The Aramaic and Syriac branch of the West Semitic divine name — the determinate form "the God," carried from the Aramaic chapters of Daniel and Ezra into the Peshitta, and standing one step from Arabic al-ilāh, Allah.
Eloha, Elaha, Alaha — these are transliteration variants converging on a single Aramaic/Syriac word built from the same triliteral root, ʾ-l-h, that gives Hebrew its El, Eloah, and Elohim. This site is not a duplicate of a Hebrew-focused reference; it follows the word specifically through its Aramaic and Syriac life — the language family that carried it into the Aramaic sections of Daniel and Ezra, into the Peshitta Bible, and into Syriac Christian liturgy.
For the Hebrew term's usage in Job and its Golden Dawn Kabbalistic association with Tiferet, see eloah.cc, a related but distinct site in this reference network.
Aramaic אלה (ʾlh) is cognate with Hebrew אלה and Arabic ʾlh — the same consonantal root that underlies "god" across Northwest and Central Semitic languages. Aramaic's absolute-state noun is elah ("a god"); its emphatic/determinate state adds the suffix -ā, producing elāhā — literally "the god," functioning much like a definite article fused onto the noun.
Biblical Aramaic favors elāh / elāhā; later Syriac (Classical Aramaic's eastern literary dialect) contracts and rounds this toward alāhā. The shift from Aramaic's e-vowel to Syriac's a-vowel is a regular dialectal development, not a different word — the same reason Arabic's cognate ilāh ("a god") becomes al-ilāh → Allah ("the god") through its own definite article.
Two portions of the Hebrew Bible switch from Hebrew into Aramaic mid-text: Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, and Daniel 2:4b–7:28. In both, the divine name regularly appears as elah or its determinate form elaha.
| Reference | Aramaic | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Daniel 2:47 | אֱלָהּ אֱלָהִין | "God of gods" — Nebuchadnezzar's acclamation after Daniel interprets the dream |
| Daniel 3:25 | בַר־אֱלָהִין | "a son of the gods," describing the figure in the furnace |
| Daniel 6:20 | אֱלָהָא חַיָּא | "the living God" — Darius calling to Daniel at the lion's den |
| Ezra 5:1 | אֱלָהּ יִשְׂרָאֵל | "the God of Israel," in the account of the Temple's rebuilding |
| Jeremiah 10:11 | אֱלָהַיָּא | The Bible's single Aramaic verse embedded in an otherwise Hebrew book |
Occurrence counts and glosses follow standard critical editions (BHS) and Aramaic lexica (e.g. Vogt's Lexicon Linguae Aramaicae); English wording above is a working gloss, not a quoted translation.
The Peshitta — the standard Bible of Syriac Christianity, Old and New Testament — renders "God" throughout as ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ, Alaha. Its most quoted instance is the opening of John's Gospel:
ܘܡܸܠܬ݂ܵܐ ܐܝܼܬ݂ܵܘܗܝ ܗ݈ܘܵܐ ܠܘܵܬ݂ ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ ܘܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ ܐܝܼܬ݂ܵܘܗܝ ܗ݈ܘܵܐ ܗ݈ܘ ܡܸܠܬ݂ܵܐ John 1:1, Peshitta — "and the Word was with Alaha, and Alaha was the Word" (gloss)
A minority position within some English-speaking Syriac Christian circles — often called Peshitta primacy — holds that the Peshitta's New Testament preserves the original composition rather than a translation from Greek. This is a fringe view within mainstream New Testament scholarship, which treats the Peshitta as an early and valuable Syriac translation, not the autograph. Both the linguistic value of the Peshitta and the primacy debate are real; this site reports the position without adjudicating it.
Alaha remains the standing term for "God" in Syriac Orthodox, Church of the East (East Syriac / "Nestorian"), Maronite, and Chaldean Catholic liturgy today, and in the everyday speech of Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christian communities.
| Language | Form | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | אֱלוֹהַּ / אֱלֹהִים | Eloah / Elohim — "God" / plural-of-majesty form |
| Biblical Aramaic | אֱלָהּ / אֱלָהָא | Elah / Elaha — "a god" / "the God" |
| Syriac | ܐܲܠܵܗ / ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ | Alah / Alaha — same pattern, eastern Aramaic dialect |
| Arabic | ilāh / al-ilāh → Allāh | "a god" / "the god" (contracted) |
| Ugaritic | ʾil / ʾilhm | Bronze Age Northwest Semitic cognate, predating all above |
Claims about grammar, vocalization, and textual distribution (root structure, determinate-state suffixes, verse-level occurrences) are drawn from standard reference grammars and lexica for Biblical Aramaic and Syriac. Claims about living religious practice (which communities use Alaha liturgically today, the Peshitta-primacy position) are reported as the positions of the traditions that hold them, not verified theological fact. Where a claim rests on later interpretive tradition rather than the primary text, that distinction is named rather than smoothed over.