The Role of Presuppositions in Understanding Religious Text

Gayour Al-Hasanein

Abstract

Presuppositions play an important role in forming the framework that texts are understood by. They influence how texts are understood, and result in different explanations for one text. There are many types of presuppositions, like instrumental presuppositions, implicit presuppositions, presuppositions that are related to historical influences, presuppositions that influence deeper understanding, and presuppositions that influence critical and evaluative understanding. It is important to distinguish between these types, and distinguish between what is allowed and what is necessary in understanding a text, like the reality of idea, combining of two contradictory things, context, vertical and horizontal understanding of meanings of words, and to that which is not allowed in understanding text, like comparing the unseen to the seen, religious good and bad, and restricting meanings to one level, and restricting meaning of text to the views of the predecessors. In this research, we relied on the descriptive-analytical methodology in explaining the different views related to each of these presuppositions, and the critical methodology in evaluating them.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)