Arlington Statement

Arlington statement in my humble opinion is just another attempt to impose Colonial model of Bible translation which I do not think will be very successful. The reason is these translators do not need Bible societies any more to publish their work. And they are also not their colonies any more. What do you think?
As far as Shahadah is concerned, Shahadah is lost heritage of Bible which is actually being recovered by these translators. And it's not first time. Saadia Gaon the founder of Judeo Arabic writings also used it to communicate the one and only, incomparable God,  to his audience in Baghdad, Iraq.

I didn't know that Saadia Gaon used the Shahada in his translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Could you direct me to a paper or resources? Thanks.

Saadia Gaon is actually known as the father of Arabic Jewish literature. . As far as Shadah is concerned, Shaadah is used in Targum Onkelos which was produced before Islam. I will give exact reference when I publish my post. I will soon write a detailed post this week inshallah.

SIL response to Arlington Statement:
SIL and its partners in the Wycliffe Global Alliance believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. As such, Bible translations must always faithfully reflect the meaning of the Scriptures in a way that communicates clearly without distortion. SIL is committed to translation practices that result in accurate, clear, and natural translations. As a member of the Forum of Bible Agencies International (FOBAI), SIL is committed to the translation standards of FOBAI and the standards based on the guidelines of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and has processes in place to ensure that its work adheres to these.

SIL’s concern about the Arlington statement centers around its prescriptive approach. It is more restrictive than the FOBAI and World Evangelical Alliance standards, which maintained a commitment to faithful translations while including carefully crafted language about the movement’s rich diversity. We believe that our current standards and policies enable us to achieve accuracy while appropriately engaging with the different contexts in which we serve.

Therefore SIL is not supportive of the Arlington Statement.

Dick Kroneman, SIL International Translation Coordinator

Psalm 18:32 (Psalm 18:31 in English Bibles) in Targum Onkelos does have לית אלהא אלא יהוה, "There is no God except YHWH." But this does not prove that the Shahada is "biblical."

The first problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that YHWH is equivalent to Allah.

But more importantly, large portions of the Targums are essentially commentaries within the text that are not translations of the Hebrew Bible at all. Such is the case here.

Psalm 18:32 in Targum Onkelos, translation from The Aramaic Bible:
For on account of the sign and the redemption that you work for your anointed one and for the remnant of your people who are left, all peoples, nations, and languages will give thanks and say, ‘There is no God except the LORD,’ for there is none apart from you. And your people will say, ‘There is no one who is strong except our God’—

Kevin Cathcart, Michael Maher, and Martin McNamara, eds., The Aramaic Bible: The Targum of Psalms, trans. David M. Stec, vol. 16 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), Ps 18:32.

Now, compare with Psalm 18:32, from Jewish Publication Society 1985:
Truly, who is a god except the LORD, who is a rock but our God?—

Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), Ps 18:32.

Dick, thank you.  Might you clarify a couple of matters:

1. I'm not sure what "including carefully crafted language about the movement’s rich diversity" means.  What "movement" do you have in mind? 

2. It would be helpful to have a few examples as to how ASBT is more prescriptive than FOBAI and World Evangelical Alliance standards.  I'm not doubting what you say; i'd just like a few more details, if you would?

tom

Hi Donald. If presence of Shahadah in Targum does not prove it's biblical let me ask you does it prove Shahadah is Quranic?
I will appreciate if you please explain why Allah is not equivalent to YHWH?

Dick,

Do you believe that the FOBAI and WEA guidelines were adequate to protect the integrity of the Tchadian Arabic translation?

(https://biblicalmissiology.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Tchadien-Arabic-Review-R2a.pdf)

Mike

Thank you, Dick, and SIL as an organization, for making SIL's stance on the Arlington Statement clear to the global Church.

