Did you know?
Christians and Jews
say “Allah” too
Yes. Arabic-speaking Christians have no other everyday word for God, and Arabic-speaking Jews used it for over a thousand years.
The Word · Do Christians and Jews say “Allah”?
A church, in 512
The oldest dated Arabic inscription naming God is on a church. At Zabad in Syria, in 512 CE, Christians carved al-ilāh, “the God”, into a lintel of the church of St Sergius. The stone is now in Brussels.
A rabbi's Torah
A thousand years ago the great Jewish scholar Saadia Gaon translated the Torah into Arabic. He used “Allah” about 1,650 times. His Shema reads:
Arabic Bibles
The earliest dated Arabic Bible manuscript, Sinai Arabic 151, was finished in Damascus in 867 CE. Arabic Bibles today say “Allah” on their first page: “In the beginning Allah created the heavens and the earth.” In Indonesia, Christians have read “Allah” in their Bibles since 1629.
In London, this week
At St Luke's in Kentish Town, a congregation prays the Lord's Prayer in Arabic, and the word they say is Allah. Watch the 27-second clip ↗
Same God?
Saying the same word does not settle the bigger question. Christians give three answers, each in good faith: the same God, differently understood (the Catholic Church's teaching since 1965); the same God intended, but described so differently that “same” misleads; or not the same, because God is known only as Trinity. Jews and Muslims have their own debates. We set them side by side in Is it the same God?
Keep going
Watch and listen
Documentaries and short films on the word and its story.
