In one Safaitic inscription the author petitions two deities for security and the protection of those who read and invoke his text. One deity is familiar to us, Allāt, the most commonly invoked deity. She is called upon beside another god, a unique deity named 'ḥd (احد), meaning “one.” While writers often invoke Allāt alongside other gods, especially Ḏušarē, which many scholars regard as Her consort, it would be odd to use 'ḥd as an epithet for Him since He’s never referred to as such or any epithet for that matter. There’s also no evidence from the Nabataean tradition that He was given such a title, or that oneness was a characteristic associated with Him. In Deuteronomy 6:4 Yahweh is also given the attribute of “One,” “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And in Verse 112:1 “Say, “He is Allah - One.” But it’s not unheard of to see “One” used as an epithet in pagan contexts. In one Palmyrene inscription we see an invocation to a deity called mrn 'ḥd “our lord, [who is] one”, dated to 159 AD. This is an Aramaic rendition of the Greek εἷς θεός (one God), which was popular in the first few centuries AD. εἷς θεός was originally an epithet of a Pagan sect, appearing in the 2nd century AD. So is this a Hellenistic divine epithet rendered in Aramaic and Arabic, or the influence of Jewish monotheism on neighbouring Paganism?
The nomads of Arabia traded, travelled to and from, and conducted raids against Palmyra. These interactions would have provided the opportunity for a Hellenistic divine epithet to transfer to Old Arabic. At the same time, there is also evidence of contact between Arab nomads and Jews but no evidence for the existence of Jewish nomadic tribes in the area. But the fact that our author invokes 'ḥd beside Allāt stops us from regarding this text as a monotheistic Jewish inscription. The polytheistic climate of the region meant that anyone could seek favour from any source, both local and outside deities. Most deities are Arabian; Allāt, Roṣ ́aw/y, YayṯeꜤ, Allāh, etc. Other gods are from neighbouring peoples. Nabataean deities are also popular, such as Dhul-Shara and ShayꜤhaqqawm. It was common to invoke many gods, including foreign ones, so an invocation could be heard widely. So it seems most likely that our author was invoking a Palmyran deity, either borrowing the divine epithet εἷς θεός directly into Arabic or taking it from Aramaic.
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