What is meant
Muhammad Shahrur holds that Isra’iliyyat did not remain outside tafsir; rather, they seeped into tafsir and Islamic history through transmission and circulation. He notes that they entered through figures such as Wahb ibn Munabbih and Ka’b al-Ahbar, and then became part of the prevailing meaning. For this reason, he links them to the formation of the traditional reading of some concepts.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: critical
- Argument movement: attributes some of the prevailing interpretation to the influence of Isra’iliyyat
- Key terms: Isra’iliyyat, tafsir, Islamic history, the inherited tradition, women.
- Degree of centrality: subsidiary.
This atom explains one source of distortion in Shahrur’s reading of the inherited tradition. It is not a judgment on all tafsir, but on a specific path that he sees as having entered through transmission and circulation.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: The Qur’anic Stories, vol. 1
- Critique of heritage, jurisprudence, and tafsir
- Isra’iliyyat
- Islam is a universal human message
Support
- Supporting text: «The reports that diminish women or interpret qiwāma and imāma on the basis of her deficiency are not from the Qur’an, but from the inherited tradition influenced by tribal culture and by Isra’iliyyat. Isra’iliyyat entered tafsir and Islamic history through figures such as Wahb ibn Munabbih and Ka’b al-Ahbar, and then became part of the prevailing meaning».
Place of support in the book
- Book: The Qur’anic Stories, vol. 1.
- Location: in the early parts of the book
- Type of support: close witness.
- Verification marker: critique of his former role within the inherited epistemic system
- Reading note: the passage discusses a critique of the inherited exegetical structure, and it serves as close support for the idea of the entry of Isra’iliyyat into tafsir.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted textually.
Its function in the book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows depends in the course of the argument.
Related to
Editorial note
It performs the function of revealing an external influence in the formation of inherited meaning.