One God across Three Scriptures: A Linguistic, Scriptural, and Rational Case

Thesis

If there is only one Necessary Reality, the uncaused cause who sustains all that exists, then sincere worship that terminates upon this One is not divided by language, tribe, era, or canon. The Qur’an calls to this truth with stubborn clarity. The Torah proclaims it at the heart of Israel’s creed. Jesus echoes it as the first and greatest command. Disputes arise over interpretation, over later theology, and over how to read history, yet the primary referent of worship is one. This essay sets out three lines of argument that converge on that claim. First, the linguistic family of divine names across Semitic tongues points to a single referent, not rival deities. Second, the scriptures themselves, when read at the level of core claims about God’s essence and rights, speak with one voice on divine oneness, transcendence, justice, mercy, creation, providence, and judgment. Third, reason shows that the God demanded by revelation is the same God demanded by metaphysics, which leaves no room for many “ultimate” beings, since ultimacy cannot be multiplied without ceasing to be ultimate.

The language of God’s name across Semitic cousins

The names that appear in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic are not competitors; they are close cousins that carry a shared intuition about the Most High. In Hebrew, El and Elohim designate God; in the Shema, Israel is commanded to confess that YHWH is one. In Aramaic and Syriac, the common term is Elah or Alaha. In Arabic, the generic term for a deity is ilāh, and the form used to denote the One worthy of worship is Allāh, which most scholars read as al-ilāh contracted in natural Arabic speech. The consonantal skeleton that carries the idea of divinity is the same family root across these tongues. The languages differ but the conceptual centre remains. Arabic speaking Christians and Jews long before Islam used Allāh in prayer and scripture, just as Arabic Bibles do to this day. A change in phonetics is not a change in referent; when a Samaritan speaks of Elaha and an Arab speaks of Allāh and a Hebrew speaks of Elohim, they are not naming rival gods, they are naming the One. The Qur’an does not deny the ancient name YHWH; it simply does not replicate it as a liturgical token, and this restraint accords with the long Jewish habit of reverent avoidance in vocalising that name. Instead, the Qur’an fills the field with attributes that map to the biblical God, the Living, the Everlasting, the Holy, the Mighty, the Wise, the Just, the Compassionate, the Forgiving.

A further linguistic thread strengthens the kinship. The Qur’anic name Al-Rahmān, the All-Merciful, sits on the Semitic root R-H-M, which in Hebrew yields the rich field of mercy and compassion, the language of divine womb-like care. This is not accidental echo, it is family resemblance. Names shift with dialects; essences do not.

What the scriptures say at the core about God

Strip away later accretions and polemics and listen first to the core claims. The Torah speaks plainly. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” This is not merely a count of how many, it is a demand of allegiance, a claim that only One is worthy of unshared worship. The prophets warn against idols, against images, against trusting the work of human hands, and against turning revelation into licence for domination. God is creator of the heavens and the earth, giver of the law, judge of nations, defender of the orphan and widow, and holy beyond the image of any creature.

Jesus confirms this centre when asked about the first command; he recites the Shema and binds love of God to love of neighbour. He prays to the Father, distinguishes his sent servanthood from the One who sent him, and teaches that only God is absolutely good. Whatever later councils will say, the recorded teaching places pure monotheism in the mouth and life of Jesus, coherent with the Torah he came to confirm, correct, and fulfil through obedience.

The Qur’an takes this same axis and restores it to the front and centre of human accountability. “Say, He is God, One; God, the Ever-Sufficient; He neither begets nor is begotten; and none is comparable to Him.” “God, there is no deity except Him, the Living, the Sustainer.” “Your God and our God is one, and to Him we submit.” The Qur’an calls the People of the Book to a common word, that we worship none but God and associate none with Him and take none as lords apart from God. It affirms the sending of Torah and Gospel as light and guidance in their time, and it positions itself as a guard over previous revelation, not as a rival deity, but as a corrective measure against forgetfulness and faction.

On attributes the consonance is striking. Creator from nothing, sovereign over history, speaker who commands and is obeyed, judge who weighs deeds, merciful who forgives the penitent, near to the broken hearted, yet utterly transcendent over His creation. The Qur’an denies that any likeness can contain Him, just as the Torah forbids image making for worship. The Bible proclaims that the heavens cannot contain Him, and the Qur’an proclaims that vision comprehends Him not, yet He comprehends all vision, and He is the Subtle, the Aware. These are not portraits of rival gods; they are triangulations around the same infinite horizon.

Names and the divine Name

A frequent worry is that the Qur’an does not preserve the tetragrammaton, and therefore it must be speaking of another god. Yet the Torah itself witnesses to a complex pedagogy in God’s self-disclosure, where the divine Name is progressively known through acts and attributes. “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name YHWH I was not made known to them,” says God to Moses, which is not a literal denial that the term was ever heard, but a claim that the depth of its meaning was unveiled through the exodus event. The point is not the phonetic form; it is the self-revelation in history that teaches who God is. The Qur’an takes precisely this path. It binds God’s reality to acts that disclose His character, creation as sign, rescue as sign, provision as sign, judgment as sign, prophetic truthfulness as sign. It gives a treasury of beautiful names that disclose facets of His being, and in doing so it honours the biblical pattern that names are windows into essence, not talismans. To insist that a different token undercuts identity is to confuse label with reality.

