نشریه قرآن شناخت
سال سوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 5، بهار و تابستان 1389)

The present article is the interpretation of Sura al-Baqara, verses 25-29 inwhich the qualities of paradise, comparison to a gnat, features oftransgressors, resurrection, and the creation of the earth and heavens arestated. The outcome of the interpretation of theses verses is as follows.Verse 25: paradise is a pleasant environment for living in which a varietyof fruits are available, the sexual needs of its people are easily satisfied, andthey abide there forever.Verse 26: Drawing a comparison towards removing ambiguity is not anunwise or blameworthy act, thus Allah is not supposed to leave it. Thefaithful consider Allah’s driving a comparison to a gnat and the like a wisething, thereby they are guided. However, the faithless having an unwelcomelook at it go astray to a larger extent.Verse 27: Holders of three qualities i.e. breaking divine covenant,severing what Allah has commanded to be joined, and not being beneficentto members of society are the losers.Verse 28: This verse prevents all people from disbelieving in Godreasoning that man was a lifeless thing to which Allah gave life, then makeshim die and again brings life to him.Verse 29: Whatever found in the earth is for the benefit of mankind. Thisindicates the high value of man before God. Considering this point makes aman not sell himself at a low price.

In the twentieth century, we witness various attitudes in different fields such ashermeneutics, literary theory, and semiotics a common point of which is opposinginterpretive intentionalism. According to them, the intention of the author does notplay any role in the process of understanding and interpreting the text, and weshould not take the real purpose and the intended meaning of the author as the goaland objective of semantic encounter with the text. On the other hand, authororientedness and interpretive intentionalism is one of the major characteristics of theacceptable and prevalent theory of interpretation among the Muslim scholars. Thepresent article seeks two objectives. First it is an attempt to study and criticize themajor reasons of the opponents of interpretive intentionalism defending the essentialrole of the intention of the author in the process of reading the text. Then it presentsan account of interpretive intentionalism free from the flaws and deficiencies ofcertain accounts of author orientedness.

Understanding a work is receiving the message lying within it. Concerning the elements contributing to understanding a work, various approaches are raised. We may name these approaches based on the element whose role is overemphasized as author oriented, text oriented, and interpreter oriented. Regardless of unconventional works the meanings of which exclusively depend on the audience, in other works including the Quran the author has a key role in the structure, contents, as well as the purposes of the work andfinally in understanding it. The audience of the Quran being the whole mankind, this book has addressed them according to the language and discourse of the reasonable.Allah has revealed the Quran for the guidance of mankind selecting its words and phrases in the Quranic special context. Thus understanding and interpreting the Quran without observing the rules of the discourse of the reasonable, the worldview of its producer, and the context of its revelation is an example of the interpretation based on personal opinion which is undesirable and forbidden according to the dictates of religion and reason.

Following the methodology of Izutsu, the present article seeks to explain the semantic position of Salat as a focal word based on historical and descriptive semantics. In historical semantics, the basic meaning of the root is taken into consideration relying on the poetry of the Days of Ignorance, historical books, and Quranic commentaries. In descriptive semantics, the semantic relation of the term "Salat" with its syntagms and substitutes in the Quran is analyzed. The outcome of the historical study is that ignorant Arabsconsidered Salat as a devotion and supplication. The descriptive study shows that Salat in its revealed usage is put in the semantic field of such words as supplication, remembrance, and glorification of God, in terms of paradigmatic axis. It is also placed in the semantic field of performance, patience, and modest ones, in terms of syntagmatic axis. One of the important results of the descriptive study is revealing the deep semantic link of Salat with other terms of the same semantic field. These links have causedSalat to be influenced completely by the neighboring words and continue its life in a distinct and transcendent meaning.

Semantics is a branch of linguistics or an independent branch through which it is possible to analyze the meanings of the words and sentences of a text finding their exact and proper positions based on their semantic system. This article deals with the semantic analysis of “seeking proximity to Allah” in the holy Quran. Achieving this goal, it has shed new light on the words lying in the semantic field of the state of being a servant of God and relevant to the focal word “proximity”. The semantic analysis of proximity in the holyQuran shows that this term next to the term “Allah” refers to a new meaning different from its usages at the time of revelation. This concept in the holy Quran has a graded meaning like that of faith “Iman”. The faithful “Muminun”, the virtuous “Muttaqun” and the righteous “Abrar” each have reached a particular grade of proximity. Towards his journey to Allah and embracing Islam, man is admitted into the domain of the proximity of Allah getting closer to its central core through faith, good deed, virtue, and righteousness.

Opponents of the Holy Quran have attempted to identify the holy Quran as a product of human mind and borrowed from earlier sources. The hypothesis of the Quran being borrowed from the scriptures of earlier religions has been one of the fields of study of orientalists. In addition to this accusation, they have sometimes accused the holy prophet of anachronism. The story of Haman is an example of this category. The pretenders of the anachronism of the Quran hold that the holy prophet mistook Haman, the vizier ofAhasuerus, for the vizier of Pharaoh, the contemporary of Moses, due to isunderstanding Jewish sources. This hypothesis is rejected based on certain definitive arguments. A large number of researchers have considered the Book of Esther raising the issue of Haman being the vizier of Ahasuerus as a mythical work. On the other hand, the Quranic report on Haman is not in conflict with historical facts. Rather, archeological researches made by orientalists themselves give adequate evidence that verify Haman as ahistorical figure belonging to the court of Pharaoh at the time of Moses.

Presenting the principles of eloquence, rhetoric plays an undeniable role in explaining the inimitability of the Quran in literary form and responding to the objections against the Quran as a miracle. Knowledge of the quality and quantity of this contribution identifies the position of these sciences in the issue of inimitability of the Quran indicating the necessity of studying them as introductory studies of Quranic sciences. The significance of rhetorical sciences is so high that the first books on the inimitability of the Quran havedealt mainly with rhetorical issues.Benefiting from the achievements of rhetorical sciences, we can respond not only to the spurious argument of Sarfa (divine prevention of people from imitating the Quran) but to various other arguments against the Quran as a miracle. These arguments may be classified in three general fields: inimitability in terms of literary form, that of harmony and that of the contents. In the domain of inimitability of the Quranic literary form, theobjections of repetition and challenge can be answered. In the field of inimitability in terms of harmony, the objections concerning restrictions, perfect similes, and seemingly undue displacement of Quranic terms are responded. Rhetorical sciences may also put an end to certain objections aiming at finding flaws in the teachings and messages of the holy Quran