Paradise and hell word count in the Qur'an: Difference between revisions

This article lists all forms of the words jannah (paradise, garden) and jahannam (hell) in the Qur'an. Some Muslim apologists claim that they both appear 77 times and that this constitutes a miracle, however that does not appear to be the case. The word count has to be in the Arabic Qur'an, which makes it complicated for most people, but this article is written in a way that can be understood without previous knowledge of Arabic.

Paradise - الجنة (al-jannah)

The word paradise (الجنة, al-jannah), literally means "the garden". The root of this word is جنن (j-n-n). Some other Arabic words derived from this root:

• garden (جَنَّٰتٍ, jannatin in verse 2:25)
• over-shadowed (جَنَّ, janna in verse 6:76)
• jinns (ٱلْجِنَّ, aljinna in verse 6:100)
• madness (جِنَّةٍ, jinnatin in verse 7:184)
• madman (مَجْنُونٌ, majnoonun in verse 51:39)
• a snake (جَآنٌّ, jannun in verse 27:10)

This word appears only in its singular form and it is a feminine word–it ends on the letter ta marbuta (ة). When a word is pronounced without the case markings ('iraab) and/or outside of the an idaafa, the ta marbuta at the end is not pronounced, so it is read as jannah, not jannat. So when using this word in English, it is basically always read as jannah. But when reading whole sentences from the Qur'an in Arabic, the ta marbuta would be read as "t" unless the word cames at the end of the line.

There are 3 forms of الجنة:

• ٱلْجَنَّةُ (al-jannatu) - nominative
• ٱلْجَنَّةِ (al-jannati) - genitive
• ٱلْجَنَّةَ (al-jannata) - accusative

Sometimes the same word (only with differences in diacritics) actually refers to the jinns and not paradise:

• ٱلْجِنَّةِ (al-jinnati)

The (optional) diacritics in Arabic determine the vowels. Otherwise الجنة is just ال (al-) prefix and letters ج (jim) - ن (nun) - ة(ta marbuta).

This word does appears 55 times and in 5 cases refers to the jinns:

• 1) Verse 11:119 "... Certainly I will fill hell with the jinn (ٱلْجِنَّةِ, aljinnati) and the men, all together."
• 2) Verse 32:13 "... I will certainly fill hell with the jinn (ٱلْجِنَّةِ, aljinnati) and men together."
• 3,4) Verse 37:158 "And they assert a relationship between Him and the jinn (ٱلْجِنَّةِ, aljinnati); and certainly the jinn (ٱلْجِنَّةُ, aljinnatu) do know that they shall surely be brought up;"
• 5) 114:6 "From among the jinn (ٱلْجِنَّةِ, aljinnati) and the men."

In the verse 41:30 the word appears with a prefixed preposition:

• "Indeed, those who have said, "Our Lord is Allah " and then remained on a right course - the angels will descend upon them, [saying], "Do not fear and do not grieve but receive good tidings of Paradise (بِٱلْجَنَّةِ, biljannati), which you were promised."

Two questions that arise are many ways:

• Include or exclude the verses where the word refers to the jinns?
• Include or exclude the verse where the word appears with a prefix?

Contrary to the miracle claim, there do not to appear to be 55 instances of the word occurring.

Garden - جنة (jannah)

Trying to count al-jannah didn't bring the result 77. But maybe it will get to 77 if we consider "paradise" to be synonymous with "garden", because they are basically the same word and heaven is described as "gardens under which rivers flow", repeatedly, in the Qur'an.

The word "garden" doesn't always mean the garden where good Muslims are supposed to end up. In many verses the word just refers to a garden that is on earth. Or the word is used allegorically. So in the Translation column, the context is specified.

The list also includes Arabic words jannah, which have a different meaning, other than "garden". The reason is not that it makes sense to count them, but to understand how apologists got to the number 77.

The counts in the list:

• The column "Mixed count" counts all forms of the Arabic word jannah, including the cases where it does not refer to gardens in heaven or where it does not refer to gardens at all. It counts singular, dual and plural forms together.
• The column "Translation" counts all occurrences of the word, including singular, dual and plural forms, where the word refers to the gardens in paradise.
• The column "Mixed number" counts singular, dual and plural forms separately, regardless whether the word refers to any gardens or not.
• The column "Gardens in paradise number" counts singular, dual and plural forms separately, only from the words, which refer to the gardens in paradise.

• (*) In the verse 42:22 the word appears with the al- prefix. al-jannah usually refers to the paradise and not to the gardens in paradise. But the word is plural and that would mean that there are many paradises. So this word probably means "gardens". However, even if we add this word to the al-jannah (paradise) word count, it still doesn't get to the word count 77. And for the total word count (paradise + paradise gardens) it doesn't matter in which category this word is.
• (**) In the verse 71:12 "And help you with wealth and sons, and make for you gardens, and make for you rivers.", Noe promises his people that Allah will give them gardens. It is not clear whether he meant gardens on earth or in heaven. So the plural for "gardens in heaven" might be actually 59 and not 58.

There are cases where the ِArabic word جنة does not refer to any gardens. 5 times it refers to madness (jinnatun). The literal meaning is "possessed by the jinns" and that is why it has the root j-n-n, just like jannah.

