ABSTRACT
The narrative of the Surat Yusuf is not the story of the prophet Yusuf, but the story of the listener or reader's coming to differentiate among these different perspectives and therein find his appropriate place. Yusuf is one of the prophets preceding Muhammad whose story does not appear in the Surat of the Poets, although his scheming, lying brothers may be considered analogous to the band of poets opposing Muhammad. The Surat Yusuf is no more a mere variant of the biblical tale of Joseph than a Qur'anic verse is a variant of the line of pre-Islamic poetry with which it shares an odd word or two. The 'narrative' is not only stripped of historical and geographical context, but here the Qur'an studiously avoids investing any object with specific identity. Baydawi is not performing a sort of linguistic archaeology, but instead recognizes that the disruptive ambiguity of this verse finds its analogue not in narrative but in lyric.
