The linguistic and conventional definition of Tafseer
Tafseer (interpretation) is derived from Safr (lit. to reveal or disclose). Tafseer has a similar meaning.
Conventionally, there are other definitions to Tafseer, including “the science of interpreting the Book that Allah revealed to His Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and shedding light on its meanings and deriving laws and wisdom from it.
”This definition is inclusive of all types of Tafseer, such as the form concerned with wordings and linguistic structures or the form concerned with deriving laws and wisdom. The latter includes“scientific Tafseer” (Tafseer ‘Ilmi), which is associated with the natural sciences, technology and disciplines, such as engineering, mathematics, anatomy, sociology, physics, chemistry, biology and geology.
Scientific Tafseer:
it is the personal judgment (ijtihaad) of a Tafseer scholar in finding relationships between Qur’anic verses and discoveries made in empirical science in a way that demonstrates the miraculous nature of the Qur’an and indicates the source of the Qur’an and its validity for every time and place.
A better and more comprehensive definition for it is the study of the meanings of the verses and Hadeeths in the light of overwhelmingly established theories of natural science.
