The Prophet and the Messenger in the Thought of Interpreters and Theologians: the Process of Evolution and Critique of Views

Although the words Prophet and Messenger have been used widely in Holy Quran and Islamic culture, Muslim interpreters and theologians have agreed less on the exact meaning of these two words. Generally speaking their views can be categorized in two groups called contradiction and equality. Of course the contradiction view has been explained with multiple expositions in which the distinction of Prophet and Messenger has been expressed as: having the mission of conveying revelation to people, having an independent religion, having a holy book and seeing angels. Those who have recognized the Prophet and not the messenger as the person in charge of conveying revelation have known the meaning of messenger as one of these three: not having the mission of conveying revelation, informing (people) from God, having a high position and dignity. In this article the viewpoint of around 80 interpreters and theologians about these two words in three periods of time - early, recent and contemporary - has been reviewed and categorized according to the above model. By reviewing the above statistical community we can conclude that there has been different expositions from equality and inequality of the words prophecy and messaging in all Islamic periods, although the recent interpreters and theologians tend to the generality of the concept of prophecy compared with messaging. Also according to the author, because of the problems existing in different expositions of contradiction theory we can conclude that in the idiomatic meaning the words Prophet and Messenger used in the Holy Quran and Islamic texts are the same.