Assessing the Credibility of the Chain of Transmission of Interpretive Narrations in Imami Sources: Examining the Narrations on the Torment of Noah's People (AS)

Imami sources are full of narrations that can be used to interpret the Quran. But due to the chain of transmission's weakness or fakeness, it is impossible to use all these narrations. Therefore, it is necessary to separate acceptable narrations from other narrations with a correct method. The purpose of this article is first to examine the possibility of using interpretive narrations and then to show a practical example of a group of interpretive narrations about the torment of Noah's people. The results indicate the preference of the view of the permissibility of using wahed (single) narrations, quoted by a reliable person, in interpreting the Quran. By assessing the credibility of the chain of transmission based on the common method in the Shia Elm Rejal (the science of knowing men), the authentic narrations are determined from the non-authentic ones. For this purpose, the chains of transmission of six narrations are examined, and the information obtained from authentic narrations is added to the related Quranic materials and it is proposed as a practical method in narrative interpretation. The method of this research is fundamental and citational with interdisciplinary data analysis.