About George M. Lamsa and Rocco Errico

[Christina]

No god except THE God.

But again, none of these terms....not the Aramaic "Alaha", Hebrew "Eloah", Arabic "Allah", English "God" or Greek "Theos" means anything except for god with a lower-case g. God only has one real name, His personal name. And when in Aramaic we want to allude to it we say "Maryah", or "Lord Yah". The meaning of the symbol on this website. It's the Holy Name.

Islam has corrupted that concept by attributing a title to Him as a personal name, which of course is ridiculous.

Thank you for your explanation, though I agree it's not as simple or as smooth to explain with exactness. So technically (liguistically/historically) "allah" shouldn't be taken as a personal name, I won't argue with this anymore.

But...

From a spiritual view, and taking your explanation into account this is the impression I get on what the shahada states:

"There is NO god but THE God and Muhammad is HIS prophet" <!-- s:angry: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/angry.gif" alt=":angry:" title="Angry" /><!-- s:angry: -->

It seems that the shahada's emphasis is on Muhammad rather than "Allah", that his (Muhammad's) god is "The God" (the only god). The implication is very clear, Muhammad's fingerprints are all over this, and that doesn't surprise me at all. <!-- s:mad: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/mad.gif" alt=":mad:" title="Mad" /><!-- s:mad: -->

Perhaps I'm making a bigger deal of this than I should, although "Allah" technically means "god" I can't help but feel that Christian Arabs shouldn't refer to God as "Allah" because the evil one has distorted it into a personal name. I agree that it is ridiculous (logically) as you said, but spiritually I highly doubt that it's coincidental considering what Rafa said about the Hebrew word "alah" (curse/oak tree). <!-- stern: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/stern.gif" alt="tern:" title="Stern" /><!-- stern: -->

Now I think it's time I get off my soapbox.

Shlama.