The Esoteric Nature of the Holy Qur'an and its Impact on the Eternalness of the Holy Qur'an, with particular emphasis on the viewpoint of Ayatollah Maʿrifat

The esoteric nature of the Qur'an has been a subject of discussion amongst Qur'anic scholars, exegetes and scholars of hadith from the era of the Holy Prophet (S) until the present. One of the noteworthy viewpoints concerning the method of acquiring the esoteric meanings of the Holy Qur'an is the one presented by the Shi'a scholar, Ayatollah Maʿrifat. His suggested methodology entails four steps: 1) acquiring the purpose of the verse; 2) removing all time, place and character specifics from the verse that do not influence the purpose of the verse; 3) extracting general principles from the verse; and 4) correlating the extracted general principles on new referents. This article aims to present and discuss the viewpoint of this scholar and its impact on the eternal nature of the Holy Qur'an.