What is intended
This passage distinguishes between God’s direct speech and His indirect speech, as two different levels of meaning. It also links God’s speech to His words in existence and His laws, and links that to the changing human understanding of these laws.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: interpretive
- Argument movement: distinguishes between the level of divine discourse and the level of changing human understanding
- Key terms: God’s speech, God’s words, understanding, laws.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
This atom provides a framework that links the text to its constancy on the one hand, and to the movement of understanding on the other. Its place here is to explain how interpretation works within Shahrur’s conception of the relationship between revelation and knowledge.
Links that help reading
Basis
- Supporting text: “The passage establishes the constancy of the text of the Wise Revelation, together with the dynamism of understanding and content according to the development of knowledge and historical and social circumstances. It distinguishes between God’s direct and indirect speech, and between God’s words as existence and its laws, and between the changing human understanding of these laws. It links the structure of the Qur’an/Book with the duality of prophethood and messengerhood, then links them with legislation and ijtihad.”
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: Draining the Sources of Terrorism.
- Location: in the final section of the book
- Type of basis: close evidence.
- Marker helping verification: the text’s constancy in itself and the movement of content
- Reading note: the phrase affirms the text’s constancy while making it relative to its reader and making understanding change with the development of knowledge, which supports the intended atom.
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 reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted textually.
Editorial note
The meaning here is more organizational than descriptive in a linguistic sense.