Quran’s 99 Appellation Names And Torah’s One Personal Name – OpEd
The Qur’an contains 99 names (attributes) of the one God while the Torah contains one unique personal name of God plus dozens of names that are character traits or attributes. Aram Naharayim, is the region from where Sarah and her husband Abraham the 1st Hebrew man and woman originated. Nahar in Hebrew is a river and Naharayim is a pair of rivers: the Euphrates and the Tigris River. Today’s Iraq.
For thousands of years the religions of the Near East, India and China worshipped hundreds of gods, and had hundreds of names for their gods; including several miracle working humans who lived and died among their fellow humans, and were then in retrospect elevated into deities like: Asklepios. Confucius, and Siddhartha Gautama.
But for those religions that trace their prophets back to Prophet Abraham, and his two Prophet sons Ishmael and Isaac, the many names of God simply describe different aspects or attributes of the one God’s multifaceted personality.
God’s names are appellations: titles and descriptions. Thus to say that God is a King or Judge describes one of many ways God acts. To say that God is the Compassionate One is to describe one of many character or personality traits of the one God. Ibn Al-Qayyim writes:
“The attribute of generosity is an attribute of God who feeds and is not fed. The most beloved creatures to Allah are those who take on his characteristics. Indeed, Allah is noble and loves nobility from his servants, he is knowledgeable and loves the scholars, he is powerful and loves courage, and he is beautiful and loves beauty. (al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib 1/34)
While each of the many ‘names’ for the one God is only one of the many appellations of the one universal creator of space and time; both Islam and Judaism also have one special Divine name that is always in the believer’s heart and soul.
Because the Qur’an is filled with beautiful Arabic poetry, it is not surprising that the Qur’an is also filled with 99 names of God.
Because the Jewish tradition reaches back more than thirty five centuries; it is not surprising that Jews have focused on many additional names for the one and only God over those many centuries.
Yet, because all the many names of God call upon the same One God, it is also not surprising that many of the 99 beautiful names of God in Muslim tradition also appear in Jewish tradition, which sometimes refers to the 70 names of God (found in Midrash Shir HaShirim and Midrash Otiot Rabbi Akiba).
Since Islam and Judaism are very close yet uniquely different religions, there are also several Jewish names for God’s attributes that are not found among the 99 names that appear in the Quran. One rabbinic name for God is Shekinah. This Hebrew word is very close in meaning to the Arabic word Sakinah. Both words are feminine gender, but only Jews think of Shekinah as the feminine side of the one and only God. I have written elsewhere about the Sakina-Shekenah connection.
For Jews the most important name of the one God, the name that God himself revealed to Moses at the burning bush, is YHVH: which appears more than 6,800 times in the Hebrew Bible.
In Exodus 3:13-15, Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.”
Ehyeh is the verb ‘to be’ in its future tense singular form and means ‘I will/might/may become the one who I may/will/might become,’ indicating that Ehyeh is The God of Potentialities, The God of Possibilities, The Living God of Becoming and Transforming, the One who can liberate Banu/Bnai Israel from bondage in Egypt.
The Torah continues, “And God said, ‘You must say this to the Israelites, “I Am” (the usual mistranslation for God’s self-revealed name) has sent me to you.'” God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites: Ehyeh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation’ (Exodus 3:13-15).
When Jews speak of God in the third person, God’s name is YHVH: “the One who causes being and becoming, the One who brings potentials into existence.”
This name was spoken publicly from the time of Moses and throughout the centuries of the 1st Temple of Solomon, but it was replaced by Adonai (Lord) before the beginning of the 3rd century B.C.E., because God’s actual holy name was eventually considered too holy to utter audibly.
In later centuries even that substitution was considered too holy to utter; and the custom among pious Jews till this day is not to use any name for God at all (except in prayer); but to say HaShem–the name (of God) when speaking about God. The distinction between the personal intimate name of God that the Jewish believer uses in prayer and when reciting his or her holy scripture versus all other names, is a measure of the believer’s piety and love of the God of his or her own religion.
The Qur’an contains 99 Arabic names (attributes or character traits) for the multifaceted essence of the one God, but not one of them connects the one God with one people, while one of the dozens of Biblical names for God is ‘The God of the Hebrews’. “But they (Aaron and Moses) said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us,”. “So let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness so we can offer sacrifices to the LORD our God. ” (Exodus 3:18 and only 5 other verses in the Book of Exodus in the Torah).
In the Hebrew Bible, Prophet Abraham is the first person to be called a “Hebrew” (Genesis 14:13). The term Hebrew comes from the verb ‘to go over a boundary’— like the Euphrates or Jordan river— or ‘to be an immigrant.’ The first thing God told Prophet Abraham in the Biblical account was: “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….” (Bible, Genesis 12:1-2)
So Prophet Abraham was what we can call the first ‘Islamic Hebrew’ or the first ‘Muslim Hebrew,’as the Qur’an indicates: “He (Abraham) was not Yahuudiyyaan, “a Jew”, nor Nasraaniyyaan, ‘a Christian,’ but rather a Haniifaan, ‘a Muslimaan,’… (Quran, 3:67) i.e. ‘a monotheistic Hebrew believer submitting (islam) to the one imageless God’ who created all space and time and who made Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew’s descendants through Prophets Isaac and Jacob (Israel) into a great multitude of monotheists called the Children of Israel —B’nai Israel in Hebrew and Banu Israel in Arabic.
