Quranic Hermeneutics - Introduction

Introduction

Hermeneutics in Islam leans on a lengthy tradition of tafsir, the exegesis of usually the Qur'an. Peter Heath posed in 1989 that "the modern study of Islamic hermeneutics is in its infancy"; in response, Jean Jacques Waardenburg proposed five questions and issues that a study of a possible hermeneutics of Islam would have to deal with:

  1. Is there a consistent methodology underlying tafsir that one could call hermeneutical, do rules exist "that have been explicitly formulated and consciously applied by Muslim scholars"?
  2. Given that much of the tradition of interpretation of the Qur'an is concerned with the interpretation of specific verses, what is the relationship between those interpretations and the interpretation of the Qur'an as a whole
  3. What type of philological knowledge, and what type of knowledge of the historical reception of the text is necessary to come to an assessment of Islamic hermeneutics?
  4. Can we separate our emotional response to certain verses from the study of the meaning of the text?
  5. What is the role of the specialists in the field (the mutakallimiin, the ulama, and the fuqahā') and what is their relationship to the broader circle of students of the Qur'an and the even larger community of believers?

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