What Is Meant
What is meant is that the Qur’an or the Book itself is not heritage; rather, heritage is what human beings have produced from understanding them over the ages Thus, human interpretation is not part of the sanctity of the text, but a relative historical understanding that differs according to time and knowledge
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Distinguishing
- Argument movement: It separates the sanctity of the text from the humanity of historical understanding.
- Key terms: heritage, human understanding, text, sanctity.
- Degree of centrality: Central.
It redefines heritage as understanding, not text, thereby preventing the equation of human interpretation with revelation, and opening the way to revisiting meaning according to time and knowledge.
Links That Help Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur The Book and the Qur’an
- Critique of Heritage, Jurisprudence, and Tafsir
- The Book and the Qur’an
Reliance
- Supporting text: “The Qur’an/the Book are not heritage in themselves; rather, heritage is the relative human understanding of them across the ages”.
Location of Reliance in the Book
- Book: The Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: In the early parts of the book, within the distinction between the text and people’s understanding of it.
- Type of reliance: Close witness.
- Mark to help verification: people’s relative understanding
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as evidence because it distinguishes between the text itself and people’s understanding of it, and it is almost identical to the intended meaning of the 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 transmitted word for word.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it sets out a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in building the idea.
Links
Editorial Note
This atom is central to the critique of traditional sanctification.