Defining Hermeneutics: Meaning, Origins, and Conceptual Foundations
The term “hermeneutics” refers principally to textual interpretation and the problems surrounding it. The problem of hermeneutics emerges from the fact that human expressions, or divine expressions in a human language (texts in particular) are simultaneously familiar and alien to the reader. Taking into account this seeming paradox, the reader, if the text is to be understandable, has the task of transposing the meaning of text into his/her own system of values and meanings. Derived from the Greek verb hermeneuein (“to interpret”) hermeneutics is defined as the “intellectual discipline concerned with the nature and presuppositions of the interpretation of expressions.” As an interpretative activity, its essential concern is the written text and can be described as “the theory of the operations of understanding in their relation to the interpretation of written texts.” Hermeneutics deals with three major conceptual issues: the nature of a text; what it means to understand a text; and how understanding and interpretation are determined by the presuppositions and assumptions (the horizon) of both the interpreter and the audience to which the text is being interpreted.
Hermeneutics and Islamic Scholarship: Terminology and Conceptual Parallels
The term hermeneutics does not seem to be employed in the Arabic language. The compound fiqh al-tafsīr wa al-ta’wīl – “the understanding of exegesis and interpretation” – however, is appealing. The absence of a definitive term for hermeneutics in the classical Islamic disciplines, or its non-employment on a significant scale in contemporary Qur’anic literature, does not imply the absence of definite hermeneutical notions or operations in Qur’anic studies. While the term “hermeneutics” dates only to the seventeenth century, the operations of textual exegesis and theories of interpretation, religious, literary, and legal, date back to antiquity.
Classical Tafsīr Traditions and the Question of Interpretive Horizons
Traditional tafsīr activity has, however, always been categorized, and these categories – Shiite, Muʿtazilite, Abbasid, Ashʿarite, etc – are acknowledged to say something about the affiliations, ideology, period, and social horizons of the commentator. Connections between the subject of interpretation, the interpreter, and the audience are rarely made. When this is the case, it is usually done with the intention of disparaging the work or the author, or they are made to underline the theological prejudices of the author. To date, little has been written about these connections in a historical or literary critical manner or about the explicit or implicit socio-political assumptions underlying their theological orientations, the central concern of contemporary hermeneutics.
Contemporary Approaches to Qur’anic Hermeneutics
In contemporary Muslim scholarship, Fazlur Rahman, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and Muhammad Arkoun are among the rare exceptions who deal with hermeneutics. Rahman insists that “the Qur’an is the divine response…to the moral and social situation of the Prophet’s Arabia.” He thus pleads for a “hermeneutical theory that will help us understand the meaning of the Qur’an as a whole so that both the theological sections of the Qur’an and its ethico-legal parts become a unified whole.” Arkoun emphasizes the need “to reconstruct the historical background of each [Qur’anic] text or period” and for greater consideration to be given to “the aesthetics of reception: how a discourse is received by its listeners and readers.” He suggests a critical re-evaluation of the interpretative methodology “elaborated by jurists-theologians based on rationality as founding the true knowledge and excluding the constructions of imagination.” In its place he offers the “hope that semiotics and linguistics can create the possibility of reading religious texts…in a new way.”
Text, Culture, and Interpretation: Abu Zayd in Focus
While both Rahman and Arkoun emphasize the historical context of the Qur’an’s revelation, Abu Zayd stresses the Arabic nature of its origin and the need to approach it as an Arabic literary work. While he does not deny the divine origin of the Qur’an, he argues that it is futile to delve into this because the divine is beyond the realm of scientific inquiry:
The Qur’an is a communicative relationship between sender and recipient that arose through the means of a code or a language system. Because, in the case of the Qur’an, the sender cannot be the subject of scientific inquiry, the study of the text must proceed from the premise of the verifiable / observable reality of the culture of the community addressed by the text as well as its primary, the recipient, the Messenger. Culture is expressed in language. The study of the text must thus proceed from the reality and culture as empirical givens. From these givens we arrive at a scientific understanding of the phenomenon of the text. The idea that the text is a product of culture [muntaj thaqafi] is so obvious that it does not have to be argued any further.
For Abu Zayd, the text is larger than the Qur’an, which he describes as the “primary text” from which all other Islamic texts sprang forth. By text in the broader sense, he refers to “that reservoir of knowledge of the Arabs at a time when they had no science; only poetry.” While at a superficial glance, his methodology resembles that of John Wansbrough and others who have adopted a literary approach to Qur’anic studies, his emphasis on the Arabicity of the text places him firmly in the camp of Arabists rather than in Islamic studies.
While Wansbrough saw interpretation as so thoroughly interwoven with the text that they have become indistinguishable, Abu Zayd regards interpretation of the text as “the flip side of the text” – irrevocably tied to each other and argues that only though interpretation can the text be comprehended. For this to take place, the Qur’an needs to be decoded in the light of its historical, cultural, and linguistic milieu. Furthermore, the results of this decoding must be decoded in the code of the cultural and linguistic milieu of the interpreter. Unlike Arkoun, he regards his own work as part of an Islamic renewal-cum-reform project and has utilized the results of his work to argue for human rights and gender justice, saying that in these matters the spirit of the text must take precedence over its letter.[1]
The Emergence and Future of Hermeneutics in Qur’anic Studies
We have in these writings the beginnings of the emergence of hermeneutics as a discipline in Qur’anic studies. If previous patterns in Islamic scholarship are indicative, then considerable time will pass before its direction and nature becomes evident. Clearly though, in societies where Muslims are desperate to make contemporaneous sense of the speech of God in the midst of active struggles for justice, a significant contribution to this discipline will emerge.[2]
This article is an excerpt from: Farid Esack, “The Territory of the Qur’an: ‘Citizens,’ ‘Foreigners,’ and ‘Invaders,’” in Observing the Observer: The State of Islamic Studies in American Universities, ed. Mumtaz Ahmad, Zahid Bukhari, and Sulayman Nyang (London/Washington: IIIT, 2012), pp. 62–65.
https://iiit.org/en/book/observing-the-observer-second-edition/
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).
Notes
[1] He believes that studying the Qur’an from its historical-linguistic perspective will necessarily yield progressive results for a number of social questions. He distances himself from the methodologies of the likes of Tantawi Jawhari, Rashid Rida, and Muhammad Abduh, who attempted to interpret the Qur’an from the perspective of then-new theories of the exact sciences and/or understandings of society dealing with questions such as democracy, human rights, and gender equality. They, he argues, took contemporary values as their basic premises rather than the socio-historical context of the Qur’an
[2] See my Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997) as an example of this contribution to Qur’anic hermeneutics.
