Category: Biblical Textual Criticism

Why It is Not Possible to Substitute Allah with Tuhan in Bible Translation

Muslims in other parts of the world (Arabs, Persians, North Africans, Pakistanis and Indonesians) have no objection and are not worried about getting confused when Christians use the word Allah. In contrast, some Malaysian Muslims claim to be confused; a strange phenomenon indeed.  This observation lends credence to the suggestion that the Allah issue is an artificial Malay issue and not a genuine Muslim issue. The truth is that the current orchestrated protests against the recent High Court decision to allow the Catholic Herald (and Christians) to use the word Allah must be seen as cynical manipulations by Malay politicians to gain votes from their community. Continue reading “Allah and Tuhan in Bible Translation”

TRANSLATING THE NAMES OF GOD: Recent experience from Indonesia and Malaysia
D. Soesilo

Note – This is partial reproduction of the original article. Reproduced with permission from the author

The Situation in Malaysia
The situation in Malaysia in regard to the use of the divine names is different to that in Indonesia in one important respect, which has more to do with politics than with language. It is that some years ago some states and the federal government prohibited the use of the name  Allah  by non-Muslims.
It is partly fear of this that has led some organisations to make changes in the rendering of the names of God in Malay and Indonesian, in both their own writing and in quoting of Scripture. (Each time the word  Allah  “God” occurs, it has been consistently changed to  Tuhan “Lord”, with the result that there is no difference between the renderings of the two Hebrew names YHWH and Elohim.)
Continue reading “Translating the Names of God”