What is meant
This passage calls for understanding the Qur’anic narratives and the relations between messengers and prophets as events to be read historically and methodologically It also rejects treating them as direct legislative rulings to be projected onto the present
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Movement of the argument: it calls for understanding the Qur’anic narratives historically and methodologically.
- Central terms: the Qur’anic narratives, historically, methodologically.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
The narratives provide a reading framework, not a legislative one, so they prevent direct projection onto the present and tie them to understanding the relations between messengers and prophets within their context.
Links to help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur The Book and the Qur’an
- The methodology of the contemporary reading
- the Qur’anic narratives
- the Qur’an and the Mother of the Book
Basis
- Supporting text: «It states that the Qur’anic narratives and the relations between messengers and prophets must be understood historically and methodologically, not as direct legislative projections onto the present».
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 the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted textually.
Its function in the book
Its function here is methodological; it regulates the mode of reading or inference followed by the book.
Related to
Editorial note
The atom defines the limits of drawing on the narratives.