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Structure and Qur?anic Interpretation: A Study of Symmetry and Coherence in Islam's Holy Text. By Raymon d Farrin . Ashland, Ore.: Whit e Clo ud Press, 2014. Pp. xvii + 163. $17.95 (paper).
The important and fascinating problem (along with the attendant problem of why it should be a problem at all) of the coherence of the Quran has been circulating through the general field of Islamic studies for a long time. Quran scholars have taken it up relatively recently. This book is not a summary of that scholarship but rather something of a popularization of many of its conclusions pressed into the service of a study of coherence as exemplified in the Quran through symmetry, chiasmus, and pairing/organization of suras into unified sections or systems of textual and narrative coherence. The second chapter of the book (pp. 9-21) was published a few years ago in The Muslim World as a study of the coherence of surat al-Baqara. This article has been revised and joined with some interesting supplementary explorations of coherence from different angles. Many of these theories and approaches have been the subject of recent scholarship. A cognate, though quite different,...