Meaning
What is meant is that the Qur’an or the Book itself is not heritage; rather, heritage is what human beings have produced through their understanding of them over the ages. Human interpretation is therefore not part of the sanctity of the text, but a relative historical understanding that varies according to time and knowledge.
Structure of the Atom in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Distinctive.
- Movement of the argument: It distinguishes between the sanctity of the text and the human nature of historical understanding.
- Central terms: heritage, human understanding, text, sanctity.
- Degree of centrality: Pivotal.
It redefines heritage as understanding rather than text, thus preventing the equation of human interpretation with revelation and opening the way for revising meaning according to time and knowledge.
Links That Aid Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: the Book and the Qur’an
- Critique of Heritage, Jurisprudence, and Exegesis
- the Book and the Qur’an
Evidence
- Supporting text: “The Qur’an/the Book are not in themselves heritage; rather, heritage is the relative human understanding of them across the ages.”
Location of the Evidence in the Book
- Book: the Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: In the opening sections of the book, within the distinction between the text and people’s understanding of it.
- Type of evidence: Close witness.
- Verification aid: people’s relative understanding
- Reading note: This passage serves as evidence because it distinguishes between the text itself and people’s understanding of it, and it closely corresponds to the meaning of the atom.
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 wording above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted directly.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional: it establishes a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in constructing the idea.
Links
Note to the Reader
This atom is central to the critique of the sacralization of heritage.