Reading Tafsīr Tarbawī (Qurʾānic Educational Interpretation) of Abuddin Nata from the Perspective of Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics

Abstract

This paper analyzes Abuddin Nata’s book of tafsīr tarbawī (Qurʾānic educational interpretation) entitled Tafsīr Ayat-Ayat Pendidikan (“Interpretation of Educational Verses”) on the basis of Paul Ricoeur’s ideas of hermeneutics. It does so through its main postulation of distanciation and appropriation through the dialectics of understanding or comprehension (verstehen) and explanation (erklären), using two primary stages: from naïve understanding to explanation through guessing; and from explanation to comprehension (deep understanding) through contextualization. This paper claims that the still contested methodology of tafsīr tarbawī is reflected in the dominance of the author’s subjectivity vis-à-vis the objectivity of the text. Such a claim is based on its minimal distanciation using the original verbal meanings of the Qurʾān, while the appropriation is dominated by the author’s own horizon. The implication is that Tafsīr Ayat-Ayat Pendidikan does not reflect the correct degree of fusion between the text-horizon and the author’s horizon as Paul Ricoeur suggested should be the case.