In addition, Prophet Isaiah said: “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he [Abraham] was only one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. (Bible, Isaiah 51:1-2)
And the Qur’an states: “You have an excellent example to follow in Abraham.” (Quran, 60:4) “Follow the way of Abraham as people of pure (monotheistic) faith.” (Quran, 3:95)
What makes Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew an excellent example of pure faith according to three different religion’s Sacred Scriptures? It is that all three scriptures proclaim Abraham to be the one “whom God chose to be His friend”: the Arabic Qur’an 4:125, the Hebrew Bible Isaiah 41:8; and the Greek New Testament Book of James [the brother of Jesus] 2:23.
Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew, “whom God chose to be His friend,” —as far as we know— is also the only prophet to have two sons who were also prophets. And these two sons of Abraham, Prophet Ishmael and Prophet Isaac, are the only two Prophets who each had a descendant many many centuries later, who proclaimed a sacred scripture each of which has become the basis for one of the two largest religions in the whole world.
Prophet Abraham was the first of those we know to receive a Sacred Scripture (Quran 87:18-19). All of the others were among his descendants. Is being ‘the first’ what makes Abraham so special that his name appears 69 times in the Qur’an, second only to Moses (136 times)? No.
Prophet Abraham is famous for the numerous ways God tested him, especially the two terrible tests: banishing Hagar and his first born son Ishmael (Qur’an 2:124, & Genesis 16:1-16) and calling on Abraham to make his son a sacrificial offering to God. (Qur’an 37:100-113 & Genesis 22:1-24)
Most Muslim commentators say the son, unnamed in the Qur’an, was Ishmael (Arabic Isma’il). Some Muslims assert it was Isaac. Perhaps both participated in the test at different times, so that each son could produce descendants who in time would become a blessing for other nations of the earth. (Genesis 22:16-18 & Qur’an 4:163)
The great French medieval commentator Rashi notes that earlier rabbinic commentary states that one of the two young men who accompanied Abraham and Isaac was Ishmael. The Artscroll [Jewish] commentary states that Ishmael had come back to visit his father. Thus, both sons may have shared the test.
Prophet Isaiah said: “But you, Israel, My servant —Jacob— whom I have chosen, are the offspring of Abraham, My friend…” (Bible, Isaiah 41:8)
So the biological offspring of Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew (Banu Israel) became the first ongoing monotheistic community when God rescued them from Egyptian oppression and made an enduring covenant with them at Mount Sinai. Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew was not born a Jew, but his descendants from his grandson Jacob/Israel became the Banu Israel—the Jewish People.
For 1200+ years after Prophet Moses, the Banu Israel was the only continuing monotheistic community in the world. Unlike the other monotheistic communities that rose and fell during those centuries, most, but not all, of Banu Israel remained loyal to the covenant which God had made with them at Mount Sinai (i.e., Mount Tur – Quran 28:43-46).
It was only several centuries after Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew that the Hebrew nation acquired its better-known name, the Children (Descendants) of Israel (in Hebrew B’nai Israel; in Arabic Banu Israel). The name of Abraham-the-Hebrew’s grandson, Prophet Jacob, was changed by God to Israel when his descendants were being oppressed in Egypt.
It is hard for many Muslims to understand the intertwined nature of the religion of Judaism with the ongoing nature of the ethnic Jewish People because, although Judaism and Islam are very close in most ways, they differ greatly from each other in their origins: Abraham was an ethnic Hebrew, and a monotheist, but not himself a ‘Jew,’ as the Quran correctly notes; yet Abraham’s descendants through his son Prophet Isaac (Arabic Isḥaq) and grandson Prophet Jacob /Israel (Arabic Ya’kob/Isra’el) were later to become the ethnic Hebrews-religious ‘Jews’: Yehudim—Banu Isra’el. However, Prophet Abraham’s descendants through his son Prophet Ishma’el (Arabic Isma’il) would be ethnic Arabs —a separate Semitic people— and later religiously Christians and Muslims.
All three groups were in the monotheist tradition, stemming from the pure monotheist, the ‘Friend of God,’ Abraham-the-Hebrew, whom I prefer to call the first ‘Islamic’ Hebrew or the first ‘Muslim’ Hebrew, that is, the first Hebrew monotheist submitted [Arabic ‘islama’: to submit] to the one God.
Muslims needed only one Prophet and one book. Jews, as the first ongoing long lasting monotheistic community, needed dozens of Prophets and Sacred Scriptures.
While Christians, Jews and Muslims should make no disrespectful distinction between any of their prophets or their sacred scriptures, we cannot help but notice that the circumstances and style of the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an as written revelations are very distinct:
The Hebrew Sacred Scriptures are a vast collection (305,358 Hebrew words) of Divinely inspired books written over a period of almost a thousand years, by 48 male prophets and 7 female prophetesses (Talmud Megillah 14a); plus many more anonymous Divinely-inspired historians, poets, and philosophers. The Arabic Qur’an is much shorter (a total of 77,934 Arabic words) recited by only one prophet during a period of less than two dozen years and written down by his own disciples.
Most people in the world have learned of Prophet Abraham, not by reading a book of Jewish history or religion, but by listening to and reading from the Christian Bible or the Muslim Qur’an. This unique and amazing situation is a reflection of a promise made to Prophet Abraham-the-Hebrew more than 36 centuries ago, and recorded in both the Torah and the Qur’an:
“I swear (says God) because you did this —not withholding your son, your favorite one— I will bestow My blessing on you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command.” (Bible, Genesis 22:16-18) and “Indeed, We chose him (Prophet Abraham) as one pure and most distinguished in the world, and he is surely among the righteous in the Hereafter.” (Qur’an 2:130)
