Well apparently the same analogy is used in the Quran as well. https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=7&verse=40
It has turned out to become the mainstream view, but really trinitarianism and antitrinitarianism are both valid views of Christianity and Islam stems from the “back to the basics” antitrinitarian view.
While we’re at it, Judaism was also developed contemporarily with Christianity and not before (as is the mainstream view), because Judaism includes the teachings of the Rabbis.
The root is Middle Eastern monotheism.
they used to be the other way around in english too
respect
Also, I noticed that for more obscure languages (including Romanian), it didn't, so that confirmed to me it's not some fully hardocded conversion - for languages where it has enough examples it understands the "proper" translation, for those where it doesn't it does the simpler thing.
For that matter, would you use "sect" in english and be confident it would not be seen as pejorative term? I feel it's all context dependent.
I also don't think looking through google translate with a single phrase is the right method to figure this out- for one thing I've heard the european languages are usually heavily based on legislature (eu legislature is published in all eu languages, so an excellent source of translations). In my experience google translate can be stilted and formal, so which implications and connotations a phrase or term has in different languages can definitely be literally "lost in translation".
Alan Segal's Two Powers in Heaven delves into this in great detail.
Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn’t prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97).
Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583).
This is a particularly interesting period in Christianity, because you had numerous influences (including what would later become gnosticism around the same time), the term "trinity" wouldn't appear in extant works until sometime in the Second Century, then the Council of Nicaea in or around the latter half of the Fourth Century establishing it as doctrine.
So, I think the evidence of a decidedly Jewish influence is quite strong and would date at least to the Babylonian captivity.
I believe Dr. Robert Alter leans toward an evolution from polytheism -> monotheism in Jewish thinking (I highly recommend his The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary); but I think the evidence for a sort of henotheism is a bit stronger and more sensible, which would better fit the sources you shared here, alongside the biblical texts.
In that sense, both Christianity and Islam view themselves as supersessionist to the respective religion that predated them, with Judaism being more or less the root of the Abrahamic tree (though you could argue that Zoroastrianism may have been the precursor for monotheism as a concept, predating them all).
The claim where Muhammad ﷺ copied from the previous books is simply not possible. An unlettered man narrating and correcting the histories/traditions of the Jews and Christians where they were few and far between in Arabia. It was pagan through and throught. Recounting their history would require a library to be available and be a polyglot in Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek (there were no Arabic Bible translation until the 10th Century).
If the motivation is to gain followers from the prior Abrahamic religions, the easiest thing to do would be to appease their view points and reaffirm what they believed, not to correct them. Not to mention the sheer volume of recounting the children of Israel and history of Jesus in the Qur'an, which does not make sense if you are copying as you would want a few lines here and there to avoid saying something wrong.
(The tone of this comment sounds firm in writing, in reality it is cordial)
I think perhaps I inadvertently implied that the Qur'an was copied from earlier sacred texts, when I only meant that it was likely influenced by them ... in the same way that the New Testament was strongly influenced by the Hebrew Bible (in some cases referencing portions directly - especially regarding prophetic literature, but in other ways making very different claims). Where I agree with you is that it's simplistic to say that Islam was simply a distant branch of another religion -- it's clearly it's own tradition, but my understanding is that most Muslims would agree that it both shares common roots (i.e. a foundational understanding) with Christianity and Islam while also superseding them.
In my mind at least, that indicates that there is some narrative progression, of which Islam would see itself as the most recent, or most complete, revelation; building on what came before while also correcting it (where it is seen as erring from Allah's/God's intended message). In that sense, I think it shares a lot in common with Christianity, a religion that more or less treats Judaism the same way.
It is also false to say that gaining followers through appeasement is the way to go, there is not a single sect in christianity that doesnt change vital parts of the bible or how to be saved. It is far easier to obfuscate and pretend to follow christianity and then make changes later.