The Variety of Quranic Concepts and Specifying a Criterion for Understanding Them

Every Quranic word holds one or several conventional, lexical, orcanonical meanings which, in methodology, are referred to as conventional truth, lexical truth, and canonical truth. The source of the lexical truth is imposition. The source of the canonical truth is designating or specifying a term whose meaning is in the lawgiver’s mind, and the source of conventional truth is the contracts and agreements among people on the use of certain terms with certain meanings. Some terms, perhaps, are capable of carrying all three kinds the aforementioned truth. In the case of the absence of an equivalent for these words, which meaning should they carry? This paper aims to study different aspects of the variety of meanings of Quranic words and designating a proper meaning to a word from among the three given meanings.Among these, the conventional truth enjoys more validity due to the necessity of the similarity of the language of the Quran to that of the audience, and when one is in doubt as to which meaning a word carries, in case there is not equivalent for any of the truths, the conventional truth is of the highest priority. This claim is shown by, first, by giving an introduction on the definition of the three kinds of truth and adding the “Quranic truth” to them and then reasoning based on some Quranic verses.