نشریه پژوهش های قرآنی
سال بیست و دوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 83، تابستان 1396)

One of the most important goals of Revelation of the Qur’an is ethical training and the prerequisite for ethical training is the cognition of ethical norms. In the Qur’an, the ethical norms have been expressed in various methods. Variety of expressing norms is among the important strategies of ethical training. This training strategy and its philosophy have been referred to in nine verses of the Qur’an. The origin of the variety of methods in the Qaur’an’s expression are some theological principles such as, “knowledge, mercy, power, wisdom, and favor”; some of the humanistic principles such as, “reasoning, factual freedom, individual differences, innate awareness, dignity, trainability, inclination toward beauty, diversity seeking, weakness, restriction, haste, and pride”, and some of the linguistic principles such as, “expressive miracle”. Some of these Qur’anic methods include, “variety of general ethical concepts; emphasis on Allah’s wrath and consent; emphasis on the factor of faith; encouragement of the faithful to follow divine morality and stimulation of human and religious emotions; reiterating the outcome of moral behavior; honoring human being and refining the expression of ethical necessities”.

Imagining incompatibility between Adam’s (A.S.) disobedience and his infallibility, the interpreters have interpreted the related verses differently and sometimes contractively. They have often proceeded to discuss it with a presupposition of his not being a prophet in Paradise and the incompatibility of infallibility with committing sins prior to Prophethood. Aiming at a comprehensive critique of the interpreters’ viewpoint concerning the nature of prohibition of the forbidden tree in Paradise and Adam’s (A.S.) disobedience, the writer tries to prove the prohibitory nature of the forbidden tree with respect to Adam’s exceptional condition in Paradise and introduces this period of his life as an exception as compared to the period prior to other Prophets’ Prophethood and negates the incompatibility between disobedience in Paradise and infallibility on earth. The reasons for this exception are: purgatoriness of Adam’s Paradise, unnecessity of his Prophethood and infallibility, his short stay in Paradise, lack of any objective experience about the enmity of Satan, detailed preemptive awareness about the outcomes of disobedience. It was for this very exceptionality that the rulings for disobedience in Paradise cannot be applied to the earth; just as the division concerning the commands and prohibitions adopted from the religions on earth into, for example, obligatory, advisory, and purificatory, are not applicable to Paradise of Adam (A.S.).

One of the features of Ayatollah Ma‘rifat’s Al-Tafsīr al-Atharī al-Jāmi‘‘ is the compilation of the exegetical traditions of ṣaḥāba (companions of the Prophet) and tābi’īn (successors to the companions) along with the traditions of the Infallibles. The scholarly status of the author and his tafsīr and the sensitivity of the validity of ṣaḥāba and tābi’īn’s traditions show the importance and necessity of recognizing and introducing his viewpoint in this field. The present research, with regard to Ustad Ma‘rifat’s three basic opinions (i.e., his special principles of hadith studies, the quiddity and quality of his employment of exegetical traditions of ṣaḥāba and tābi’īn in Al-Tafsīr al-Atharī al-Jāmi‘, and comparative study of the quality of employing the exegetical ṣaḥāba and tābi’īn’s traditions, and the Ahl al-Bayt’s exegetical traditions in exegetical operations), claims that providing a specific meaning of ḥujjīyyat (validity) in exegetical traditions and considering the content critique of hadith compared to critique of sanad, has had a significant impact on Ustad Ma‘rifat’s considering the exegetical traditions as valid. On the other hand, the validity and value of ṣaḥāba and tābi’īn’s traditions does not mean their equality with Ahl al-Bayt’s traditions in rank; rather, he pursues two scholarly and promotional objectives in narrational interpretation: 1. Filling the gaps resulted from lack of sound traditions of Ahl al-Bayt in the interpretation of some verses, 2. Promulgation of the Ahl al-Bayt’s viewpoints among the Sunnī scholars and defending Shī‘a’s specific viewpoints.

