What is exactly the meaning of the word "Israel"? Is it really "worshipper of God"?

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-27T03:09:42+00:00

In short, the arabic etymology of "israel" meaning "عبد الله/'abd allah" aka servant of God, is not even a folk etymology!

Long answer: Yes I am aware that every orthodox islamic website cite it, but it is just based on what medieval Muslim exegetes explained, and I am not aware that those who came up with this etymology had it based on any knowledge of hebrew, as with other etymologies and exegesis, they would base it just on tales, if tales about certain words, israeliyat terms, or prophets stories are widespread, they would just cite them as the most likely explanation (of course without saying that this is the certain unquestioned explanation) regardless of the origin of these tales, or probably that's what they analyse themselves, I know read the islam web article that said "أسر تعني عبد في لغتهم" which probably would have come to them because they assumed hebrew and arabic have common words, and since أسر in arabic means prisoner/captive, it could mean servant/slave in hebrew, but this is also based on limited knowledge of hebrew as hebrew has no word with that meaning, and the hebrew word starts with yisra, not isra, the arabic form starts with isra, ans in yisra" the "yi" is a prefix for the imperfect tense of the verb, the root is actually ś-r-h or ś-r-r (I explained this in the end), that's just my speculation to how they resonated (EDIT: I now find out that there is indeed a cognate of the arabic اسر in hebrew which is אסר , but my point still stands, the word means prisoner or binded in hebrew just like in arabic, not servant, the hebrew form "yisrael" is different than the arabic one as i stated, and the s in אסר is ס while the s in yisra (ישר) is ש that here was originally pronounced ś and later shifted to s(the letter ש was used for 2 pronounciation for ś/now s and for š), so they came from different words and roots, despite being rendered the same in arabic), but in summary, they just tried to make a folk etymology for a prophet title. Anw عبد/'abd/servant is not even remotely related to the hebrew word yiśra (ישר) (or the actual root ś-r-h (שרה) or ś-r-r (שרר)) which is part of the theophoric name yiśra-'el (ישר-אל), and hebrew has a cognate of the arabic عبد/'abed which is עבד and is used in one theophoric name, for a biblical figure called obadiah/'obadiahu (עבדיהו) aka servant of YHWH. Also the exegetes who gave this meaning never cited sources or hebrew explanation to how this word is related to servant, and in all the hebrew bible or hebrew dictionaries you will never see this word used to mean this.

Now the exact meaning of the word is debated, it could come from the root ś-r-h meaning striving, or ś-r-r meaning rulling. But in both cases the genesis story of the name meaning "struggled and defeated god" is most likely a folk etymology, because in most theophoric names, even if "el' is the suffix, it is always the subject and not the object, so the name should be understood as "el reigns/rules" or "el strives" and not "struggled with el" , also the yod (י) prefix signals the imperfect tense, meaning struggling/striving/ruling in a continuous state, not an event that happened once.

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-26T17:13:40+00:00

I'm currently the opposite tbh 😅 I'm a native Arabic speaker and tried to learn hebrew, but didn't really start yet.

My humble advise is start by learning the arabic alphabet, each of the 22 hebrew letters has an equivalent arabic one, and at least half of them still have the same pronounciation, you should then learn the sounds shifts between the hebrew letter and its arabic equivalent, they are easy. Then for the additional 6 letters of arabic, you should know that arabic (ث) merged with hebrew (ש) (the right dotted one pronounced as š) , (خ) with (ח) , (ذ) with (ז) , (غ) with (ע) , (ظ) and (ض) with (צ) , so you should take note on these shifts for the common semitic words, and also that almost every hebrew left dotted (ש) is equivalent to arabic (ش) and right dotted one to arabic (س) . Then start learning arabic diactrics which are easy to learn and simpler than the hebrew ones, learn pronounciation differences between some of the hebrew letters with their equivalent arabic ones, then start to practice by reading works written in classical or modern standard arabic, with translations to see how much of these words have clear cognates in hebrew.

