Analyzing the Textuality of Surah Al-Muddaththir in Refuting Richard Bell's Theory

Throughout history, the incoherence of the Qur'anic surahs and its sometimes fragmented structure has always provided room for doubt. Surah Al-Muddaththir is one of the surahs that, from Richard Bell's point of view, is considered as lacking coherence. He has stated the difference in style, length, and the lack of relevance of ayah 31 and the violation of man's free will in ayah 56 of this surah as proof of his claim. Therefore, this article aims to extract the factors of textuality and continuity of this surah in the light of textuality theory, using the descriptive-analytical method. The analysis of the data indicates that the text of the Holy Qurʾan has numerous and diverse linguistic and textual features and its textual sequence is not related to the length, rhythm, rhyme and place of revelation of the ayahs. Also, by examining the linguistic possibilities of intertextuality, intention/purposefulness and coherence as three criteria in the textuality of the text, it was determined that Surah Al-Muddaththir is a coherent and continuous text despite its discrete appearance. Two factors of the intertextuality of ayahs in ayah 31 of this surah justify the use of a long ayah among short ayahs through the semantic relationship with the words and phrases "companions of the fire", "iddah" and "junud". Moreover, the significant frequency of connective (additional), grammatical (reference), lexical (repetition, contrast, symmetry) factors in this surah indicates the continuity and coherence of this surah and its ayahs.