Jurisprudential Viewpoint of the Interpreters on the Story of Prophet Joseph

Second to the literary and lexical collections, the jurisprudential interpretations are one of the exegetical varieties that take place in the sanctuary of the Qur’ān and in light of its doctrinal knowledge. Almost one third of the āyas of the Qur’ān comprise of the conducts and speeches of the prophets and people of the earlier communities. In one respect, the number of the scriptures of earlier religions or their time spans are not clearly specified; thus with regard to the jurisprudential employment of the verses of stories by the Imams, their jurisprudential utilization is a serious necessity. Study of the abrogation issue in view of legal theorists (uṣūlīs) and interpreters has indicated that there is no elaborated and specified viewpoint by them concerning jurisprudential utilization of this section of the Qur’ān.
In this research, the interpreters’ legalistic perspective in the āyas of the Joseph story is centered around three issues of cooperation with false governances, approval and disapproval of planting false evidence, and fabricating lies against others or justification of means for a sacred goal. The present article, which is prepared by using library sources and conducted with descriptive-analytical method, describes how the interpreters and jurisprudents make jurisprudential employment of the verses of the Qur’ānic stories, and goes on to critically review the quality of their argumentation. The findings of this research demonstrate the lack of a single specified position concerning the scope of validity of the earlier religious laws and abrogation in their legal view on the above-mentioned verses and an indication of the interpreters’ and jurisprudents’ need for a jurisprudential look at elucidating the framework of abrogation and inference of precepts from the story verses of the Qur’ān.