Although the Qur’an is a religious and ideological book, it does not have just a referential application. It has made the best of language power in conveying contents to its addressees and caused to get close to a poetical and literary language. Now, the question arises as to how this literary language has appeared in the Qur’an. For achieving its objective, i.e., drawing the addressee’s attraction and having an effect on them, the Qur’an has a specific style that is not dependent upon poetry, but it enjoys the rules of poetical language and its order. Given the formalists’ opinions, who believe in distinction between the two processes of automaticity and distinguishing for studying the literary language, the language of the Qur’an does not merely deal with stating the subject; rather, to convey a certain content, it tries to use literary language in its style of expression to postpone the referent (madlūl), which will involve the readers’ mind, causing the expansion of meaning. Through repetition, this process leads to automaticity of speech and making it prominent. With a descriptive-analytical method, this research tries to study the distinguishing of the verb qāl and its derivatives through repetition. Consistent with the dynamic body of a society that seeks contemplation and deliberation, this process prepares the ground for dialogue, multimodality, and understanding. In fact, the high frequency of the verb qāl and its derivatives (1717 times) in the structure of the Qur’an and the distinguishing of this word in the external language has so highly empowered the internal language that enables it to analyze the structure.

The term kutub al-ḍalāl (books of misguidance) is not used in the Qur’an and traditions; Shaykh Mufīd has first mentioned it and the author of Jawāhir has for the first time referred to some verses about their rulings. Following the author of Jawāhir, many jurists paid attention to it due to the invention of printing and the emergence of modern mass media and adduced to certain verses concerning them, and some made conclusion on the unlawfulness of using satellite channels from those verses. Thus, although the term “jurisprudential verses of books of misguidance” is not used by the jurists, the above term is true due to the reference of the jurists to those verses. The above verses have been adduced to for keeping, compiling, writing, and acquisition of livelihood with the books of misguidance. However, intention to misguide by these books and the occurrence of misguidance is the precondition for the unlawfulness of keeping the books of guidance, hence keeping books of misguidance in itself is not unlawful. In one aspect, the Qur’an has called people to hearing words of others and following the best of words (the Qur’an). Nevertheless, writing, publication, and acquiring livelihood with them is unlawful and giving response to the misconceptions of those books is essential.

The quiddity and nature of the portents of the Last Day (ashrāṭ al-sā‘a) has always been a topic of discussion and the interpreters have dealt with it mainly through traditions. One of the instances is the bringing out a Beast from the earth (dābbat al-‘arḍ), which is mentioned briefly and ambiguously in verse 82 of Sūrat al-Naml. There are different and sometimes contradicting views in interpretations concerning the quiddity, quality, existence, action, and words of the Beast of the earth. With a comparative study of the interpretations, they can be divided into two main groups, from which seven subgroups are derived. The first group, which are mainly originated from traditions, have found referents for the Beast of the earth and the other group have not dealt with its nature. Thus, with the use of the descriptive-analytical method, delving into the words of the above verse, and with a brief explanation of the context of Sūrat al-Nam, it is tried in this paper to describe the quiddity and nature of the Beast of the earth. To this end, first, the exegetical viewpoints are briefly explained, then the word study of the verse in question is presented, and finally the selected viewpoint is stated, which is a scholarly analysis.
The findings suggest that, given the extensiveness of traditions about portents of the Last Day, some of which are also contradictory, it is necessary that by employing word study and finding the semantic field of the verse’s word, to undertake interpretation so as to get a more accurate understanding of Divine words. The achievement of this method is the approximation of exegetical opinions, unity of opinion, and the quiddity and quality of the portents of the Last Day.

The importance of translating the Holy Qur’an is still making this task in need of serious scrutiny and research. In this paper, by taking into consideration one of the very important areas of translating the Divine Words, we intend to take a constructive step toward upgrading the methodological level of this area. “Translation of common Persian and Arabic words” which is a subdivision of “the lexical structure of the Holy Qur’an”, like other discourses of translation, needs regulations as well as more competent attention so that the translation objectives would become more and more achievable.
Since the common Persian and Arabic words are divided into three types (the first enjoying semantic unity, the second having semantic difference, and the third containing semantic aspects), this paper studies those common words that are semantically different. Sīmā, shā‘ir, ṭūfān, mithqāl, midād are examples of the words being analyzed. After examining the literal meaning and the Qur’anic application of the words, the writer has used a descriptive-analytical method to touch upon the pathology of selected Persian translations of the Holy Qur’an of the above five words. The finding of this paper is a 40 to 50 percent error reporting of the present translations of the Qur’an due to negligence of the rules for understanding common Persian and Arabic words.