What Is Meant
For him, interpretation is specific to the ambiguous text; it is not used as a general explanation for every text Rather, it aims to refer the text back to the objective truth or the rational law it expresses
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Movement of the argument: it restricts interpretation to the ambiguous and refers it to objective truth.
- Central terms: interpretation, the ambiguous, objective truth, rational law.
- Degree of centrality: primary.
The interpretive work is distributed according to the type of text, and it prevents generalization in interpretation, thus giving the definitive and the ambiguous different functions within reading.
Links That Help with Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Mother of the Book and Its Elaboration
- the contemporary reading method
- interpretation
- the ambiguous
- The distinction between the definitive and the ambiguous methodically distributes ijtihad and interpretation
Basis
- Supporting text: “He makes interpretation specific to the ambiguous, because it concerns referring the text back to the objective truth or the rational law it expresses.”
Location of the Basis in the Book
- Book: Mother of the Book and Its Elaboration.
- Location: at the beginning of the book, within the discussion of the limits of interpretation and its scope.
- Type of basis: close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: specific to the ambiguous
- Reading note: this location is appropriate because it confines interpretation to the ambiguous, not to all texts, and is very close to 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 verbatim.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it sets a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
A central atom in the theory of Qur’anic reading.