Several of the initial signers of the Arlington Statement have put together a set of claims and responses relating to the statement, including the claim that FOBAI and WEA are sufficient for Bible translators and that the Arlington Statement is therefore unnecessary, as well as various critiques made publicly or privately in relation to certain articles in the Arlington Statement. We invite contributors to this forum, as well as members of the body of Christ worldwide, to prayerfully consider these claims and responses, what light the Word of God sheds on these questions, and how the Lord would have us respond. We welcome any feedback any of you may have, and pray for the Lord's blessing on this conversation and on everyone's work.

May the Lord be sanctified in our hearts, minds, words and interactions in relation to these important issues.

Waseem Raza,

The following is Genesis 1:1 from the Vandyke and the Tchadien Arabic version. Both versions translate אלהים as ٱللّٰهُ,  would you agree that both of these translations are accurate translations of the Hebrew text?

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

فِي ٱلْبَدْءِ خَلَقَ ٱللّٰهُ ٱلسَّمَاوَاتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ

فِي الْبِدَايَةْ، اللّٰهْ خَلَقْ السَّمَاوَاتْ وَ الْأَرْض

Hi Waseem, the presence of the first part of the Shahada in the Targums shows that it is Targumic. But it is not biblical since that phrase in the Targums is not a translation of the biblical text, but it is an addition to the biblical text.

The first part of the Shahada is Qur'anic because it appears in the Qur'an (Q37:35, 47:19).

You requested, "please explain why Allah is not equivalent to YHWH." Here are some answers that I have found.

"Based on Exod. 3:15 we could define YHWH as follows: YHWH is the name of the God of Israel. Although from phrases such as YHWH Seba'ot and ‘YHWH the God of heaven’ we know that YHWH is more than the God of the people of Israel, in the context of Israel among the nations he is primarily seen as the God of Israel.

"Since YHWH is the name by which the Hebrew people knew their God, it seems unacceptable to use the name of a local god, no matter how grand he or she may be. YHWH is the name of the God of the Hebrews, and another name would inevitably have other connotations. Even though it may seem desirable from a missiological point of view to use the name of the local creator-god so that people can more readily identify with the God of the Bible, there is a distinct danger that the name of the local creator-god will carry connotations that are incompatible with the name of YHWH. While it is true that YHWH is not just the God of the people of Israel, but also YHWH Saba'ot (‘LORD of Hosts’) and ‘YHWH the God of heaven’ with much in common with creator-gods in other cultures, yet ancient Israel’s main perception of YHWH was that it was the name of their God." - Nicos Daams, "Translating YHWH," Journal of Translation 1.1: 49-51. https://www.sil.org/system/files/reapdata/15/66/28/156628155631331165619732394342641225818/siljot2005_1_03.pdf

"It should be noted that the biblical translations of the Bible into Arabic and other languages used by the majority Muslim communities in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have generally not used Allah to translate the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH. This is considered to be the particular name of the supreme being of the people of Israel as revealed to Moses." - Kenneth J. Thomas, "Allah in Translations of the Bible," IJFM 23:4: 172.  https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/23_4_PDFs/Thomas.pdf

In light of this, we ought to understand the Targum's "There is no God except YHWH" as an affirmation not just that there is only one God, but that God is YHWH, but particularly the God who made a covenant with Israel, the one who revealed himself to Moses in the Torah.

In contrast, the Shahada affirms that there is only one God, but that God is the one who revealed himself to Muhammad.

So the Targum and the Shahada are making entirely different truth claims.

Hello Donald. Thanks brother, for  your kind response. This is a phrase in Deuteronomy 33:26

אֵ֥ין כָּאֵ֖ל יְשֻׁר֑וּן

Mostly translated as there is none like the God of Jeshurun. 

This is how Targum Onkelos produced it.

You can see second word for God is general Aramaic word for deity while the fourth one is "the God".

Now this is the Arabic transliteration of Aramaic 

and here is the text of Shadah..