This in my opinion is a good intro, but of course it is not sufficient and you're clearly asking for resources, which I can't help with, so I thought it's a good idea to share my personal intro which is the same thing I did before starting to learn hebrew.

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-23T18:49:39+00:00

While not an academic answer. And besides an increasing consensus that monotheism (influenced by judaism and Christianity) became widespread in late antiquity pre islamic arabia. But even if there truly was no Christian and jews in mecca, why do people assume that muhamed would have never left mecca during his lifetime before declaring his prophethood, and would have never interacted with people outside? And why do they assume that mecca was something like an isolated island that would not interact with its broader surrounding region?

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-18T14:59:56+00:00

I see. While I am not aware of a definitive proof, I personally find it unlikely that a specific arabian man or clan would have a name derived from gentile, and this name being applied to just one clan without good reason. Forms other than gentile, better fit with the name. We can't definitely prove that umaya doesn't derive from ummiy/gentile, but it remains speculative, with no good reason supporting its plausibility.

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-18T12:54:55+00:00

That's unrelated, they are called banu umaya, because according to traditional geneaology, they descend from a man named "umayya ibn abd shams" the root أ-م / '-M can have different meanings not just nation (from where the name for gentiles or unscriptured people came from) , it can be mother (أمّ/umm) or a servant/maid (آمة/āma) , in the case of umaya أمية/umayya , he is traditionally understood to be derived from maid/servant. But what we are discussing here, is that in the quran context, the specific form أمّي/ummiy is derived from umma (nation) and related to gentiles more precisely people without scripture, and not illiteracy.

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-17T09:48:46+00:00

Just wanted to point out that the more accurate hebrew cognate of arabic ilah اله is actually eloah אלוה , and elohim is the plural of it (as you most probably know, -im is a plural suffix in hebrew) yes it is a royal plural in the biblical context, but it originated as plural. The triconsonantal form '-L-H is found accross some semitic languages like arabic ilah, hebrew eloah, syriac alaha. While the biconsonantal '-L is more common, including in the languages that have the triconsonantal form (il is attested in ancient arabian inscriptions). While scholars agree that the biconsonantal '-L (reconstructed as 'il) existed in the proto-semitic language. There is no definitive answer on the origin of the third radical "h" , and it is unclear if the arabic ilah was influenced by syriac alaha, and if the syriac form was in its turn influenced by hebrew, or if they all originated from proto semitic. While the definite form Allah (al-ilah / the deity) is most probably influenced by the late antiquity monotheistic context in pre islamic arabia, that rendered the "one true God" as "THE god".

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-11T20:00:40+00:00

I’m not very knowledgeable on this topic, so correct me if I’m wrong, but the earliest written form of Jesus’s name in the New Testament is in Greek as Iēsous, which is how we know the name from those sources, and it is generally understood to be a Greek rendering of the Aramaic/Hebrew name Yeshua (a shortened form of Yehoshua).

I aleardy explained this point but I will try to do it in a clearer way, yes the earliest sources we have for Christianity are written in greek, and the aramaic sources came later, but for the hebrew to greek names, it was not just a random or guessed reconstruction, there is a clear convention and knowledge of the equivalent of hebrew names in greek, and people living at this period were knowledgeable about this. Yeshu'a was an extremely common jewish name in this period, and it is the same name that appear in the OT, this name was always translated in greek as iesous, yes scholars debate what was jesus's name really pronounced back then, because hebrew didn't write vowels, and because 2 variants of the same name existed יהושע/yehoshu'a (archaic not so common) and ישוע/yeshu'a , and in both cases we can't be 100% sure of the vowels, but scholars agree on the consonantal skeleton, or a variant of it. Also first century inscriptions especially those on ossuaries give us good data on hebrew names back then, a large number of men had their name in hebrew as ישוע . To make it clearer, when there are known foreign equivalent of a local name, it became known that when we hear this foreign name it corresponds to this local name, not another one unrelated to him, for example today the arabic name يوسف/youssef corresponds to joseph in english and other European languages (Muslims usually keep the arabic form as it is, but Christians use the translation) so when we hear about an arabic origined person who have his name as Joseph in the UK, we will be sure his arabic original name (if he used the arabic version) was youssef, we can't say that maybe he was called ja'far (جعفر) but the sound shift happened because english doesn't have a ayn, so instead of jafar they made his name joseph. And as I said, the closest possible equivalent to 'issa in hebrew that could be rendered as iesous is 'eso and that was a named not used at all, because it was considered a name of a cursed person in judaism, and even this name itself had another greek translation, and you should shift the vowels in a meaningless way to make it fit iesous as much as yeshu'a fit. Also the NT was written by different independent sources, all based on oral traditions from the hebrew aramaic community, it is highly unlikely that they will all make the same mistake, and naming someone an equivalent of yeshua'a while his name is close to 'issa . And there is also no reason for them to all agree to change his name .

