Transhistoricity of the Quran and the Mechanisms of Delivering Transtemporal and Transcendental Messages in Specific Historical Vessels

One of the main issues of the philosophy of religion is the universality and quality of the responses of Islam and the Quran – as the most important source of Islamic knowledge – to novel issues despite the fact that the revelation of the Quran has occurred in certain historical conditions. In the theory of transhistoricity of the Quran, which has been developed in Arabic countries and has been affected by the philosophical hermeneutic discussions and orientalists’ infusions, the Quranic messages are deemed as temporally limited. This issue has been criticized extensively in other works and the reasons to prove the transtemporality of the Quran have been explained in detail in other sources. However, what is important here and in need of explanation regards the mechanisms used in the Quranic expression style that can guarantee its transhistoricity. To this end, the study at hand adopted a descriptive-analytical method. First, the reasons against the historicity of the Quran – such as solving the seeming paradox of the expression of eternal messages following a certain cause of revelation as well as the proving the non-historicity of the human writings and conventions and the subsequent generalization of this reasonable method to the Quran – are given. Then, the reasons that prove the transhistoricity of the Quran – such as the installation of infallible exegetes of the Quran as a mechanism to respond to all new issues, the significations of the general Quranic words, and the intense fight against Jahiliyyah – are provided. Finally, the article argues that the Iltifat rhetorical device (grammatical shift for rhetorical purposes), general conclusions made based on small incidents, abstraction of historical events from details, inclusion of general messages while narrating the events, and the superiority of the guidance aspect of the historical reports of the Quran over their historical aspects are the mechanisms foreseen to preserve the transtemporality and transcendence of the Quranic messages.