Abstract

One of the issues discussed about the subject of faith in divine scripture is the preservation of the revelation. For instance, is "the preservation of revelation" possible both in terms of the Qurʾān and previous texts of revelation? What are the reasons for its possibility or impossibility with reference to the historical and sociological reality? If protection is possible, is its source the divine authority or human elements? If the divine authority is dominant, did this authority only manifest itself in the Qurʾān? Could the Qurʾān be different in this respect than the previous holy books? Likewise, the recognition that the Qurʾān has survived to the present day without any changes or distortion since its revelation leads to the question of why other books lacked this quality. The answers for this question are based on the argument that the Qurʾān, unlike other holy scripts, is "under divine protection"; therefore, it is not possible to change or distort it. Thus, the study first briefly discusses issue of whether the Torah, Psalms and the Gospel preserved their originality and then draws attention to the Qurʾān. Although the protection of the authenticity of the Qurʾān is beyond dispute, the nature of this preservation and what stages it covers are controversial. In this context, the interpretations commonly made regarding the commonly cited the verse of Surah al-Hijr (15/9) were examined, and this verse was majorly interpreted by the early commentators as the preservation of the Qurʾān which concerns the revelation process. In the tafsirs written in the first three Hijri centuries in particular, it makes sense that the issue of the preservation of the Qurʾān is addressed in relation to the process of its revelation and that the protection relates to a process in which Allah and the Prophet were involved. On the other hand, in the commentaries written in later times, it is clearly seen that the interpretations evolved into the idea that the Qurʾān is under the guarantee of divine protection forever. In the present study, which was carried out to reveal what could be the reasons for the change in the interpretations of the aforementioned verse in the commentaries, we discovered particular reasons. Therefore, one could say that there are sectarian motives underlying the different interpretations of the verse in question.