Dinamoturk News Agency

The grammatical and terminological distinction between the general (common noun) usage and the specific (institutional/technical term) usage of the concept is as follows:

  1. “Holy Book” as a Common Noun (General Designation)

In literal terms, “holy book” or its Arabic/Ottoman compound al-Kitāb al-Muqaddas / Kitāb-ı Mukaddes is a generic adjective phrase applicable to any text regarded as divine or sacred:

All texts believed to be revealed, including the Quran, bear the general characteristic of being a “sacred book” or “holy book.”

In this context, the phrase is not a proper noun; it is a general descriptive attribute indicating the quality (being holy/sacred) of an object (book).

  1. “Kitab-ı Mukaddes” as a Proper Noun and Technical Term (Terminology)

The distinction under discussion, apart from the general designation, involves the process of nominalization into a proper noun:

In Islamic literature, the proper name of the Quran is the Quran, the Torah is the Torah, the Gospel is the Gospel (Injil), and the Psalms is the Psalms (Zabur). In no tafsir (exegesis), fiqh (jurisprudence), or kalam (theology) source has the proper name “Kitab-ı Mukaddes” ever been used as the specific title of the Quran; the designations of the Quran (al-Kitāb, al-Furqān, adh-Dhikr, etc.) are fixed.

The word Biblia (Greek: “booklets/books”) in Western languages refers not to a single text, but to the compiled library bringing together the Old and New Testaments. When this compilation is called The Holy Bible in the West, the phrase ceases to function as a descriptive adjective phrase and becomes the proper name of that specific two-testament corpus.

Arabic-speaking Christians and Christian theology likewise designated their complete corpus of the Old and New Testaments with the proper name al-Kitāb al-Muqaddas (الكتاب المقدس).

  1. Distinction Between Modern Turkish and Ottoman Turkish

Modern Turkish: “Kutsal Kitap” is directly an adjective phrase and can be applied to the scriptures of any religion.

Publishing and Legal Terminology: When publishing the Christian corpus where the Old Testament and the New Testament are bound into a single volume, titling it solely as the “Torah” or solely as the “Gospel” would omit half of the volume; therefore, publishers and institutions registered the Arabic-origin compound “Kitab-ı Mukaddes” as the proper name of the complete corpus, establishing it as a formal title and registered imprint.

In summary, while “holy book” literally serves as a broad descriptive term encompassing any revealed scripture, the compound “Kitab-ı Mukaddes” became institutionalized in print and theological literature as a restricted proper name specifically identifying the total Christian corpus comprising the Old and New Testaments.