Non-Muslims can skip this. Too technical. Thank you.
- Today we will look at the word JUNUB in the Quran.
- This word is very well known to all Muslims.
- Or so you might have thought.
For today's discussion of JUNUB I have cut and paste (see below) all the 33 occurences of JUNUB and its derivatives in the Quran from the Quran Corpus. For the online link click here.
JUNUB and its derivatives occur 33 times in the Quran.
Recall I have said before that how I study the Quran is that I look up ALL the occurences of a word in the entire Quran. I use online sources like the Corpus Quran plus online indexes and also Professor Hannah Kassis' Concordance of the Quran.
JUNUB and its derivatives occur 33 times so with a bit of fingerwork you can read up all the 33 occurences in the Quran.
However quite a few words occur more than that, often hundreds of times so it will be a slog to check up all their occurences in the Quran. Yet that is the best way to double check the meanings of words as they appear in the Quran. You have to study each and every occurence of the word in the Quran. There is no other way. I have been doing this for about 30 years now and I have just scratched the surface.
- It is to be noted that sometimes the same words (sharing the same root word) are translated differently or are given different meanings in different verses.
- This is where you can ask someone to explain WHY?
- WHY is the same word given a different meaning in different verses?
So lets look at the 33 occurences of the word JUNUB in the Quran. But you can just read my comments which are a lot simpler. Here they are:
The tally of different English words for junub is :
keep away 1
remove from 1
to avoid 10 times
distance 2
farther away 1
impure 2
sides 13 times
flank 1
regard 1
direction 1
Total 33
So now you can double check or you can try asking why is JUNUB and its derivatives given the meaning "to avoid" 10 times? Or 'sides' 13 times? Or 'impure' two times? Or 'direction', 'regard', 'flank' once each?
Is there one English word that can better replace all these different English words and yet still capture the meaning of the original arabic word junub?
For example the English word "isolate" and its grammatical forms can be considered a substitute for these English words "keep away", "remove", "avoid", "distance", "farther away". If it captures the context the meaning should be understood.
Sometimes it has still to be studied more why different meanings are given to the same word in different verses.