Jesus between scriptures

There is no serious dispute that the Qur’an speaks of Jesus with reverence and weight, and that it refuses to worship him. The New Testament as a library is complex; at its centre stands a man of prayer who submits to the Father, who teaches in parables, who performs signs by God’s leave, who insists on sincerity, justice, and mercy, and who locates salvation in doing the will of the One who sent him. The Qur’an agrees on all these points; it calls Jesus a word and a spirit from God, born of a miracle, sinless, a sign to the worlds, and a servant who never commanded that people take him and his mother as gods. If one insists that later doctrinal developments about essence and person are the boundary line of whether two communities worship the same God, then language will forever divide what scripture itself keeps joined. If instead one returns to the command Jesus recited, the unity reappears. Worship the One completely, serve Him sincerely, do not trade the command of God for the tradition of men, and do not mistake a messenger for the Sender. On this axis, the Qur’an is not replacing Israel’s God or the God Jesus worshipped; it is calling all people back to Him.

A rational consolidation

Reason adds its witness. If God is the Necessary Existent, then He is one, without partner in ultimacy. Two necessary beings would have to be distinct in some differentiating feature; if the distinction is essential, each lacks what the other has and neither is absolute; if the distinction is accidental, then both depend on some prior cause that confers that difference and neither is necessary. Multiplicity at the summit collapses under analysis. The God who grounds being and value cannot share that grounding. Therefore, where sincere minds terminate their worship on the One who is not dependent, not embodied, not bounded by space and time, not composite, not contingent, the mind is aiming at the same final referent, however languages differ and however revelations are weighed.

Common objections and clear replies

Is Allāh a different god because the Qur’an rejects the Trinity.
The Qur’an rejects confusing God with His servants and denies that God begets or is begotten; this is a boundary drawn to protect the first command. The Torah crowns the oneness of God, and Jesus recites that same crown. Later Trinitarian metaphysics sought to guard monotheism while speaking of Father, Son, and Spirit, yet the pastoral outcome in many communities has been worship that leans toward a personified intermediary. The Qur’an reads the danger plainly and calls people back to unshared worship. A call to purify tawḥīd does not invent a new deity; it repairs allegiance to the One.

Is Allāh a pagan moon god because Arabs had idols.
Every prophet arose among people who had lapsed into idolatry. The presence of idols around a sanctuary does not define the One who purifies it. The Qur’an is relentless in its attack on the gods of stone and story and the systems that empower them. It presents Allāh as the maker of sun and moon, subduer of the stars, and the One who taught Abraham to reject the heavenly bodies precisely because they set and change. A moon god could never be the author of a scripture that condemns worship of the moon. This objection fails at the first reading.

Is the absence of the tetragrammaton decisive.
The Torah itself shows that essence precedes pronunciation. The prophets often invoke titles and attributes rather than the four letters. Reverence led many not to vocalise the Name. The Qur’an follows the path of attribute, act, and command; its doctrine of God is congruent with biblical monotheism without reproducing a specific vocal form.

Do the scriptures really affirm one God together.
Yes. The Shema declares divine oneness. Jesus recites the Shema as the first command, binds salvation to doing the will of the One, and prays to that One. The Qur’an declares God is One, that there is none like unto Him, that He does not beget, that He has no partner in rule, and that He forgives and guides whom He wills. These are not rival portraits.

A map of shared doctrine

• Creator and sustainer
  Genesis begins with creation by divine command. The Psalms sing of providence. The Qur’an repeats that God says “Be” and it is, that He holds up the heavens without pillars that you see, that every provision is by His decree.

• Holiness and transcendence
  The Temple pedagogy in the Torah teaches that the Holy cannot be trivialised. The prophets warn against images and explain that God is not like creation. The Qur’an takes the same line: nothing is like Him, yet He is nearer than the jugular vein in knowledge and care, which preserves transcendence while affirming nearness without mingling essences.

• Justice and mercy
  Abraham argues for mercy upon the righteous. David repents and is forgiven. Jesus teaches that the Father loves the contrite and that mercy triumphs over empty ritual. The Qur’an crowns God as the Most Merciful and the Most Just and binds mercy to repentance and repair.

• Revelation and command
  Moses receives law. The prophets call to covenant fidelity. Jesus deepens the law by bringing its inward meaning to the surface. The Qur’an sends guidance that confirms what remains true, corrects what has been distorted, and calls to sincerity without priestly gatekeeping.

• Judgment and hope
  The Day of the Lord is a constant note in the Hebrew Bible. Jesus warns of a coming reckoning. The Qur’an details resurrection, judgment, recompense, and the promise that no soul will be wronged.

This is one creed sung in three tongues.

Why this matters

It matters because men have used difference of vocabulary and canon to divide those who should stand shoulder to shoulder in resisting idolatry of state, market, tribe, blood, celebrity, and self. It matters because the command to love God wholly cannot be obeyed if one worships a projection of one’s group. It matters because the children of Abraham have a duty to honour truth wherever God has preserved it and to relinquish what human hands have inserted. It matters because the world strains under the weight of many new idols, and the ancient remedy is still the only one that works. Remember God alone, submit to Him alone, treat His servants with justice and mercy, and guard the spark He breathed into you from every egregore that demands your attention as worship.

A closing invitation

Let the Hebrew speaker say Elohim and tremble, let the Christian say God and mean the One whom Jesus worshipped, let the Muslim say Allāh and bow. Let each read his scripture with honesty and repent of the ways his community has replaced revelation with habit and hierarchy. Let all refuse to make a man into a god or to reduce God to an emblem of a faction. If there is only one Source, then humility before that Source is the bridge. The Qur’an gives a simple sentence that binds the bridge together. “Our God and your God is one, and to Him we submit.”

That is not an evasion; it is the centre.