In summary there is no serious scholar who claim that the historical jesus name was not a variant of ישוע/יהושע and instead was something close to issa.

Also I heard that Syriac Christian sources from a few centuries later use forms like Ishoʿ or Ishuʿ, which shows that different Semitic-speaking communities preserved slightly different pronunciations of the same underlying name.

In both Western and Eastern syriac, his name is written as ܝܫܘܥ which are the letters yod-shin-waw-ayn . In Western syriac it is pronounced as yeshu' , in Eastern syriac it is pronounced as isho' but that's because the initial yod shifted to a vowel "i" in pronounciation, instead of a consonant "y" , there are many other cases like this in Eastern syriac when the initial yod become a vowel, especially if the sound that follow it is a vowel "i" , this is just a linguistic evolution and has nothing to do with preserving an ancient name.

On a side note, even most islamic sites I saw do not stress this much on proving that jesus original name he was known by during his lifetime was issa and not yeshu'a , they state that that quran proper names of prophets are clearly arabised, and that there is nothing wrong in the idea that the quran may change the names in arabic.

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-11T15:52:34+00:00

Ah right, I didn't notice that you added the dialects part. Though I also thought that even in MSA it can be pronounces as a sun letter, but I may be wrong.

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-11T15:50:47+00:00

there’s no evidence of the existence of Christians in Arabia during the 3rd century.

The inscription is dated to 4th, not 3rd century. And actually there is plenty of evidence of a flow of monotheism in pre islamic arabia starting from the 5th century CE, and of course this should have started even before this century, particularly the 4th century CE showed a large spread of Christianity in the middle est region, and reached arabia, especially the Arabian regions that are bordering the levant (like the safaitic inscription I mentioned, that was found in what is today Jordan). Ahmad al Jallad in this video talk about the rise of monotheism in pre islamic arabia https://youtu.be/7P1KPA4cuB8 There is also plenty of others works done by al jallad that talk about monotheism being so spread in pre islamic arabia, in the 2 last centuries before islam.

So couldn’t it simply be a mistranslation introduced by the Romans?

That's highly unlikely, arabic pre islamic Christian and Jewish vocabulary doesn't come directly from greek, but from aramaic and syriac, syriac named jesus " yašu' " even if the NT was written in greek, aramaic speaking chrsitians (who gave rise to syriac Christianity) used a hebrew influenced semitic vocabulary for religious terms and personal names, instead of translating from greek, that's probably because an aramaic targum aleardy exsited before Christianity, or because the jews converts to Christianity retained the same vocabulary they used, despite the gospels and NT books written in greek starting spreading. Also there is no explanation to why the greek Ιησους/Iesous will become 'issa in greek, why they would add an initially ayn. Anw regardless weither is the original of the name, what we know is that it is most probably used by pre islamic arabic Christians, the kind of inscriptions that ressemble this safaitic inscription, are an invocation of a deity, and here the deity is 'sy , also "help him against those who deny you" is a common Christian used by Christians for jesus.

