Allah and the Type-Token Distinction
As has been widely reported recently, Malaysians are grappling with how to say “god.”
The issue is that the word most Malay speakers use, allah, refers not only to “god” in general but in particular to what we call “Allah” in English, that is, the Muslim god of that name. (For the blow-by-blow, start here for background, then see here for a recent court ruling reversing an original decision and allowing anyone to use the word allah. And see here for a report of massive violence against churches for using the word allah in Christian contexts. See also here for the court’s suspension of its reversal of its original ban.)
The problem essentially stems from type-token conflation, and not for the first time.
Essentially, there is a category (“type”) that in English we usually spell with the lower-case-g word “god,” and for which we can equally use the word “deity.”
In addition to the category, there is what the category contains (“tokens”). One example of such a token is what we usually write with the upper-case-G word “God” in English.
The distinction is usually pretty clear. For example, the type “Greek god” contains the tokens “Zeus” and “Athena,” among others.
But monotheism involves a type that has exactly one token, so it’s pretty easy to use the type and token interchangeably. We do this in English when we talk about “praying to God.” Translations even stumble sometimes, prefering the upper-case-G “God” where the lower-case version makes more sense, as in “our God” for “our god.”
We see the same interchangeability in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. The word elohim is used both for the God of the Hebrews and for any other god. And the Greek theos, represents variously “God” or “god” (or “goddess”).
Similarly, the word allah (before Islam merely one Arabian god of many) is now the Muslim name for “God” as well as the type “god.”
If nothing else, I think we see here that a solid theoretical framework, while essential for translation, is only part of the story. (I don’t think the end to the crisis in Malaysia is a campaign explaining the nature of type-token conflation.)
And I wonder if the authors of the Bible similarly debated the words elohim and theos.
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God Didn’t Say That (@GodDidntSayThat) is an online forum for discussing the Bible and its translations, mistranslations, interpretations, and misinterpretations.
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman is the chief translator for the ten-volume series My People’s Prayer Book, author of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, and editor of The Unabridged Bible. Writing under “J.M. Hoffman,” he is author of the thriller series The Warwick Files. He holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics and has taught at Brandeis University and HUC-JIR in New York City. He presents widely to churches, synagogues, and other groups. more…
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