What Does the Term Mean Here?
Shahrur means by interpretation the outcome of a verse in terms of a rational law or an objective truth. He therefore connects interpretation with reason and truth. For a comprehensive lexical reading, see Interpretation.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
Shahrur defines interpretation directly: “what the verse comes to in the form of a rational law or an objective truth.” He adds, when discussing a verse that he classifies as part of the ambiguous Qur’an, that “interpretation is the correspondence of the verse with reason and truth—that is, the objective truth of the report and its rationality.” This usage is connected to the context of his conception of the structure of The Qur’an and the Mother of the Book, and to the original book Muhammad Shahrur The Book and the Qur’an.
Atlas Explanation
The page reads the two definitions together as indicating that interpretation is directed toward testing or apprehending what the verse indicates as an objective truth or a rational law. The phrase “a movement toward truth or law” is an explanatory description of this conceptual movement, not an independent verbatim quotation from Shahrur. This is read within the topic of The Book and the Qur’an and the Mother of the Book.
Limited Inference
Based on these two texts, interpretation is not presented in this atom as self-sufficient linguistic explanation; the criterion of reason and truth is part of both its definition and its application as presented. This is a synthetic inference from the two formulations, not a third definition attributed verbatim to Shahrur.
Open Question and Limits of the Evidence
These passages alone do not specify detailed procedures for matching the verse with reason and truth, nor do they establish that interpretation is confined to one type of verse. They are also insufficient on their own to establish a complete terminological distinction between interpretation and exegesis.
The Book and the Qur’an · The Qur’an and the Mother of the Book