• 1) Verse 7:184 "Then do they not give thought? There is in their companion [Muhammad] no madness (جِنَّةٍ, jinnatin). He is not but a clear warner."
• 2) Verse 23:25 "He is not but a man possessed with madness (جِنَّةٌ, jinnatun), so wait concerning him for a time."
• 3) Verse 23:70 "Or do they say: There is madness (جِنَّةٌ, jinnatun) in him? Nay! he has brought them the truth, and most of them are averse from the truth."
• 4) Verse 34:8 "He has forged a lie against Allah or there is madness (جِنَّةٌ, jinnatun) in him. Nay! those who do not believe in the hereafter are in torment and in great error."
• 5) Verse 34:46 "Say: I exhort you only to one thing, that rise up for Allah´s sake in twos and singly, then ponder: there is no madness (جِنَّةٍ, jinnatin) in your fellow-citizen; he is only a warner to you before a severe chastisement."

In two cases it refers to "cover" (junnatun):

• 1) Verse 58:16 "They make their oaths to serve as a cover (جُنَّةً, junnatan) so they turn away from Allah´s way; therefore they shall have an abasing chastisement."
• 2) Verse 63:2 "They have taken their oaths as a cover (جُنَّةً, junnatan), so they averted [people] from the way of Allah . Indeed, it was evil that they were doing."

The word count

The list showed that the word "garden" in the context of "gardens in paradise" appears 71 times including 10 singular forms, 3 dual forms and 58 plural forms. If we count the (plural) occurrence in the verse 71:12, then we get 72 occurrences.

There are 52 occurrences of "paradise" so let's try add the occurrences of "gardens in paradise":

• 52 + 71 = 123
• 52 + 10 (singulars) = 62

No, we don't get the number 77.

It seems that there is no way of getting the number 77, so how did apologists get to the number 77? They took the 57 occurrences of the Arabic word الجنة, regardless if it is the word "paradise" (ٱلْجَنَّةِ, al-jannah) or "jinn" (ٱلْجِنَّةِ, al-jinnah). Without the diacritics, it can be both. Then they took the 24 singular forms of جنة, regardless if it is the word garden (جَنَّة, jannah), madness (جِنَّة, jinnah) or cover (جُنَّة, junnah). So now they have 57 + 24 = 81 words. And they get 77 by excluding 4 clearly singular forms, because they appear with a suffix:

• 1) 18:35 (جَنَّتَهُۥ, jannatahu) - his garden
• 2) 18:39 (جَنَّتَكَ, jannataka) - your garden
• 3) 18:40 (جَنَّتِكَ, jannatika) - your garden
• 4) 89:30 (جَنَّتِى, jannatee) - my garden

These suffixes in Arabic just express possession. But it is still garden. A singular form of the word garden! What makes it even stranger is that occurrences with a prefix (like وَجَنَّةٍ in 57:21, "and a garden", where "and" is represented by the و prefix) are counted.

It seems however that they used a completely different tactic for this word count, they just searched through the whole Qur'an without diacritics for "جنة". From this search they got 78 occurrences and they excluded the occurrence of أَجِنَّةٌ (ajinnatun), which means "fetuses" in the verse 53:32. By this search all plural forms got excluded, because plural forms don't end with a ة (ta marbuta), but a regular ت (ta). And it also explains why the words with suffixes were not counted, because ة appears only at the end of words and when a suffix is added, the ة changes into ت. Apologists were not worried, that many words which end on the sequence جنة have a different meaning than "paradise" or "garden". Not only do they count occurrences, where the garden is somewhere on earth, but also words like "madness", "jinns", "cover".. also they were not worried that by this harsh method, they excluded clearly singular forms of the word "garden".

Hell - جهنم (jahannam)

List of occurrences of the word "hell" (جهنم, jahannam). All occurrences are in the singular. This word sometimes occurs with some prefix. The forms without prefix appear in two forms:

• جَهَنَّمُ (jahannamu) - nominative
• جَهَنَّمَ (jahannama) - genitive

Unlike most Arabic words, the word jahannam has 4 (not 3) root letters (ج-ه-ن-م, j-h-n-m).

The word count for hell is easier. But there is still the question whether to count the words with prefix? In English these Arabic prefixes would be expressed with another word, so the word count would be 77. The word count 77 for "hell" makes sense in Arabic as well. But it should be mentioned that apologists didn't count the word "day" with these prefixes in the 365 days miracle in the Quran so now there is an inconsistency in the counting methods. There are 5 occurrences with a prefix so another possible word count would be 72.

• When counting the word "hell" without prefixes, we get 72 occurrences. This is exactly the same number as the number of virgins Muslims are supposed to get in paradise. Is this a miracle? If Allah wrote the Qur'an, he must have known very well that this word count would be 72 and that it is the same as the number of virgins and he must had some wise reason for that. One possible interpretation might be that Muslims who want to go to heaven to get the virgins, might actually get 72 hells as a punishment for their lust.

Conclusions

Paradise word count

• The word count for "paradise" is problematic, but the most logical way of counting it produces the result 52. That method is counting the occurrences of ٱلْجَنَّةَ (al-jannah).
• When we start adding word counts of the word "garden", to the "paradise" word count, we still don't get to 77.
• The word count 77 for paradise is produced by an absurd counting method, which counts not only the words "paradise" and "garden", but many others, like "jinns", "madness" and "cover". And this method also excludes some singular forms of the word "garden".

Hell word count

• The word count for hell is less problematic. There are basically only two reasonable counting methods. Counting all occurrences gets the result 77 and counting without prefixes gets the result 72.
• Muslim apologists count the word "garden" hand in hand with "paradise". But in most of the Qur'an, hell is simply described as the "fire". Why are they ignoring this word's occurrences?

See also

• Word Count Miracles in the Qur'an
• 365 days miracle in the Quran
• 12 months miracle in the Quran
• Iman and kufr word count in the Qur'an
• Man and woman word count in the Qur'an
• Dunya and akhira word count in the Qur'an
• Land to water ratio miracle in the Qur'an