Aramaic negation is replaced by Arabic negation. The rest is pretty similar.
 So we can conclude that somehow Quran got the first part of Shahadah from Targums because Targums were produced before Quran.   Any Majority translation off course will not use the second part of Shahadah.  However, if they choose to use  first part, it is basically Targum expression which their audience also know and can appreciate.
This is why, in a previous comment, I called it the lost heritage. By the way, just for the sake of interest I want to share that complete Shadah part 1 + 2 never exists in Quran as one single verse.

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Now as far as the name of God is concerned, the name Allah in  Shahadah, you can see from screen shot I posted, comes from Aramaic. When Quran took Shadah from Targum it retained it.  Translators of Targums were also aware that Hebrews know their God as YHWH but they identify their God as Ella'ha.
Now the Allah of Quran is equivalent to YHWH or not. Off course it might refer to another deity in a specific time period, but the idea in Arabic literature and sociolinguistics is to refer a Supreme being , who is like no one else.
Thanks for sharing the articles. I will go through them.

EDIT... An after thought, I would like to share is The examples of Aramaic ELA-HA are also found in Biblical Aramaic. For example Daniel 3:26. When Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged the God of Shadrah, Meshach and Abednego as ELA-HA, the true God. So I think  Elah, Ela-ha or Allah are not Arabic ideas. They are coming from Aramaic. Probably it would be great to see Jeffery Arthur's The Foreign Vocabulary of the Quran.

Waseem,

Thanks for the informative post.

Some comments:

Deuteronomy 33:26 in Targum Onkelos has some textual variation. A few manuscripts have לֵית אֱלָהּ כֶּאֱלָהָא דְיִשְׂרָאֵל, "There is no god like the God of Israel," instead of "There is no god but the God of Israel." See, for example, Targum Onkelos as reproduced in Sefaria (https://www.sefaria.org/Onkelos_Deuteronomy.33.26?lang=bi). Still others have לֵית אֵילָא אֲלָהָא דְיִשְׂרָאֵל, "There is none but the God of Israel," which is what I see in Accordance.

You concluded that the Qur'an got the first part of the Shahada from the Targums. However, that the Targums existed before the Qur'an is not sufficient proof of literary dependence. Both could have gotten the phrase from other sources. Or they both could have come up with the phrase independently, as it's not really an original idea, or a complicated construction. There's no evidence that the author of the Qur'an had access to the Onkelos, or if he did, which textual variant he may have had. (The traditional Islamic view is that the Qur'an came directly from Gabriel to Muhammad, which, of course, would rule out literary dependence.)

And then there's the question as to whether, in using similar language, the same meaning is actually conveyed. I'm sure you know that you cannot simply take a phrase from one language, translate it word for word into another language, and expect that you've translated the meaning accurately. The same is true with Aramaic and Arabic.

 More specifically, the phrase in Targum Onkelos is not simply "There is no god but/like God." It is "There is no god but/like the God of Israel." We cannot simply ignore the דְיִשְׂרָאֵל. In the context of the Targum, this is an affirmation not just that there is only one God, but that God is particularly the God who made a covenant with Israel, the one who revealed himself to Moses in the Torah.

In contrast, the Shahada affirms that there is only one God, but that God is the one who revealed himself to Muhammad. So the Targum and the Shahada are making entirely different truth claims. If the Shahada really took it from the Targums, as you suggest, then they twisted it to suit their own ends.

Regarding whether YHWH and Allah are equivalent, you wrote "the idea in Arabic literature and sociolinguistics is to refer a Supreme being, who is like no one else." I noticed you used the word "refer." In semantics, there is a difference between "sense," or what we would call meaning, and "denotation," or reference. So, for example, "my Father" and "Mr. Lowe" could both refer to the same person. However, "my father" and "Mr. Lowe" have different meanings, or "senses." You cannot simply substitute one for the other.

The same is true of YHWH and Elohim: they refer to the same being, but they have different senses. They are used in different contexts, and they evoke different associations. Thus, they are not simply equivalent. By extension, the same would be true for אֱלָהּ in Aramaic and Allah in Arabic.

