veiled4allah: the 99 names of God veiled4allah: the 99 names of God
God is the Strong. There is none strong but the Strong. All strength belongs to God. All physical, worldly, political, and cosmic strength is nothing before the infinite strength of God. "The strength, all of it, belongs to God" (Quran 2:156). "There is no strength but in God" (Quran 18:39). As the Prophet put it, in a formula that Muslims frequently repeat, "There is no power and no strength but in God, the High, the Tremendous." God is the Permanent. There is nothing permanent but God. "Everything is perishing except His face" (Quran 28:88). "Everyone in the earth disappears but there remains the face of your Lord, the Possessor of Majesty and Generous Giving" (Quran 55:26-27).
God is the Independent. None is independent but God. Everything in the heavens and the earth depends utterly upon God for its existence and subsistence. "O people, you are the dependent on God, and God - He is the Independent, the Praiseworthy" (Quran 35:15). (pp. 60-61)
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Jonathan - No, there isn't any one canonical list. The Quran mentions that God has the most beautiful names and people should invoke Him by them (see, for example 59:24). There are several hadiths that mention God's 99 names, but do not give a list.
If you go through the Quran, you will find many more than 99 names, some of which never appear on the usual lists. Most of the lists you see are fairly similar but there are a few that are different. One salafi (Wahhabi) website that I saw went back to the Quran to come up with its own list on the grounds that the traditional lists had no basis.
There are several theories that I have seen as to why the hadiths mention 99 names when there are many more than that in the Quran. One theory is based on a reading of one of the pertinent hadiths as "God has 99 names that, if you invoke Him by them...", that is, of the names, 99 are special. The trick is to figure out which are the special 99.
Another theory is based on the other pertinent hadith. This hadith mentions that God has 100 names, 99 of which are given to us and 1 is kept for Himself. This theory says that the numbers are symbolic or representative and should not be taken literally. 99 indicates "a great many" while still being one short of the true number. Obviously, this theory would not find favor with those of a more literalist bent, but I can think of other examples from the hadiths where the Prophet (sAas) used numbers symbolically, not literally. The most common symbolic numbers are 7 and 3.