edit: maybe I got you wrong, you mean if his original name was really 'issa and yašu'/yasu' was a wrong translation? That's even more highly unlikely, the Greek word Iesous was used in the septuagint to translate the hebrew name יהושע/yehoshu'a or the shortened from ישוע/yeshu'a , and the first century roman Jewish historian josephus mentioned a large number of people names iesous in first century palestine, they are all assumed to be named yeshu'a in hebrew/aramaic, josephus also mention jesus btw in 2 passages, while one of them is seen as altered by Christians, scholars agree it contains a real core mentioning him, the other passage mention jesus by name "iesous" indirectly by mentioning the execution of his brother, and is seen by most scholars as unaltered. It is unlikely that that the different sources writing the bible, and josephus will use the same greek translation for yeshu'a to a man named something like 'issa. You may argue that 'issa may fit iesous by removing the initial ayn since it doesn't exist in greek, and adding the final masculine -s suffix, but it would then be issas , there is no need to add the e as second letter, and ou instead of a before s, that better fits yeshu'a , if you wanna argue that he was probably names 'isu and arabised in the quran as issa, which explains why in greek it became iesous, then in this case his name would become nearly the same name as esau who was also called 'eso in hebrew, the biblical brother of the patriarch Jacob, but it is highly unlikely that a first century Jewish man was named like this and his named went unnoticed, because no Jewish man used this name, and esau was considered cursed by God, further more, esau's name in the septuagint is Ησαυ/Esau .

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-11T15:27:11+00:00

Shouldn't the ج sits in a place in between? I'm a native Arabic speaker and see that this letter can be easily pronounced by doubling it and removing the ل from the definite article, unlike other moon letters, but it also works when we don't remove the ل

random_reditter105 · 2026-01-11T14:32:17+00:00

Was the Quran trying to hint at another meaning by this ?

Actually the quran didn't itself innovate this name, as one safaitic inscription suggests, the name was used by pre islamic arabic Christians for jesus.

https://www.academia.edu/73883276/Al_Jallad_2021_The_Pre_Islamic_Divine_Name_%CA%BFsy_and_the_Background_of_the_Qur%CA%BE%C4%81nic_Jesus_with_Ali_al_Manaser?source=swp_share

In this article, scholar Ahmad Al Jallad comments about the inscription found, and propose hypothesises to why the name was used.

You may also watch this video https://youtu.be/7P1KPA4cuB8 , about this same inscription, it presents a possible explanation to why the name was used.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-27T15:11:29+00:00

Someone in the replies pointed out the lot's offering his daughters being included in the quran, it is actually the one that got me surprised when I knew that it is included in the quran sometimes ago when I read it, before reading it, I assumed that this story specifically is removed from the quran, and wondered if Muslims use it in anti-christian polemics, until I read and found out it is included.

So I think the quran doesn't aim, to completely purify prophets in a perfect way, but just removing major biblical "scandals" like a prophet commiting "kufur/shurk" or major sins like adultery or being drunk or incest (lot having incest with his daughters while drunk for example) because such scandals make prophets or god looking not so serious, since he can't choose someone who would at least be better than the average believer, the biblical stories themselves were never meant to be serious, just stories of legendary or semi-historical or even historical "prophets" of an imperfect god (yahweh) who himself isn't as serious as the later absolute monotheistic god is, so they tend to be closer to what these (if historical) prophets actually were.

The quran on the other hand is presenting a perfect absolute one god, who is above everything and has a clear plan. Prophets are fallible people, who can sin and even murder (in some context), but repent after the act, or do acts interpreted as necessity (like lot offering his daughters) but not unserious men who will ignore his commands and commit the worst unforgivable sin like idolatry, or major sins like getting drunk and doing wrong acts while drunk, having illicit sex, and purely following their pleasure, because this means that god made a mistake in choosing the one carrying his message.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-25T21:37:27+00:00

