of their god that is shared with the Christian God that i can see is simply and solely the virtue of not sharing the quality of “deity” with any other separate being… hence, they are both technically “monotheists”. But Hephaestus would not share any of the essential attributes of the Christian God such as omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, love, omnipresence, righteousness, holiness, immutability, or any other such significant quality… they only share the virtue of being a sole / solitary supernatural being… is this uniqueness n a supernatural being the only quality necessary for you to insist that, therefore, they are “technically” the same god?

i.e., would you maintain that my hypothetical Hephaestus worshipper and Christians are “technically” worshipping the same God?

I am saying that the case is akin to all the examples you yourself provided: the same individual, even if their view or impression changed so much that it was as though they were not.

I don’t think it is helpful to try to come up with hypotheticals when there are so many real examples. Was Paul in Acts 17 wrong to quote what Greek poets had said about Zeus, and to suggest that the “unknown god” they had sought to appease during a plague was the God he was now revealing? Is the Letter of Aristeas wrong to depict as a Greek description of Jewish religion, “They worship the same God - the Lord and Creator of the Universe, as all other men, as we ourselves, O king, though we call him by different names, such as Zeus or Dis”? For that matter, was it appropriate to translate the Jewish scriptures into Greek and to use the word theos when it did not convey precisely the connotations that a Jewish monotheist would subscribe to?

More importantly, if you are a monotheist, is there any other God for someone who is also a monotheist, but disagrees with you about attributes, to worship?

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And if we are Christians in a Muslim land, do we proclaim to them we are introducing them to a different God? That doesn’t go over well.

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I think most evangelists would suggest the Unknown Jesus for Muslim countries, but Paul proclaimed the Unknown God in Athens.

Well, maybe you can elaborate on that–Annabi Isa is second only to Muhammad :slight_smile: I would agree that we believe a lot more about Him than they do. Have you read about the Isawa ?They’re interesting–a Muslim sect in Nigeria that believe Christ is higher than Muhammad. The Isawas Of Zaria - Religion - Nigeria (nairaland.com)
Just for serendipity’s sake.

You said,

“In contrast, Any and every time I have ever heard anyone use the term “Allah” for God when otherwise speaking in English, it has indeed been as Dale described, that it is done specifically to carry the implication of the Islamic view of God.”