Life and death word count in the Qur'an: Difference between revisions

This article lists all occurrences of the words "life" and "death" in the Qur'an. The purpose is to analyze the claim that they both appear 145 times. It can also serve as a reference for people who want to know where the Qur'an speaks about life or death.

Life

The word "life" (الحياة, al-hayat) is derived from the trilateral root حيي (h-y-y). In the Uthmani script, the writing style of the first Qur'anic manuscripts, it is not written like this الحياة (Simple Script), but like this ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ (Uthmani Script). This word count is complicated and it could not have been done in the English translation. Because from the same root, there are many similar words derived and there is the verb "to give-life" which is translated into English as two words, including the word "life" itself, although in Arabic it is just one verb and the noun "life" itself is not present. When the English Qur'an says, that Allah gives life to someone, then literally, he "lifes" him. It could be also translated as "resurrects". All verbs will be described as "verb" in the "Word class" column. Also there are words like "the alive" and "the living" referring to "living people" and they don't mean "life" itself (you can also notice they are written differently in Arabic). There are also 2 words translated as "life", but expressed with a slightly different word in Arabic, these words are also counted, but they are bold and can be easily excluded if we wanted not to count them.

Keep in mind that in Arabic, pronouns like "them", "our", "her" are suffixed to the word and conjunctions like "and" or "for" are prefixed to the word. There is even a lam- (ل) prefix, translated as "surely". Also the subject "he", "she" is also in the word (verb) itself. So one Arabic word sometimes needs a lot of English words, when translated. English uses more spaces between words, while Arabic rather joins the words together. So don't be confused by the long translations.

This is the list of all the words derived from the root حيي in the Qur'an. Some of them have a totally different meaning. The word "life" is counted in the Translation column. Also, all the nouns derived from this root are counted in the "Word Class" column.

As we can see, besides the fact that there are only 78 mentions of the word "life", there are only 114 nouns, so there is no possibility of finding 145 occurrences of the word "life", even if we counted even words like "snake" derived from the same root. If we wanted to get 145 words, we would have to mix word counts of nouns and verbs together! Also we can see that there are many words that are similar, but different, so if we want to use some special counting method, then there are probably dozens, if not hundereds of such methods.

The 78 mentions include words with prefixes and suffixes and these kind of words were often excluded in the apologetic word counts for other words, for the reason of not being "basic form" enough. So if we want to use their method of counting, than there is even less occurrences!

Death

The word "death" (الموت, al-mawt) is derived from a trilateral root موت (m-w-t). Words derived from this root could be described similarly as the words from the root حيي (h-w-w). There is also the verb of "giving death" or "causing death" and words like "the dead" referring to dead people and not death itself. The difference here is that there are no words with a totally different meanings. All the words have something to to with death, dying or being dead. The word "kill" (qatal) is derived from a completely different root قتل (q-t-l). So translating the death-giving as killing might be misleading.

The list of all the words derived from the root موت (m-w-t) in the Qur'an:

Again the same problem. Even if we counted all occurrences of nouns derived from the root موت, we cannot get 145 occurrences, because there are only 104 nouns from this root in the Qur'an. And the word death appears 56 times.

Conclusion

• If we count all occurrences of the word "life" (hayat), including forms with prefixes and suffixes, we get 78 occurrences and for the word "death" (mawt) we get 56 occurrences.

• There is no way to get 145 occurrences of the words "life" nor "death", because when we look at all the words derived from the same roots as the two words, we see that there are less than 145 derived nouns. So in order to get 145, nouns and verbs would have to be counted together. That method, besides being absurd, wouldn't change anything about the fact that the words "life" and "death" do not appear the same number of times.
  • If that new method of counting is supposed to be "meaning word count", that is counting words with a similar meaning, then we would get 165 occurrences for "death" because all the words from the root موت have something to do with death or dying.
• Also there are probably hundereds of ways to do the word count, so if one of those ways gets an interesting result, it is not amazing. Actually, the more chances there are to get an interesting number, the higher is the probability of finding it (and the less amazing it is, when it is found).

See also

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