Intended Meaning
The author holds that the Flood was not a global event, but occurred within a local sphere inside Mesopotamia. He bases this on a comparison of Sumerian, Babylonian, biblical, and Qur’anic accounts, concluding that the event is tied to the history of that region.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: historical
- Movement of the argument: reads the Flood as a local event tied to the history of Mesopotamia.
- Central terms: the Flood, local, Mesopotamia, comparative accounts.
- Degree of centrality: secondary.
This atom uses comparison among the accounts to narrow the event from universality to historical specificity, thereby linking the narratives to civilizational reality rather than to a generalized reading.
Links That Help Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Qur’anic Narratives, Vol. 2
- History, Development, and Sunan
- The Qur’anic narrative reveals historical laws and the role of human beings within them
Grounds
- Supporting text: “It presents a historical comparative reading of the Sumerian, Babylonian, biblical, and Qur’anic Flood accounts, and concludes that the Flood was local, not global.”
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 wording above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted verbatim.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows depends in the progression of the argument.
Related To
Editorial Note
The grounding clearly depends on comparative reading.