Contradiction in the Holy Quran: Its origin, Historic Trend and the Muslim Scholar's Methods in Resolving It

An issue discussed in the Quranic Scientific books and Commentaries is contradictory verses in the Holy Quran. From the early Centuries, The Quranic scholars, in their numerous books, have raised and rejected this claim. Commentators too, have spoken of it in most of Commentaries, not knowing that the questions raised are not of the same strength. Some of them were superficial while others serious and controversial. Facing this issue, Muslim Commentators have had different attitudes in resolving it. In this paper while factors leading to inception of the issue of contradiction in the Holy Quran and its historic records at the time of the Holy prophet (SAW) and the immaculate Imams (Pbut) have been discussed, the most important topic related to the issue in the field of the Quranic Sciences have been identified. Towards the end, the historic trend of the famous book, written in this field has been briefly discussed. The main and final part of this paper has been devoted to the different methods used by the muslim scholars in response to different claims In this part, reference has been made to lexical methods, and literary interpretation as well as such Quranic terms as abrogating, abrogated, explicit and implicit verses, veritative expression and metaphor, while each of the methods has been accompanied with samples of the view points of the well-known Commentators expressed under the related verses.