Rough translation, for teaching purposes, of selections from al-Shatibi, al-Muwafaqat, on the Sunna’s relationship to the Qur’an (Word file).
Tag Archives: Islamic theology
Manna` al-Qattan on the Qur’an and its relationship to Hadith
A rough translation, for teaching purposes, of selections from Manna` al-Qattan, Mabahith fi `ulum al-qur’an (Word file).
Mu`tazilite arguments for the created nature of the Qur’an (`Abd al-Jabbar)
A rough translation, for teaching purposes, of selections from `Abd al-Jabbar / Mankdim, Sharh al-Usul al-Khamsa (available as an html file on my old web site and as a Word file).
Al-Nazzam
My very first publication was an encyclopedia article on the early Muslim theologian Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Sayyar al-Nazzam (782–836), whose thought I encountered in writing my dissertation.
David R. Vishanoff. “Naẓẓām, al‑.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, ed. Lindsay Jones, vol. 9, 6444-6446. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005.
The article can be accessed directly in the Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Some Epistemological and Hermeneutical Dimensions of the Doctrine of the Created Qurʾān
At the 2002 American Academy of Religion meeting in Toronto I presented work I had been doing toward the chapter on the Mu`tazila in my dissertation, which eventually became Chapter 4 of The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics. This was my first presentation to the AAR, and I was very grateful for respondent Jane McAuliffe’s encouraging comments.
“Some Epistemological and Hermeneutical Dimensions of the Doctrine of the Created Qurʾān.” American Academy of Religion, Toronto, November 25, 2002.
Here is a pdf of the paper.
Here is the abstract:
The Muʿtazilī theologian ʿAbd al‑Jabbār (d. 415/1024) contended that the Ashʿarī defense of God’s eternal speech undermined its epistemological value. He sought to ensure the Qurʾān’s reliability as a source of law by arguing that it is one of God’s acts, a created piece of evidence from which humans are to infer God’s will. This view had three consequences for his hermeneutics. First, the Qurʾān cannot communicate in the same manner as human speech. Second, interpretation consists in reducing all the different forms of Qurʾānic speech to indicative statements about the legal values of acts. Third, the Qurʾān cannot be ambiguous. Contemporary discussions of Islamic legal and interpretive theory have paid little attention to such questions about the nature and function of the language of revelation.