Christians often make the claim that “Muslims worship a different God to the God of the Bible”, that Allah is not the God that the patriarchs believed in.

In response to this, the point can be made that the name of God in the Bible is Eloh(im), which is the Hebrew equivalent of Allah. The entire first chapter of Genesis uses this name exclusively.

Christians then make the claim that Yahweh is the real name of the Biblical God, and that Eloh(im) is just a generic term meaning deity/deities, but the word Eloh is used in the Bible grammatically in most places as a proper noun.

Also, the Bible itself states that Abraham (pbuh) and the other patriarchs did not know the name Yahweh.

And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Yahweh:

And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh was I not known to them. (Exodus 6:2-3)

In fact, if we look at the Pentateuch (Torah), the 5 books they ascribe to Moses (pbuh), each story in these books is told twice. Once with the name Eloh and then again with the name Yahweh. It’s almost as if there was an original text using one name for God.

And then someone came along and duplicated the text, inserting the other name for God and splicing the two together. Biblical scholars call these two different narratives the Elohist and the Yahwist narratives.

So, which one of these narratives was the original? The Elohist or the Yahwist? Christians will of course tell us it’s the Yahwist, since they want to make the case that Yahweh is the real name of God.

There’s actually a clue that is embedded in the text of the Pentateuch itself. Theophoric names – these are names that include the name of God in them, and they are fairly common throughout the Bible. Conveniently they are divided into two main categories, those that use the name El (shortened form of Eloh) and those that use the name Yah (shortened form of Yahweh).

The Old Testament (The Jewish Bible) consists of 3 main sections, The Pentateuch, which tells the story of the Hebrews, from the beginning of creation until the time of Moses (pbuh), The Prophets (Nevi’im), telling the stories of various major prophets and, The Books (Khetuvim) which contain the Psalms and stories of various other minor prophets. The entire book is known as the TaNaKh, which is an abbreviation of the names of the 3 sections, Torah, Neviim, KHetuvim.

Throughout the entire text of the Pentateuch, not a single name based on the God Yahweh exists. All theophoric names are based on the name Eloh. The first book of the Neviim is Joshua (Yahoshua), which is a name based on Yahweh.

Clearly the name Yahweh was never used by the Hebrews for their entire history until after the time of Moses (pbuh). The Jewish scribes after this then went back and inserted this name into the 5 books ascribed to Moses (pbuh).

There’s no conceivable way that a people could be believing in a god, Yahweh for thousands of years, and never once use his name in their names, instead using the name of another god Eloh. And then all of a sudden after several thousand years they start inserting that name into their names.

Clearly the name Yahweh was not in use amongst the Israelites until after or around the time of Moses (pbuh). And this means that the passages of the Pentateuch that reference Yahweh are later fabrications and insertions and not part of the original text.

A clear sign for those who are capable of understanding and reasoning.

Allah knows Best.