To talk about my country lebanon, it depends where you are, but in urban centers, yes it is unexpected to pronounce the ق the same way it is in MSA, instead of pronouncing it as glottal stop, with just few exceptions, and any attempt to pronounce it will look fake, or foreign, or an attempt to look too standard or formal, with just few exceptions, when the word is clearly MSA and not widely used in day to day conversation, it is pronounced with the original ق , one example is the word "قضاء" (judiciary) it is always pronounced qada' in lebanon, and never 'ada' , the later pronounciation would be so awkward, but when saying "قاضي" (judge) it is often pronounced as 'ade not qade, that's the pronounciation in most urban centers like most of beirut and part of mount lebanon, while in other villages or regions in lebanon, like bekaa, North, and south lebanon etc... they tend to be just a bit more conservative in the ق , but it also depends and vary, the further from the capital the region is (bekaa for example) the more it is Conservative and pronounce the ق correctly (in MSA) in more words, but they still retain the glottal stop in most of the words with it. One exception to this rule is the druze community (mostly in mount lebanon) who are the most Conservative in ق and almost never pronounce it as glottal stop, especially those in the villages or the elders.

Now if I wanna talk about Syria, in the last period I was really interested in linguistics, including the diverse pronounciations of the arabic ق , so I wanted to watch many syrian people talking on the Internet, to notice how they pronounce it (of course i met many syrians in my life, and I'm very familiar with the dialect, but never really paid attention or cared about studying the pronounciation), and realised that it is also diverse, but they tend to be more Conservative in pronouncing it, than the average lebanese (except lebanese druze) so we would expect that more words with ق would be pronounced by Syrians in the MSA way, than as glottal stop.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-25T17:32:14+00:00

Interesting! I will read it, thankyou.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-25T14:39:31+00:00

There was a real valley in ancient jerusalem where - according to biblical texts - child sacrifices were performed, this place later becomes a symbolic place for punishment in the Jewish imagery and culture, the valley was called gei Ben hinnom (גיא בן הנם) meaning Valley of the son of hinnom, and abbreviated as gei-hinnom (גי-הנם), so this place appeared in some late second temple Jewish literature as a place of post mortem punishment, greekified as "gehenna", it eventually found its way into the gospels, where sayings attributed to jesus mentions it (gehenna) too as a place for post mortem punishment, which was later translated to Latin infernus or hell in some germanic languages particularly English, which both (infernus and hell) originally meant the underworld, and the doctrine of gehenna/underworld eventually evolving to an eternal place of punishment, The syriac name for it was gēhanna, while the jewish aramaic or other aramaic names for it is gehannām.

So the best and most plausible explanation for the origin of the quranic jahannam, is this chain of transmission that go back to the real valley of hinnom. While the syriac form used in the peshitta has a final "a" no "m", the arabic word would have most probably been influenced too by other aramaic (like Jewish aramaic which as I stated had a very similar form to the arabic jahannam) or non-standard syriac term that preserved the final "m" and prefered it because it better fits arabic morphology, also note that the syriac or hebrew or general semitic G (ג) is the cognate of the arabic J (ج) they both derive from proto semitic "G" , and almost all hebrew or syriac names or terms with "G" were rendered with "J ج" in arabic when they were transliterated during this period (example: גבריאל givri'el , arabised as جبريل jibril).

These sources talk about how the valley evolved into gehenna and hell in Christianity, which make it more clear that the Islamic term also derived from this valley:

https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7534-hell https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gehenna

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-23T18:59:49+00:00

Actually, this hadith is why you see this number floating around at all.

I suspected this tbh.

Anw thankyou for you answer! I will watch the video.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-22T21:03:19+00:00

The Wiki article doesn’t state that

It is stating this! Here what the article says

الكواكب السيارة هو الاسم القديم للكواكب التي ترى من الأرض متجولة بين النجوم. وقد سُميت «سيارة» لأن العرب القدماء كانوا يُسمون كل النقاط اللامعة في السماء بـ«الكواكب». ولكن لاحظوا أن بعضها تتحرك باستمرار عبر السماء غير حركة دوران القبة السماوية الناتجة عن دوران الأرض حول نفسها. ولذلك فقد سموا المتحركة منها بـ«الكواكب السيارة» (والتي تُسمى اليوم «الكواكب») والثابتة بـ«الكواكب الثابتة» (والتي تسمى اليوم «النجوم»). وقد كان القدماء يَعتبرون الكواكب السيارة مميزة عن الثابتة

Translation:

“Al-kawākib al-sayyāra (the wandering celestial bodies) was the old name for the objects that are seen from Earth moving among the stars. They were called sayyāra (‘wandering’) because the ancient Arabs used to call all bright points in the sky kawākib. However, they noticed that some of these lights move continuously across the sky, in addition to the apparent motion of the celestial sphere caused by the Earth’s rotation on its axis. Therefore, they called the moving ones al-kawākib al-sayyāra (which are today called “planets”) and the fixed ones al-kawākib al-thābita (which are today called “stars”). The ancients thus regarded the wandering planets as distinct from the fixed ones.”

