"12 months miracle" in the Qur'an

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This article contains a list of all the occurrences of the word "month" (شهر - transliterated as "shahr") in all its forms in the Qur'an. It also counts the total number of occurrences, number of occurrences in singular/plural/dual separately and the number of occurrences, where the word consists only of the three arabic letters شهر (regardless of diacritics). The purpose is to refute the apologist argument, that: The word appears 12 times in the Qur'an, just like there are 12 months in a year, which "cannot be a coincidence" (although it could be a coincidence even if it was true), and therefore the Qur'an must be from god.

List

Apologists often (always) don't show the words and their context[1], but there it is:

Total count Verse Word in arabic (شهر counted) Translation Number (counted)
1 2:185 شَهْرُ 1 the month [of Ramadan] singular 1
2 2:185 ٱلشَّهْرَ (in) the month singular 2
3 2:194 ٱلشَّهْرُ the month [Sacred] singular 3
4 2:194 بِٱلشَّهْرِ for the month [Sacred] singular 4
5 2:197 أَشْهُرٌ months plural 1
6 2:217 ٱلشَّهْرِ the month [Sacred] singular 5
7 2:226 أَشْهُرٍ [four] months plural 2
8 2:234 أَشْهُرٍ [four] months plural 3
9 4:92 شَهْرَيْنِ two months dual 1
10 5:2 ٱلشَّهْرَ the month [Sacred] singular 6
11 5:97 وَٱلشَّهْرَ and the month [Sacred] singular 7
12 9:2 أَشْهُرٍ [four] months plural 4
13 9:5 ٱلْأَشْهُرُ months [sacred] plural 5
14 9:36 ٱلشُّهُورِ (of) months plural 6
15 9:36 شَهْرًا [twelve] months plural 7 *
16 34:12 شَهْرٌ 2 a month singular 8
17 34:12 شَهْرٌ 3 a month singular 9
18 46:15 شَهْرًا [thirty] months plural 8 *
19 58:4 شَهْرَيْنِ two months dual 2
20 65:4 أَشْهُرٍ [three] months plural 9
21 97:3 شَهْرٍ 4 [thousand] months plural 10 *
  • (*) In these 3 cases the word itself seems to be in the singular and that is how apologists get to the number 12, but the arabic language allows to construct the plural with a singular word and from the context we can clearly see that it is meant to be plural.
    • 9:36 - .. ٱثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا .. - ..tweleve months..
    • 46:15 - .. ثَلَٰثُونَ شَهْرًا .. - thirty months ..
    • 97:3 - .. أَلْفِ شَهْرٍ .. - thousand months ..

Conclusions

Main

  • The word شهر does not appear in the Qur'an 12 times, but 21 times.
  • The word شهر appears 9 times in the singular.
  • The word شهر in its basic form (consisting only of the trilateral root ش - ه - ر (ra - ha - shin) without any suffix/prefix letters and while ignoring the differences in diacritics) appears 4 times in the Qur'an.

Other

  • Apologists used a different method of word counting for the "12 months miracle", then for the "365 days miracle", because otherwise they wouldn't get those "miraculous" numbers.
    • They didn't count the word day with ب ("bi-") prefix in the "365 days miracle", but now they do count the word month with the bi- prefix
    • They didn't count the word day with و ("waw-") prefix in the "365 days miracle", but now they do count the word month with the waw- prefix.

References

  1. Like here [1]