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To: RBroadfoot
With all due respect, the way this line of thought leads to the wrong conclusion because it often is used to justify equivalence, and to lead to the proposition that the deity of the Torah is the deity of the Koran.

They may have the same word in some languages or contexts, but if you look at how they describe themselves, their goals, how they instruct humanity to relate to them and how they relate to humanity, they are not the same beings.

At the very least, the God of the Torah, beyond giving a finite area of the middle east to Israel, does not authorize anyone to exceed that boundary. Further, and more important to how He relates to humanity, He never forces anyone to accept a relationship with Him, especially by forced conversion at the point of a sword.

(Until a manuscript is unearthed, it is only speculation that any of the gospels were written in a language other than Greek. Thus, it is a great stretch to speculate on how Mark would have used the word Allah.)
60 posted on 08/11/2006 2:10:44 PM PDT by theBuckwheat
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To: theBuckwheat

It's not a "line of thought"; it's a fact that Jesus used the word "Allah" to refer to God.

The conclusions drawn from this fact are up to the individual.

I suppose that this is just a semantic argument we have. We both reject the Qur'an as a source of theological, religious and moral instruction. I argue that it gives a specious description of God and his commandments. You seem to argue that it is attempting to describe a different entity altogether. That argument would apply equally to deny that the Christian's trinitarian God is ontologically different from the Jew's God of the Torah. That argument has led to all sorts of death and destruction over the centuries.

WRT to the Gospel of Mark, it is indeed speculation, but it's educated speculation based upon Greek grammar and Aramaic idiom. Quite a few passages in Mark appear almost verbatim in Dead Sea Scrolls, which are of course in Aramaic. I'm no expert on this topic; I just read and try to understand.


61 posted on 08/11/2006 4:03:10 PM PDT by RBroadfoot
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