Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis - Key Paradigms and Concepts - Massimo Campanini

Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis - Key Paradigms and Concepts - Massimo Campanini

9: The Translation of the Qur’ān as Hermeneutical Exercise

Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis - Key Paradigms and Concepts - Massimo Campanini

Massimo Campanini [+-]
University of Trento
Massimo Campanini was born in Milan in 1954. He graduated in philosophy at the University of Milan in 1977 with a thesis on Giordano Bruno’s thought. Later he obtained a degree in Arabic at the Institute for the Middle and Far East of Milan in 1984. Lecturer in history and institutions of the Muslim world at the University of Urbino and of Arabic culture at the University of Milan; reader in History of Islamic countries at the Oriental University in Naples; presently, he is Associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Trento. He published about 100 scientific articles and 30 books, a few of them translated in Spanish, Portuguese and Serbo-croatian. In English he published The Qur’an: The Basics 2nd edition (Routledge 2016), Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press 2008) and The Qur’an: Modern Muslim Interpretations (Routledge 2011).

Description

Translating is a highly hermeneutical activity. Translating is always interpreting. The problem is: When we are translating the Qur’an, are we “betraying” its meanings? Discussing the topic of the Qur’an’s translation is then a very difficult task. On the one hand, the Qur’an is not a normal literary text; and, on the other, Muslims do not accept the translation into another human language of the direct speech of God who spoke in Arabic. This chapter focuses on Nasr Abu Zayd’s, Fazlur Rahman’s and other commentators’ approach to understand how it is possible to convey to all human beings, who speak many languages, the meaning of a message originally expressed in Arabic. The problem of the Qur’an’s inimitability (i‘jaz) is crucial.

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Citation

Campanini, Massimo. 9: The Translation of the Qur’ān as Hermeneutical Exercise. Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis - Key Paradigms and Concepts. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 88-95 Oct 2016. ISBN 9781781792315. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=32126. Date accessed: 11 Dec 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.32126. Oct 2016

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