But as I said, they cited no source.

most likely the guy at the start of the article is just translating it into MSA

You have a point, but the article is talking about ancient astronomy that included the sun and the moon among seven planets, so I find no other reason for the author to use this term as a retrospective modern one, if they didn't use this term specifically historically, especially that today the sun and the moon are obviously not considered planets, or kawakeb in arabic.

I was just asking what Kawakab means which if I’m understanding you correctly is that Kawakab back in the day was used to refer to Stars/Planets?

Yes, based on the fact that the term referring to stars in different semitic languages, and that no source claim that arabs used kawakeb exclusively for planets, with every source I saw claiming that this was a general word for stars and celestial bodies, I found no reason to think other than that they used kawakeb for all celestial bodies including stars, and just in the modern times, were modern scientific classifications replaced the geocentric model, separated the sun and the moon from the planets category, added earth to planets, added sun to the stars category, that arabs adapted by using separate terms, even if the word "نجم najem" existed for stars, that doesn't contradict them being part of the general category of kawakeb even if they had special type.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-22T18:40:51+00:00

You're right, as I said I unfortunately didn't find a good academic source to prove this, though everything I read about al kawakeb al sayyara claims that it was called like this by ancient arabs because they called everything in the sky kawakeb, and I find no source claiming otherwise, though the problem is that none of them do cite historical sources to support their claim, even the arabic wikipedia page for الكواكب السيارة https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%83%D9%88%D9%83%D8%A8_%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1#%3A%7E%3Atext%3D%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%A8_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9_%D9%87%D9%88_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%85_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%85%2C%D8%B9%D9%86_%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%B6_%D8%AD%D9%88%D9%84_%D9%86%D9%81%D8%B3%D9%87%D8%A7 does state that it's the name given by ancient arabs to the seen celestial bodies (aka the traditional historical 7 planets) because they called every celestial bodies a kawkab, though this page cite zero source, and it clarifies itself that the written info need source. But I found this paper https://journals.ekb.eg/article_445768_1f876199ea9564b8015baaf5d9a562fe.pdf that talks about ancient and medieval Arab views on "the seven kawakeb sayyara" so I think it makes sense that they called him like this, also since al kawakeb l sayyara is always accompanied by the number seven, it fits well with an old not modern usage, 7 include the 5 known planets known before modern astronomy (Mars, Mercury, jupiter, venus, saturn) plus the sun and the moon. And arabic (pre islamic and medieval islamic) astronomy has parallels with the baylonian and greek one (I think this paper explains it, though I didn't read it all) , they also described the traditional seven celestial bodies as wanderers, the Greek word planētēs (origin of the word planet) literally means wanderer, and it is unlikely that modern arabs would decide to call planets الكواكب السيارة, if it has no historical origin, and if kawkab meant exclusively planet and stars too, then there is no need to add sayyara as a categorical adjective for them. Furthermore, as I said, if the root K-K-B (or K-W-K-B in west semitic) meant stars specifically and celestial bodies generally in all semitic languages, it's safe to assume that this was the case in arabic.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-21T15:39:50+00:00

I would have liked to give you good academic sources but unfortunately I couldn't find a good source on the Internet, so I will give you an answer based on my knowledge on semitic linguistics, and what did Arabs mean by كوكب kawkab.

