The name YHWH
The proper name of God in the Bible, YHWH, is written with consonants only, and in Jewish tradition is never pronounced. The Jewish manner of reading from the Bible is to substitute the word Adonai ("lord') for YHWH. Yahweh and Jehovah are Christian expansions of YHWH with vowels added. (Indeed Jehovah was a mistake, combining the letter of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai.)
YHWH was revealed to Moses as God's name at the burning bush.
Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to the, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you" and they ask me, "What is his name" Then what shall I tell them?'
God said to Moses, "I am who I am. [or "I will be who I will be.'] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."' God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites "YHWH, the God of your fathers " the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob " has sent me to you." This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.' (Exodus 3:13"14)
The name is revealed again to Moses on Mount Sinai when he asks God to show his glory. The LORD replies "you cannot see my face' (Exodus 33:20), and instead announces his name to Moses:
Then YHWH came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name "YHWH'. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "YHWH, YHWH, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. (Exodus 34:5"7)
The name YHWH, God tells Moses, is "my name forever':
This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation. (Exodus 3:15)
The name Allah
Although many Arabic Christians today refer to YHWH as Allah, there is no evidence that the Arabic name Allah (or any dialect variant of it) was used by Arab Christians or Jews in Arabia as the personal name of God before the time of Muhammad. (What there is evidence to support is that related languages used related forms, e.g. Aramaic Alaha, to refer to the God of the Bible.)
Allah is announced as God's name in the Quran, and is referred to 2,700 times:
"Who is the Lord of the Heavens and of the earth?" Say "Allah." (Q13:15"19)
The word Allah is derived from a contraction of the Arabic expression al ilah "the god', which would have been a generic expression used for gods in general. The word ilah comes from an ancient Semitic root reflected also in the Hebrew Elohim ("God, gods').
It seems that Allah had previously been used as the title of a pagan Arabian deity known to the Meccans before the time of Muhammad. Reasons for believing this are that:
"¢ The feminine form of Allah, derived in parallel fashion from al ilat "the goddess' was the title of a specific idol known among the Arabs. Faris in his Book of Idols has written:
They then adopted Allat as their goddess. Allat stood in al Ta'if, and was more recent than Manah. She was a cubic rock beside which a certain Jew used to prepare his barley porridge (sawiq). Her custody was in the hands of the banu-'Attab ibn-Malik of the Thaqif, who had built an edifice over her. The Quraysh, as well as all the Arabs, were wont to venerate Allat. They also used to name their children after her, calling them Zayd-Allat and Taym-Allat.
"¢ Muhammad's pagan father, who died before Muhammad was born, bore the name Abd Allah (Abdullah), "slave of Allah'. This suggests that Allah was the principal deity of his grandfather, since it was a common practice among the pagans to name their children after their personal god.
"¢ Pagan assumptions about Allah were very much a live issue during Muhammad's prophetic career, because the Quran repeatedly seeks to counter claims that Allah was but one among many gods; that he had divine sons or daughters; or that the jinn " demonic beings " shared divinity with him. Q53:19"24 refutes the pagan idea that the goddesses al Uzza, al Ilat and Manat were the "daughters of Allah'. Furthermore Q37:145"59 rejects any suggestion that Allah has sons and daughters, that angels could be female, being capable of reproducing, or that the jinn (demons) share kinship with Allah (see also Q16:59, Q6:100).
"¢ It does seem from certain verses of the Quran that the pagan Arabs regarded the god Allah as the creator of the world, god of the heavens, the weather and the waters, but that they had other gods in their pantheon beside this god of the wind and the waves:
If thou askest them, "Who created the heavens and the earth and subjected the sun and the moon?' they will say, "Allah.' How then are they perverted? "
If thou askest them, "Who sends down out of heaven water, and therewith revives the earth after it is dead?' they will say "Allah.' "
When they embark in the ships, they call on Allah, making their religion sincerely His; but when He has delivered them to the land, they associate others with Him, that they may be ungrateful for what We have given them, and take their enjoyment; they will soon know!' (Q29:60"69; see also Q39:35"39)
What else can we know about the pagan deity associated with the name of Allah? Some have identified Allah with the moon god, although the evidence for this seems tenuous. The often-repeated claim that the Islamic symbol of the crescent moon derives from moon-god worship appears to be a mistake. This symbol was apparently taken over from the Byzantines after Constantinople was conquered by the Turks.
There is some possibility that Hubal, the "Lord' of the Quraysh (Muhammad's tribe) and the chief deity in the Kaaba (the pagan sanctuary at Mecca), could have been a manifestation of Allah. This could help account for the continued use of the Kaaba in Islam for the worship of Allah, for Hubal's idol was located in the centre of the sanctuary beside the Zamzam sacred well.
We also know from Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad that his family were devotees of Hubal. Muhammad's grandfather, Abdul Mutallib, had undertaken to sacrifice Muhammad's father to Hubal " this was the same youth Abd Allah whose name showed that he had been dedicated to the god Allah. Muhammad himself was dedicated as an infant before the statue of Hubal by the same grandfather. There is even an account of Muhammad's grandfather praying to Allah beside the idol of Hubal while lots are being cast to determine which son he will sacrifice.
Although the name Allah was adapted from Arab paganism, Muhammad categorically rejected any association between Allah and the old idols, as he sought to cleanse the worship of Allah from what he regarded as its pagan accretions. The idol of Hubal was destroyed, along with all the other idols, when Muhammad conquered Mecca and took control of the Kaaba. Although it is interesting to speculate about the origins of Allah in the pagan period before Muhammad, it is ultimately secondary to the question of the identity of Allah, which must be based upon an examination of the Quran.
