For the last several weeks I have been listening to a series of lectures about the “coherence” of the Qur’an. The lecturer connects similar language patterns between ayaat and surahs; and purports to discover linguistic patters in the Qur’an that can deepen the reader’s understanding and appreciation, and which can demonstrate congruence where there may superficially appear to be sudden topic changes, and so on. And he seems to suggest that this approach is superior to traditional tafsir.
OK. So my conclusion, for what it is worth, is that this is a fake discipline, like a lot of modern academic theories of how to approach literature. To me, this is a game; and as the lecture series progressed, this became clearer and clearer. He was not ‘discovering’ patterns so much as ‘projecting’ them onto the text.
The game has at least two purposes. One; students can become busy with what is actually a distraction from the Qur’an – looking for trees instead of at the forest, as it were. And two; it serves the classic purpose of other phony disciplines in academia, namely, when you create a discipline you automatically create yourself as its reigning expert. I can imagine students coming to this lecturer with various ‘patterns’ they perceive, hoping for his approval of their use of his method; he can then validate or invalidate their findings. Instant authority.
Meanwhile, the Qur’an is being dealt with like a jigsaw puzzle instead of as a message of Guidance.