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the sunna of the prophet 73These two different categories (book of the unseen / book of conduct)indicate a distinction between prophethood and messengerhood.Prophethood (nubåwa) is derived from the Arabic root n-b-#, whichmeans—in its second verb form (nabba"a)—‘to announce’ or ‘todisclose’, 1 and in the context of the Book it refers to those parts of thetext that announce or disclose the themes of universal—and sometimes,historical—‘truth and falsehood’ ( al-Èaqq wa’l-b§ãil). The versesof messengerhood ( al-ris§la), in contrast, contain concrete moral,social, and ritual instructions, that is, precepts of correct and praiseworthybehaviour, to be followed by the believers in their daily life.The verses of prophethood talk about the essential questions ofhuman existence: about life and death, about the beginning and theend of the world, Hell and Paradise, and such; they form the ‘bookof prophethood’ (kit§b al-nubåwa). The verses of MuÈammad’s messageor messengerhood, in contrast, talk about religious practices:about rituals, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, prohibitions, social duties,welfare obligations, and the like. They represent the ‘book of messengerhood’(kit§b al-ris§la). The book of prophethood deals with thereality of our objective existence; it distinguishes between true andfalse, real and illusory; it possess the quality of being ‘ambiguous’(mutash§bih), and it is located in the textual (or existential) subcategoriesof al-qur"§n and sab# al-math§nÊ. The book of messengerhood, thatis, the book of conduct, possesses the quality of being unambiguousor ‘definite’ (muÈkam) and is located in the umm al-kit§b, the ‘motherof the book’. In short, MuÈammad (ß) is a messenger of God and aprophet, but both roles contain different tasks and themes. The Bookacknowledges MuÈammad’s dual role by clearly distinguishingbetween verses of messengerhood and verses of prophethood. 21MS refers exclusively to the root n-b-# and hence nabba"a ‘to make s.th. known,to announce s.th.’ (as in 66:3), even though the conventional reference would be ton-b-y and nabÊy ‘prophet’, from Syriac nbÊy§ or from another Aramaic dialect(Ambros, Dictionary, 262). MS uses the semantic association between nubåwa (prophecy)and nubå"a (prognosis, prophecy), the latter linked to inb§" (notification, information),to establish his interpretation that the role of prophets is ‘to notify’ or ‘toinform’.2Based on his assumption of two fundamentally different categories of divinerevelation, MS defines verses according to their metaphysical status as either eternal,absolute, and objectively valid or as temporal, relative, and subjectively conditioned.Since MuÈammad enjoyed the status of the Prophet and the Messenger of Allah, MSargues, the Qur"an must reflect these two positions (which are conventionally notperceived as separated) in the form of two different categories of verses: verses of