Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The word “God” (aka Yahweh/Elohim, Theos, Allah) is considered to refer to the same entity in the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and more recently, the Baha’i Faith. This paper puts this assumption to the test. Using corpus linguistics (CL) and discourse analysis (DA) methodologies, (McEnery & Baker, 2015), this paper contrasts specific textual references to lexical items that refer to “God” in the King James Version of the Old Testament and New Testament (cf. Oosting, 2016), in Yousef Ali’s translation of the Qur’an (cf. Al Ghamdi, 2015), and in the authorized English translation of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, Baha’ullah’s book of laws (see Danesh, 2015). The paper highlights areas of convergence and divergence in these scripture-specific discursive constructions of “God.” The paper concludes with a discussion of potential reasons for differences in terms of strategic intertextuality (Pregill, 2007). Al Ghamdi, S. A. (2015). Critical and Comparative Evaluation of the English Translations of the Near-Synonymous Divine Names in the Quran. University of Leeds, Danesh, R. (2015). Some Reflections on the Structure of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. The Journal of Baha’i Studies, 25(3), 81. McEnery, A., & Baker, P. (2015). Corpora and discourse studies: Integrating discourse and corpora: Springer. Oosting, R. (2016). 11 Computer-Assisted Analysis of Old Testament Texts: The Contribution of the wivu to Old Testament Scholarship. In The Present State of Old Testament Studies in the Low Countries (pp. 192-209): Brill. Pregill, M. E. (2007). The Hebrew Bible and the Quran: the problem of the Jewish ‘influence’on Islam. Religion Compass, 1(6), 643-659.