إِنَّ هَـٰذَا لَفِى ٱلصُّحُفِ ٱلْأُولَىٰ
| View | What it says | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| The immediately preceding ruling (14-17) | The principle that the one who purifies himself is saved and that the hereafter is better | The nearest referent; the majority's preference |
| The whole of the sūra | Everything said in the sūra | The comprehensive reading |
| The Qurʾān | The Book itself | There are places where the demonstrative hādhā is used of the Qurʾān; but here it stays distant |
The first view is the nearest and works most easily in point of language. The second view does not exclude it.
An important caveat: the verse does not say that the same wordings are found in the earlier books. The expression "this is in those scriptures" points to content. In establishing its relation with the earlier revelations the Qurʾān does not claim identity of text.
A ṣaḥīfa is a spread and flat surface on which writing is done; it may be leather, papyrus or parchment. Its plural is ṣuḥuf. From the same root comes مُصْحَف (muṣḥaf): that whose leaves have been gathered together. In modern Arabic ṣaḥāfa (the press) and ṣaḥafī (a journalist) are derived from the same root as well.
And in the section on al-Bayyina, when the word's occurrences in the Qurʾān were listed, al-Aʿlā 87/19 had already been mentioned: for the earlier revelations, "in the scriptures of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) and Moses".
1. The earlier revelations — here and at al-Najm 53/36-37. 2. The records of deeds — "When the scrolls are laid open" (al-Takwīr 81/10). 3. The Qurʾān itself — "a messenger reciting purified scriptures" (al-Bayyina 98/2); "…in scriptures honoured, exalted, purified" (ʿAbasa 80/13-14).
At al-Ḍuḥā 93/4 ٱلْأُولَىٰ had occurred, and there it had the sense of "the former life"; as the opposite of al-ākhira. And al-ākhira occurred in the seventeenth verse of this sūra as well.
But the ٱلْأُولَىٰ in the eighteenth verse is not in that sense. Here it is the attribute of al-ṣuḥuf: the earlier scriptures — that is, the revelations sent down before.
The sūra, that is, uses the same word in two different works one verse apart: at 17 al-ākhira is the life of the hereafter; at 18 al-ūlā is the earlier books. The two are not a pair to one another.