Hi Donlad, Thank you for mentioning the textual variants of Onkelos, probably this is the reason Sadia Gaon used لیس کمثلہ famous phrase from Sura e Shau'ra chapter 42 vs 11.
As far as literary dependence is concerned, may be Targum got it from some where else I do not know that but the Jewish Influence (HEBREW + ARAMAIC) is not hidden to the academic world. This is what Nöldeke suggests. 

"In comparison, the influence of the Gospels on the Koran is much slighter.13 A closer investigation of the apparent Jewish and Christian elements in the Koran will lead to the

conclusion that the primary elements shared by Christianity and Islam are of Jewish colouring. For example, the familiar Muslim creed, إلّا لله 󰏳 لا إ is derived from a Jewish formula; verse IISamuel 22:33 = Psalms 18:32 מי־אל

מבלעדי יהשה and appears in the Targum as ליח אלהא אלא יי and also in the

Syriac Peshitta "

Hi Waseem,

Thanks for the reply.

I said before that you did not have sufficient proof of literary dependence. The quote from Nöldeke is interesting, but he is not bringing any more proof than you had.

The problem with proving literary dependence is that the amount of literature we possess today is just a small percentage of what existed back then. Scholars like to connect dots and suppose literary dependence based on the literature they have, but it's just speculation based on limited physical evidence.

But more importantly, even if the Shahada were borrowed from the Targums, as you and Nöldeke suggest, the meaning in the Qur'an is different, as I've shown you above. The Targums affirm YHWH, the God of Israel. The Qur'an affirms Allah, whose messenger is Muhammad. This is, in no way, any justification whatsoever for the insertion of the Shahada into the Hebrew Bible, which appeared centuries before either the Targums and the Qur'an. Such an insertion is anachronistic and syncretistic.

Hello Donald, thanks for your comment. EL and all it's variant forms in Aramaic and Arabic are common Semitic heritage. Rabbi Sadia Gaon being the heir of the book (TANAKH) was well aware of that so he took liberty and used not only Allah but the whole shahadah to communicate the idea to his Muslim audience.
In Arabic and Quranic socio linguistic, Allah is used for the supreme being who is one, there is no one like him, he is the almighty creator and provider of His creation. Do you think YHWH is a different deity?

Hi Waseem,

Thanks for your comment.

I don't know much about Rabbi Sadia Gaon is, but I question whether his writings should be considered authoritative in how we translate the Bible. Especially if he affirmed the whole shahada, Muhammad's prophethood and all.

Do I think YHWH is a different deity? There are problems with using this question to decide on translating YHWH.

1. "Same deity" vs. "different deity" is reductionistic. "Different deity" implies that there are two separate entities, and "same deity" means that they are the same entity. Neither capture the similarities and differences.

For example, I believe that YHWH manifested himself in the flesh as Jesus, who was both God and human. Is this YHWH the same deity as Allah in the Qur'an? Probably any Muslim would tell you, no. And I think you would be hard-pressed to find any Muslims who would affirm that God's name is YHWH.

Better to say, the conception of YHWH in the Bible and Allah in the Qur'an have some similarities and differences, rather than force the two together in one box, or separately in two boxes, in terms of "same deity" or "different deity."

But the bigger problem, which I addressed before, is:

2. You're using reference ("denotation"), but not meaning ("sense"), to determine translational equivalence.

Even if you're convinced that the YHWH of the Bible and Allah of the Qur'an refer to the same being, it doesn't mean that YHWH and Allah have the same meaning. Just like "Mr. Lowe" and "my father" refer to the same being but have different meanings,  YHWH has a different meaning than El, and by extension, all its variant forms in Aramaic and Arabic.

In semantics, the reference of a word to its actual manifestation is called its "denotation," but the meaning of the word is called its "sense."

