ABSTRACT
Scriptural exegesis of one form or another has been a critical aspect of religious, intellectual, and social activity in the Muslim community since the time of its foundation. The diffusion of exegesis through multiple genres is also due to the fact that both the religious sciences that coalesced into formal disciplines in the classical period and more "secular" branches of literature drew on a common pool of orally transmitted material handed down from the formative period of Islam's development. There are different ways to explain the disjunction between the explosion of Companion and Successor reports pertaining to exegesis and the relative paucity of traditions of prophetic tafsir. In evaluating the origins, nature, and role of scriptural interpretation in Islamic culture, it is important to take a number of trends in contemporary scholarship on Islamic origins into account.
