نشریه رهیافت هایی در علوم قرآن و حدیث
سال چهل و هفتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 95، پاییز و زمستان 1394)

In the process of revelation, divine message is transmitted from the Sublime Lord and by the Prophet to the people. This heavenly message can be considered from several aspects, including that of Invitation as a separate category. The present article deals with the linguistic dimension of Invitation in the Qur’an, specifically in the context of Meccan Suras. Hence, the structure of Invitation language and its corresponding mechanisms will be analyzed and examined from the standpoint of linguistics and semiotics.

This paper examines the stylistics of the ‘Arafa supplication in terms of their acoustic and phonetic levels. This supplication has a unique and consistent texture. The acoustic features of the words and sentences and the repetition of some sounds, words and phrases and acoustic syllables, as well as literary devices such as rhyme and paronomasia tend to increase the rhythm of speech. In fact, rhythm is a constituent part of important poetry and prose works, as music and rhythm are more capable of being connected to the inner feelings and passions of the self.

For the first time, it is mentioned in the interpretation of Muqātil bin Sulayman that: ‘Nadr ibn al-Harith, who was familiar with the traditions of ancient Iran, claimed that the Qur’an contained ‘legends of the ancients’; i.e. stories like those of Rostam and Esfandiyār. Following Muqātil, commentators often quoted this view, associating and translating ‘legends of the ancients’ with and into mythologies and stories of ancient peoples. This understanding of the concept of ‘legends of the ancients’ is also seen in later interpretations. In this paper, the evolution of the concept of ‘legends of the ancients’ in interpretations has been investigated. In addition to what researchers have suggested, the following reasons have been presented in order to prove the assumption that ‘legends of the ancients’ refers to themes mentioned in the sacred texts prior to the Qur’an: (1) a semantics of the words ‘legends’ and ‘the ancients’ in the context of their association in Qur’anic verses; (2) the mismatch between Qur’anic themes and those of legends like Rostam and Esfandiyār; (3) the recognition of pre-Islamic scriptures in the Qur’an; (4) accusation and the Ifk (slandering) affair; (5) the themes preceding and following the verses which include the phrase ‘legends of the ancients’.

Different religions have applied the term ‘faith’ in various areas and this diversity has caused the minds of monotheists and others to engage in defining and explaining the nature of ‘faith’. In several verses from the Qur’an, the final Divine Book and the eternal miracle of Islam, the word ‘faith’ occurs. Thus, a comparative study of these verses clarifies the point that the concept of faith is an ambivalent one and entails different conditions and characteristics. Discovering the logic of the Qur’an in this area, does not only lead to explaining the meaning of this term, but also has important implications in determining the referents of ‘believers’ and their place in Islamic community. Since an application of fuzzy logic and pluralism in explaining the logic of the Holy Qur’an in this field leads to two completely different results, the need for such a choice is made clear. Because the Qur’anic concept of ‘faith’ involves different hierarchical levels, employing fuzzy logic leads to liberation from the trap of pluralism’s relativistic approach, and helps one survive the uncompromising dilemmas of the religious exclusivist approach. In addition, based on the type of inclusivism meant by Allameh Tabatabai and Imam Khomeini, one would be able to remain safe from extremism, and consequently to consider - albeit based on earning the minimums - ‘members of the community’ as believers of faith and salvation.

Discourse analysis attempts as methodology to discover the interactions of language with intellectual-social structures within written and oral texts, as well as to study the meaning formation in relation to intralingistic and cross-linguistic factors. In other words, the conditions of meaningfulness are called discourse. This method has been achieved as the outcome of studies conducted by scholars from different fields, including the linguistics. Some parts of the Holy Qur’an and the traditions have found meanings and functions in the contemporary era that are different from those at the original time of their applications. Such meanings and functions are only understandable through the consideration of a variety of backgrounds for their formation, ranging from the cultural, to the political and the social. The concepts of oppression (istiz‘āf) and arrogance (istikbār)
are as such. Because of being located in conditions such as the predominance of Marxist and anti-imperialist discourse in the years before and after the Islamic Revolution, these concepts have been understood in ways different from the conditions of meaningfulness in the context of the Holy Qur’an, and the same understandings have been assimilated in the contemporary interpretation. The present research applies the methodology of discourse analysis, examines the conditions for meaningfulness of the two concepts in Qur’anic verses and traditions, and compares them within the meaningfulness conditions of Marxist ideas prevailing in Iran during the 60s and 70s and the anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial thoughts predominant since the late 70s to the present time. We thus attempt to demonstrate the process of semantic changes and the functions of these concepts.

One of the important theological issues in many religions - and most importantly in Abrahamic religions - is ‘angelology’, especially the recognition of ‘archangels.’ This study focuses on one of the angels called ‘Raphael’ and compares his significance and duties in the three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In addition, it is examined whether Raphael equals the Islamic angel ‘Israfil’ or not. The result is that in some Christian and Jewish traditions Raphael is considered as an archangel and his role in the two religions is closely similar. In Islam, however, Israfil is not as important and his role differs greatly with Raphael’s role in Judaism and Christianity. There are no convincing reasons to consider Israfil in Islam as an equivalent for Raphael.

One of the important questions considered in every theory of interpretation regards unity versus plurality of the true meaning of the text. This paper, as a descriptive-critical research built on data collection and library documents, has tried to get help from the principles derived from sciences such as linguistics, hermeneutics and principles of jurisprudence, in order to demonstrate that the plurality of true meanings in religious texts is possible, desirable and achievable, and does not fall into trap of problems such as relativity. To investigate this issue, first the general fundamentals of the plurality of meaning in texts are considered. Then, the plurality of meaning in non-religious texts is examined and finally the plurality of meaning in religious texts has been studied.