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46 Andrew Rippinsuggestion could also be taken to be an assertion of the Qur'an's independence.from the New Testament tradition and thus those English resonances of Jesushealing the blind, deaf and the leprous are eliminated, once again likely in a"scientific" mode, reflecting popular currents of Muslim thinking regarding thevalue of"scientific" inforillation in the Qur'an.One might object that such very specific meanings of words do not really matter.That is, we may be setting ourselves an impossible goal if we wish to define wordstoo closely on the basis of little evidence. But more importantly, it does seem, asillustrated by the case of {alb, that we cannot escape from some sense of theMuslim tradition in determining meaning in some, if not many, instances. Thatthen means that the role of scholarly investigation and etymology has to be acheck on that heritage in order to understand where dogma or pure speculationcomes into play. We may not be able to clarifY every meaning on the basis of theresources available to us from outside the tradition of exegesis but we can becomemuch clearer about which meanings are secure and which are not. To accomplish .this goal would require a different dictionary than those we currently have. Wewould need specific studies of each word, considering the basis upon which themeaning is established. 28 As both of the case studies suggest here, there can becomplex structures behind some of the most innocent words, which remain buriedwithin the tradition of interpretation. And it is certainly true that there would be noway, nor any reason, to escape from that storehouse of knowledge. What wewould know, however, is the basis upon which such meanings were established.Of course, a dictionary such as that would not be the final word of Qur'iinicstudies: individual words have contextual connotations well beyond what adictionary can reasonably record, but it would be a major resource that we do notcurrently have available, even given the current influx oflexicographical resources.Towards understanding theQur' an's worldviewAn autobiographical reflectionNasr"Abu Zayd 1I have been wondering for some time now why the companions of Mu]Jammad,upon producing the official mufibaf known as the 'Uthman codex, decided to have. the mufibaf arranged by the chapter-length order rather than the historical chrono­. 'logical order, an order that would have saved Qur'an scholars a lot of trouble. Thequestion is still valid even when we accept the traditional claim that Gabriel·..·authored this arrangement during Mu]Jammad's lifetime. Trying to figure out theimpression which the chronological order would have created, I imagine that theQur'an would have been very much similar to the Old Testament narrative formof "history of salvation." The Qur'an, however, presents itself as a continuationof earlier scripture, beginning with "the sheets" of Abraham and Moses (tiubufIbrahim wa-Miisii; Q 87:19). It distinguishes itself from earlier scriptures as the, dominant (muhaymin), and the most accurate (al-(laqq; Q 5:48). Such a distinctionmust have consequences for both form and content. If arranged according toits chronological order (tartfb al-nuziil), the Qur'an would have been a book of···the history ofMu]Jammad's mission and of the early Muslim community; it mightappeared like a historical document rather than a divine message.I suppose that the companions were aware of this possibility, so they emphasizedthe distinction by making such a choice. A similar distinction on which they;·· insisted is that of naming the volume which contained the Qur'an. Although it took. the form of a book after being codified, the companions chose to call the Qur'an a. mutj(lafinstead of a "book" (ldtiib), the name that the Qur' an uses often to identifYitself. It never refers to itself as mutj(laf, which is, in fact, a borrowed word of28 Shawkat Toorawa's list of hapax legomena in the present volume (he notes that there about 300,with a third of them in rhyme position) is a place to start with a series of"studies." Also see OrhanElmaz, "Die Interpretationsgeschichte der koranischen Hapaxleogomena", PhD thesis, Vienna,2008 (my thanks to S. Toorawa for drawing my attention to this work).1 Editor's note: Dr Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd passed away on July 5, 2010, in his native Egypt. Thepresent article thus represents one of the last products of his intellectual career. Dr Abu Zaydsubmitted it to me soon after his keynote lecture at the April2009 Notre Dame Qur'iin conference.I read the paper and consulted with him on revisions through the following year, and sent the latestversion to him on June 5, 20 I 0. Due to the illness that led to his tragic passing, Dr Abu Zayd wasnot able to review this version. Thus the present paper is shaped substantially by my own editing,and any errors therein are my responsibility.