[powers]” and he states in his correspondingly

long footnote that, “…Razi advances the view that we may have here a reference to the physical, intellectual and emotional powers within man himself.” He goes on to describe the nineteen powers as seven organic functions, five external or physical senses, and five internal or intellectual senses. He then sums up the argument by stating, “…that in the aggregate, it is these powers and faculties that confers upon man the ability to think conceptually, and place him, in this respect, even above angels.”

How he or Razi deduced all of this from Q74:30 is beyond me and I must confess that this is just one example where “man” has extended himself in trying to analyze and draw conclusions from the Quran. Man has continually, and sometimes erroneously, over analyzed and read much into the Quran’s eternal message.

If the Quran had stated 18 or 20 instead of 19 they would have written that there were 18 or 20 angels standing guard and only 18 powers, omitting one from their list, or additional power to complete their argument.

In both cases they assumed the word nineteen referred to “something” and that nineteen was the count of those items – angels or powers. They gave in their translations a plural form to nineteen and therefore used the word “are” instead of “is” within the verse. In both cases, as well as many other translations, the verse is translated as, “Over it are nineteen” instead of “Over it is nineteen” as does Rashad Khalifa.

Why the difference? Until Rashad Khalifa was allowed by God to unlock the mathematical miracle of the Quran, Islamic scholars were forced to view “nineteen” as a number which counted something tangible, as in powers, or something intangible, as in angels. They viewed the context of the verse within the Sura and drew their conclusions.

Then what is the significance of nineteen and this Quranic verse? The words “Over it” appear straightforward. “Over,” according to Webster’s dictionary, means to be above in position, authority, or scope as in to tower over them or to obey those over you.

If we assume the singular form of nineteen, referring to a single thing or being, then we would comply with the use of “is” and not the use of “are.” The use of the word “is” will become clearer when we discuss the term nineteen.

The word nineteen only occurs once in the Quran. It appears in Verse 74:30. Its significance was discovered by Rashad Khalifa when he unlocked the mathematical code of the Quran and launched a wave of discoveries concerning the meaningfulness of nineteen.

It is not the scope of this article to discuss, at length, the detailed discovery of the mathematical code. [For more information, the readers may refer to our publications on this subject, including the English translation of the Quran by Dr. Rashad Khalifa.]

Suffice to say, the number nineteen permeates through, governs and authenticates the authorship of the Quran as being from God. For no one of this earth could have developed the intricate mathematical relationships within the Quran while maintaining a poetic and stylistic literature that has not been surpassed.

What is significant, for the purpose of this article, is that the number nineteen refers to the mathematical code and also appears to be the signature, if you will, of God. God has created, through this coding, a means to authenticate and establish, without doubt, the legitimacy of the Quran as being the work of God and not the work of man.

WHY THE NUMBER 19?

But why nineteen and why is it significant? All of God’s original scriptures, not only the Quran, were apparently mathematically coded with the number nineteen or its multiple. Even the universe bears God’s divine signature. The number nineteen possesses unique mathematical properties beyond the scope of this article, but for our purposes let’s consider just the following:

1. The number nineteen is a prime number. In other words it is only divisible by itself and one. Numbers such as 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19… are all prime numbers. God has chosen the number 19 as His signature prime number.

2. Nineteen embraces the first numeral (1) and the last numeral (9), as if to proclaim God’s attribute in the Quran (57:3) as the “First and the Last.” “He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Outermost and the Innermost. He is fully aware of all things.”

3. Nineteen looks the same in Semitic and European languages. Both components, 1 and 9, are the only numerals that look the same in these languages.

4. Nineteen possesses many peculiar mathematical properties. For example, 19 is the sum of the first powers of 9 and 10 (9+10=19) and the difference between the second powers of 9 and 10 (100-81=19).

5. Nineteen is the gematrical value of the word “ONE” in all the scriptural languages — Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic (please refer to the footnote concerning the definition of gematrical value).

Hebrew	Arabic	Value
V	W	6
A	A	1
H	H	8
D	D	4
Total Gematrical Value		19

As shown in the table above, the Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets used to double as numerals in accordance with a universal system. The Hebrew word for “ONE” is “Vahd” (pronounced V-AHAD). In Arabic, the word “ONE” is “Wahd” (pronounced WAAHED).

The number 19, therefore, proclaims the First Commandment in all the scriptures: that there is only ONE God.

Footnote:

What is a “Gematrical Value”?

The gematrical value is the numerical value assigned to the letter
of an alphabet. When the Quran was revealed, 14 centuries ago, the
number system known today did not exist. An alphabetic system was
utilized whereby the letters of the Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
and Roman alphabets were used as numerals. The Roman numeral system
(I, V, X, C, etc.) is still used extensively today. The number assigned
to each letter is its “Gematrical Value.”

For example, the Arabic letter “Alef” (A) has a gematrical
value of 1, and “Bah” (B) has a gematrical value of
2 and so on.