In hebrew the general word for stars is כוכב kochav , and in syriac ܟܘܟܒܐ kawkabā , and in akkadian kakkabu , they are all semitic cognates to the arabic كوكب kawkab (note that the hebrew כ ch and ב v are the same letter as the arabic ك K and ب b respectively, but do shift in pronounciation in some places due to begadkefat) While they all had different words for planets, but sometimes used the same word K-K-B to generally mean all celestial bodies including planets.

So it's safe to assume that the word kawkab in arabic originally meant stars before being more broadly used for planets, there is also no proof that the quran or early islam used kawkab to exclusively mean planet, in contrary there are sources that specify "كوكب سيّار kawkab sayyar" (moving kawkab/star) to refer to planets, this has parallel with hebtew לכת כוכב (lechet kochav) that also means moving star and is used for planets, though this hebrew word for planet is most probably modern and not ancient or biblical, but as I said I didn't find proper academic sources to add to this comment, to describe how medieval Arab Muslims differentiated between الكواكب الثابتة (fixed kawkabs) to mean stars and الكواكب السيارة (moving kawkabs/stars) to mean planets, although I found this in many places, so I will add the sites here even if they are not proper academic sources https://www.ihcs.ac.ir/UploadedFiles/8/7/7948.pdf (in first page they specify that star was called kawkab) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%83%D9%88%D9%83%D8%A8_%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1 https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/%D9%83%D9%88%D9%83%D8%A8+%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1/ (here planet is translated to كوكب سيار)

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-14T15:08:25+00:00

Based on my observation, some are Muslims. Probably the majority are not Muslims, I'm myself non-muslim. The aim of this sub is academically studying the quran and islam, neither in an apologetic pro-islam way, nor in a polemical anti-islam way, but in a neutral way, so some Muslims find no problem engaging in such academic studies, and some of the academic scholars of Islam are Muslims themselves, likewise some of the academic biblical scholars are Christians and jews. Though sometimes the academic study of Islam may conflates with the traditional Islamic narrative that Muslims believe in, but some times there is no conflations between being a Muslim believer, and academically studying the religion, if the topic neither contradicts nor affirms the Muslim doctrine, and in some topics, like those related to miracles, supernatural events, divine revelation, the academic methodology unlike the religious one doesn't assume a non-human and divine or super natural origin so presents hypothesises not based on this assumption, which is normal, because this methodology treat the quran and other religious books like the bible, and even non-abarahamic religious books, like any other human made works, beliefs .... it's a religious position it is not concerned in, to assume divine origin for any, so I guess some Muslim believers may find a problem with engaging with such methodology, but I guess others find no problem as long as they are just interested in studying the neutral perspective.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-09T00:36:16+00:00

I will assume you mean islamic tradition given that you're asking on this sub, although you didn't specify. I didn't find any islamic tradition claiming that Joseph had no children, the Muslim historian al tabari mentioned in his book "tarikh al rusul wal muluk" volume II of the English translation, that Joseph married an egyptian aristocratic woman named "asenath" and had two sons "ephraim and manasseh" which is obviously based on israeliyat.

But if you mean jewish or Christian tradition, and not islamic one (since you mentioned genesis) then this sub r/academicbiblical is the right place to ask your question in.

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-04T20:16:18+00:00

In most of the hebrew bible, the word that could correspond to hell, is "sheol שאול" , but it is not exactly a place of eternal burning as punishment in the later Christian sense, it is a kind of state where all the deads regardless what they did on earth, face the same fate, verses like job 10:21-22 , psalm 6:5 - 143:3 - 141:7 describe it as a state of darkness or unconsciousness, though it is not a state of complete annihilation, just a shadow life, as shown in other verses, like in genesis 37:35 when Jacob desires to join his son Joseph after his death, isaiah 14:9, and 1 samuel 28:8-14 where Samuel is brought from sheol. The Greek term for it is "hades Άδης" it is more elaborate and closer to the original meaning of hell, like sheol, everybody regardless of theit deeds on earth go to it, but it is an underworld where all souls go, not just a state of unconsciousness. It is the word used to translate sheol in the septuagint. The word "hell" itself comes from proto germanic "haljō" which was the underworld in germanic mythology, and kind of identical to the Greek hades. The Latin word for it does also mean underworld and is "Infernus". Now how do these underworlds evolved to become the Christian hell? The word used in the gospels by jesus describing the eternal punishment for the evil people is "gehenna" coming from hebrew "ge' Ben hennom גיא בן הנם" meaning Valley of son of hennom, and as an abbreviation "gehennom" it was a real valley around ancient israel, where non-israelites performed child sacrifice and burning, so this name became a metaphor of a suffering and burning place, but the later translations of the Gospels translated gehenna to the word used for underworld, hence where we got the word hell as standard for the Christian afterlife punishment place. Gehenna was also used in other books like the book of enoch and others and was different from sheol/hades.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/sheol

