Intended Meaning
The news is information about an unseen matter, whether past or future, and it comes in a concise, summary form rather than as present, detailed description. Therefore, it is connected to what is not directly witnessed, whether it concerns events of the past or what will occur in the future.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: definitional
- Movement of the argument: news is defined as information about the unseen past or future.
- Key terms: news, the unseen, past, future.
- Degree of centrality: central.
An oppositional terminological relation with “report” is established, and the scope of “news” is expanded to include what is not directly grasped in the present, whether it pertains to the past or to what is yet to come.
Links Helpful for Reading
Grounding
- Supporting text: “News: information about an unseen matter, past or future, and it comes in a concise, summary form.”
Location of the Grounding in the Book
- Book: Qur’anic Stories, vol. 1.
- Location: in the middle section of the book, within the treatment of the term news and its verses
- Type of grounding: nearby witness.
- Mark helping verification: presence makes the news
- Reading note: This location works as evidence because it links news to the unseen event and presence, and it is very close to defining it as information about the unseen.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted word for word.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in building the idea.
Editorial Note
Its primary task is to build the semantic distinction with the atom of report.