Naẓm , iʿjāz , Discontinuous Kerygma: Approaching Qur'anic Voice on the Other Side of the Poetic

• Published in: Journal of qur'anic studies Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 1 - 21
• Main Author: El-Desouky, Ayman A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Edinburgh University Press 01.06.2013
• Subjects: Exegesis & hermeneutics; Quran
• ISSN: 1465-3591; 1755-1730
• DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2013.0094

The present study offers tentative reflections toward approaching the questions of revelation, iʿjāz, naẓm and Qur'anic voice from within modern conceptual frames of the literary and the sacred which focus not so much on the poetic and the metaphorical as on the historical. What is meant by the historical here is the locus of human experience in its receptivity to the revealed word: the response to the very fact of revelation, which turns the experience of the sacred text and its rhetorics into an experience of sacred hermeneutics – whether on the level of the individual, from within the uniqueness of each individuality, or on the level of the community of faith and the call to live by the word of revelation. The possibility of a more uniquely Islamic hermeneutics of proclamation will be explored on the level of the ‘discontinuous verse’. By invoking Western traditions of interpretation and hermeneutics the present study also seeks to initiate a dialogue with Western Biblical and critical hermeneutics, with the aim of instituting a more sustained engagement with the peculiarities of Qur'anic voice that will also introduce a particular range of conceptual language not so steeped in the assumptions of Western metaphysics and speculative theologies.