I brought this up before, but perhaps you didn't understand what I wrote, or perhaps you're not familiar with the distinction between "denotation" and "sense." If so, I advise you to take a course on semantics and pragmatics, or at least do some readings on it. At Dallas International University, Paul Kroeger teaches from his book, which is available free online.

https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/231

Hi Donlad

Sadia Gaon is the father of all Judeo Arabic writings and for centuries, he is speaking through his work  to the translators working in majority context.
He never affirmed whole shahadah, as you are suggesting. This is your own thought. He only used it's first part which Quran actually took from Targums. So in first place
 I  will suggest lets not call this first phrase Quranic.  
Secondly he was a biological son of Jacob, he knows how to express his scriptures better than adopted sons.
Thirdly his translation model in majority contexts works much better than the one imposed by BFBS on us. With experience, I have seen it's fruit.
Finally  Sadia Gaon is not god. He is a human being like you and I but I respect Saadia and every other senior  because they have dealt these issues before us and we are looking at things from their shoulders.

 When you say " Allah in Quran"  probably you think Allah is a pagan deity? Right? I guess this is an intercognitive complexity .     In our socio linguistics, Allah is the supreme being, creator and  provider of this world and all it's creation. 

You said  "You're using reference ("denotation"), but not meaning ("sense"), to determine translational equivalence". How would you translate YHWH then? As an English speaking person what does YHWH mean to you?
and when you say "YHWH has a different meaning than El, and by extension, all its variant forms in Aramaic and Arabic." 

Do you mean you accept Allah to translate El but not YHWH?

Hi Waseem,

Thanks for your reply.

You wrote:

"He never affirmed whole shahadah, he just used it's first part which Quran actually took from Targums. So in first place I  will suggest lets not call this first phrase Quranic."

I've already previously disputed the claim that the Quran took it from the Targums, based on insufficient evidence, and based on the fact that the Targums are affirming something different than the Qur'an. I don't understand why you are reasserting this as fact without interacting with what I wrote in reply to you, and without bringing any additional supporting evidence.

Your further suggestion, that we not call this first phrase Quranic, seems odd. The first phrase of the Shahada appears in the Qur'an multiple times in Arabic. How could it not be Quranic? Why are you so reluctant to recognize it as Quranic?

You wrote:
"Secondly he was a biological son of Jacob, he knows how to express his scriptures better than adopted sons."

Yet, Jesus disputed with the Pharisees, also biological sons of Jacob, about their understanding of the Scriptures. I think we can agree that one's biological lineage does not necessarily make one a good interpreter of Scripture.

You wrote:

"Thirdly his translation model in majority contexts works much better than the one imposed by BFBS on us. With experience, I have seen it's practical application and fruit both."

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "works much better"?

You wrote:

"How would you translate YHWH then? As an English speaking person what does YHWH mean to you?

In English I would translate it as Yahweh, which in English means God's personal name revealed in the Bible. It's very well-known in English; it's even the title of a U2 song. Alternately, LORD in all caps is a standard translation convention for YHWH.

You wrote: "Do you mean you accept Allah to translate El but not YHWH?"

Yes, that's exactly right. This has been nearly universally practiced in biblical translation for majority Muslim communities for centuries. Did you read the Thomas article I linked to earlier?

"It should be noted that the biblical translations of the Bible into Arabic and other languages used by the majority Muslim communities in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have generally not used Allah to translate the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH. This is considered to be the particular name of the supreme being of the people of Israel as revealed to Moses. In Arabic translations it is transliterated as yahwah or translated as rabb (Lord), corresponding to the Jewish custom of using adonai in place of saying the divine name. Translations of YHWH in other languages used in the Islamic world have followed the precedent of the Arabic in either transliterating YHWH and/or using a word for Lord (rabb in Bambara and Somali, khodavand in Persian, Pashto, Sindhi, and Urdu, Tuhan in Indonesian)."  - Kenneth J. Thomas, "Allah in Translations of the Bible," IJFM 23:4: 172. https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/23_4_PDFs/Thomas.pdf