Rereading and analyzing the opinions of Allamah Fazlullah regarding the historicity of religious texts

Gholami, Marjan; Ajilian Mafogh, Mohammad Mahdi; Ahmadi, Mahdi

doi:10.22034/iscw.2026.2078088.1215

Rereading and analyzing the opinions of Allamah Fazlullah regarding the historicity of religious texts

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Marjan Gholami ¹

Mohammad Mahdi Ajilian Mafogh ²

Mahdi Ahmadi ³

¹ PhD in Quran and Hadith Sciences, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Quranic Sciences and Hadith., Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

³ Assistant Professor, Department of Quran and Hadith Sciences, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

10.22034/iscw.2026.2078088.1215

Abstract

This article, by examining the set of opinions of Allamah Fadlallah in relation to traditional approaches to understanding the text and new hermeneutical approaches, explains and analyzes his view on the historicity of religious texts in an analytical manner. According to the results of this study, Fadlallah has considered historicity in religious texts to be possible in some of the non-signature laws from the set of non-worship laws of Sharia. Regarding Quranic propositions, he believes in the existence of a fixed and a variable dimension in the religious text and considers historicity to be at most a reference to the propositions on the surface of the text; at the same time, he considers the inner meaning or the criterion of that superficial meaning to be ahistorical and always constant. From the same perspective, regarding the propositions of the tradition, he accepts the two-level nature of meaning in the form of purposive ijtihad; with the difference that although he also emphasizes the stability of the criterion of the ruling regarding the tradition, he acts more freely in dealing with the surface of propositions and sometimes completely sets aside the surface of the narration.

Keywords

Text

Hermeneutics

Historicity

Constant and Variable

Allameh Fazlullah

Subjects