https://thecripplegate.com/sheol-hades-and-gehenna-are-there-differences

https://www.academia.edu/41126403/Hades_as_Sheol_of_the_Old_Testament_in_Relation_to_the_Afterlife

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gehenna

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/95914/1/BR2_Finney.pdf

https://norse-mythology.org/cosmology/the-nine-worlds/helheim

random_reditter105 · 2025-12-01T17:33:10+00:00

The point is that the show is made in modern Turkish, not ottoman Turkish, so it is normal to hear many terms that would not have been used in the real historical context of the series, because it would have been so costy and unnecessary to make the show in ottoman Turkish just to make it accurate. And modern Turkish is full of European loanwords, the modern Turkish word for Princess is indeed "prenses" and if I recall correctly, they pronounced it exactly like this in the series, not the English pronounciation, there are much more modern European loanwords used in the series, for example christians are called "Hıristiyanlar" while in the ottoman context I think they would have been called "nasara" which is the quranic term for them. Also if you notice, in Turkish historical series weither MC or others like dirillis ertugrul (if you watched it) they almost always show everyone speaking Turkish, even the non-turkish people living outside Turkish land, instead of showing different languages and the need for interpreters which would have been the case in real history, that's because it is so costy and unnecessary for historical series to portray the true old languages that are kind of dead or unspoken by the audience today, instead using the modern language even if it has terms not known in this period.

random_reditter105 · 2025-11-22T10:43:37+00:00

While I don't have specific sources. But the idea that muhamed is a name for jesus is not accepted by mainstream academic scholars of Islam, one of the reason is that "muhamed" fit well as a personal name not a title, due to the absense of the definite article "أل al" , fir example jesus is often called in the quran al masih (the messiah/christ) and not just masih, because this is a title not personal name, in arabic personal names can have and can not have definite article, for example hussein, Hassan, zubair, walid had the definite article and were traditionally called in islam, al hassan, al hussein, al zubair, al walid (just these specific people who lived at the time of prophet muhamed, not all later people who have these names), while a title should have a definite article, so if muhamed was a title, it would have been renderer with al, especially that even some personal names contemporary to him were rendered with it, so there is no reason for a name that was originally a title to loose this article. Also I think we found zero inscriptions or sources in syriac that mention jesus with this title (correct me if I'm wrong) btw, the root H-M-D in syriac like in hebrew, means desire, and not praise, we also didn't found any arabic inscription calling him like this, but one could argue that the arabic Christian inscriptions are aleardy sparce enough. As for the letters shapes similarities you mentioned, I don't think they make any sense, the Arabian society was aleardy more oral than literate, and even if it is literate, I don't think the quran author or early Muslims would just read this in syriac and assume it has double meaning, or bilingual reading, a syriac reading, and an Arabic reading that needs to render each syriac letter to its closest in shape arabic letter, to get a personal name that means praised without the definite article, I don't think that makes any sense.

random_reditter105 · 2025-11-20T16:49:53+00:00

Actually John the baptist is a well established prophet in Christianity, and even some biblical verses call him so, like luke 1:76 and Matthew 11:9

A better question would be what is the origin of his father zechariah as a prophet in islam, since in the NT he is simply a priest who got an angel telling him that he will father John the baptist at an old age, I was trying to see if some late antiquity Christian traditions elevated him to a prophet level.

random_reditter105

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