Monday, January 4, 2010

Use of the word Allah

The strange thing about this ban of the use of the word Allah in Malaysia (next door to Indonesia and speaking a similar language) is that the Indonesian translation of the Bible has used the word Allah for well over 100 years. Personally, I do not like the use of the word. I don't know why the original translators chose to use this word instead of the word Yahweh, or at least the Indonesian word "tuhan" which means "lord". The KJV incorrectly used the word "Jahovah". This was corrected in later versions where the word "LORD" was used in all capital letters to show the original was the tetragrammaton (Yahweh). Where lower case letters were used the regular meaning was intended.

If Malaysia bans the word "Allah" from all non-Islamic materials, then will Indonesia follow suit? If it does then the Bible will have to be reprinted using a different word for "God". This would not offend me.

If we want to translate the Bible correctly into the Indonesian language, then let's use the word Yahweh everywhere the tetragrammaton is used in the Old Testament. And while we're at it, why not use the word "silam" (immersion) instead of "baptisan" (baptism), or "jemaat" (assembly) instead of "gereja" (church)? There are more, but you get the point.

Finally, the word "Allah" is not an Islamic word, but an Arabic word predating Islam and a very large part of the Indonesian vocabulary is made up of Arabic roots or words. Do we eliminate them all? One could only hope....

1 comment:

Steve Cate said...

Your comments are always welcome.